Page 60 of His Unicorn Alpha
“Oh,” the smugness turned to sheepishness. “Then, surprise?”
I blinked at him for a moment before chuckling and carefully easing down onto the couch beside him, not wanting to set my knot off again. “You’resolucky I love you.”
His expression softened out and he nodded. “Yes, I am.”
Time continued to pass. I picked up occasional jobs out of town, but nothing that would keep me from my mate for more than a night or two at most. As his due date loomed closer and closer, I found myself feeling increasingly more protective and possessive. Plus, his mobility was greatly impacted by the three babies throwing off his balance and putting strain on his back. I preferred being able to look after him, massaging his back and rubbing his feet.
Yeah, I was a sap. But he was my omega, and he was pregnant with my children, and it made me happy to look after him.
Eric continued to monitor him closely, which I was grateful for, even if Brandt and I both complained at having become Eric’s favorite new lab rats. But our third baby was still measuring on the small side, and watching her health was more important than anything else.
“Have you tried shifting recently?” Eric asked during one of our weekly appointments.
Brandt groaned and closed his eyes, splaying one of his large hands over his belly and wincing. I assumed one of our miniature cage fighters was attempting to box their way out of his abdomen, so I reached over to rub soothingly at the spotwhile Brandt answered, “I barely have the energy to put on my shoes of a morning. I can not imagine attempting to shift.”
“Well,” Eric cocked his head, “I think we should try it. It might give your little ones more room to grow.”
“Your logic is flawed,” my mate grumbled. “Every other pregnant shifter has mentioned feeling even more ungainly in their shifted form.”
Eric shrugged. “Yeah, well, none of them have been dragons, have they?”
“But—”
“Brandt, please. For our research. Forscience.” Eric’s voice took on a placating lilt which reminded me of Beck trying to get his kids to eat vegetables. “You love science.”
I tuned them out as they bickered, focusing instead on the foot currently stretching my mate’s belly into a strange, lumpy shape. I was still kind of mystified every time I felt our kids roughhousing inside him. It somehow felt surreal andtooreal all at once.
Before I knew it, those babies would be out in the world, and I would be responsible for looking after them.
Maybe my mom was right: maybe it would be best if she and Dad came to visit for a while once the girls were born. Brandt and I were in the middle of interviewing shifters to be our live-in nanny, but I suddenly felt the desperate need to be with my family. My entire family. Mom, Dad, Brandt, our babies…I wanted them all in one place. I wanted them all in the pack I’d claimed as my home. My inner horse (and, yeah, I still called him a horse, even if he did have wings and a horn) blew out burse of air through his lips and stamped his hooves. He was getting anxious, too.
I came back to the conversation as my hand was dislodged from Brandt’s belly as he struggled to get to his feet. Helping himup, I supported his back as he explained that Eric had convinced him to try shifting.
“If nothing else, I can curl up in my dragon form and sleep for a short while,” he muttered as he waddled (I would never use that phrase within his earshot) down the clinic’s short hallway. “That should alleviate some of the pain in my back as well.”
“I’ll shift and cuddle with you,” I said. “We’re getting better at communicating through the bond, so maybe we can use it as a chance to practice in shifted form.”
After Beck and Ollie had told us that they had learned to send focused sensations and feelings to one another —and the pink slashes across my friend’s cheeks had told me exactly what they used that discovery for— Brandt had been determined to master the skill himself. It took a lot of concentration, and I still wished we could send each other actual thoughts instead of feelings or phantom touches, but it was still pretty cool that we could silently communicate at all.
“I want to hear about how that goes,” Eric chirped behind us. “You haven’t tried while shifted yet, have you?”
“Not yet,” I answered, guessing that my mate was close to turning around and snapping at his brother again. The further he progressed in his pregnancy, the more volatile his mood swings became. “And I’m interested to see if we can do it, and from how far a distance.”
Not that I had plans to be separated from Brandt at all. He was thirty-two weeks pregnant and, even though Eric hadn’t said anything, I was under the impression that he thought the babies could arrive at any time. My own research had confirmed my suspicions: on average, triplet pregnancies only really made it between thirty-two and thirty-five weeks.
I really needed to call my mom.
When we got to the fields behind the clinic, I helped Brandt out of his shirt and sweatpants. He toed off his slip-on shoes andEric and I stepped back to watch him shift. Even his transition into his dragon form seemed to take longer than the last couple of times I had watched him, as if even the magic that thrummed through our veins was struggling to find the energy to complete its task.
The magnificent, hulking, dark red form of my mate finally materialized in front of us. Even in his state, his belly seemed swollen beyond belief.
“Fascinating,” Eric murmured, eyeing his brother before typing on the ever-present notes app on his phone.
“Do you think his body is struggling because the girls are unicorns, not dragons?” I asked.
“Doubtful,” Eric didn’t look up from his phone screen. “Considering our young don’t shift for the first time until they’re five or so.”
I scrunched my nose and thought back to when Lena was pregnant with her twins. She was a rabbit, which obviously couldn’t accommodate two human-sized fetuses in her shifted form. “So…the babies just grow —or shrink— proportionally to the shifter in question?” I looked back at my giant mate and his gravid belly and shuddered at the idea of a humanoid fetus the size of a small car. “Weird.”
