Page 86 of As The Shifter World Turns

“He did.”

“What?” I was joking. ‘I know nothing about stuff like that.”

“He said the stories and ancient texts passed down told of unicorns mated with other shifters, but it was so rare for unicorns to meet their one true mate, that the truth became fiction and fiction became reality.”

“Wow!” That was hard to take in knowing unicorns had been denied love.

“It was easier for the community to believe that they could only mate with their own kind rather than wander the Earth for decades looking for their fated mate.”

“That’s so sad,” I sniffed.

“But all that’s going to change thanks to us.”

He brought me peppermint tea and we sat in bed talking about the baby. “Will it be a unicorn or a wolf? A uni-wolf? A wolfie-corn?” I giggled and almost spilled the tea.

“No.”

“Then what?” I asked. He got out of bed and looked underneath. “Micah?”

“That wasn’t me. I mean it was me, but I was just repeating what someone else said.”

We’d been happy for five minutes, a family of three—with Patch—and about to become four. And now the blood had blanched from my mate’s face, and he was looking for someone who wasn’t here or there.

“Babe, get into bed.” Maybe it was time for me to look after him. He’d been doing everything for me and now I was well, I could do the same for him.

“No.” He shot up and bumped his head. “There it is again.”

I wrapped my arms around him. His heart was thundering and I thought he was having a heart attack. I leaped out of bed and Patch cried. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

“No.”

I didn’t want to hear that word again. One small word, two letters and my world was falling apart.

“I don’t need any help.” His expression changed and his eyes were bright while his face was flooded with color. “I hear him.”

With a trembling hand over my mouth, I tried to tamp down the tears. Where was my Micah? I needed him and so did our baby.

He turned to me, his eyes blazing. “I hear my beast, Archer. And he’s a cranky so and so. Says it took mating with you for me to hear him.”

I sunk onto the mattress, hardly comprehending what he was saying. “But unicorns don’t have a beast, right?” Micah had often referred to his beast as in the actual animal he became when he shifted, but that’s all there was.

“I don’t fully understand it. No, make that I don’t understand it at all. But it’s because of you. Mating you has given me the world.”

32

LOOK WHO’S IN THE DARK NOW

Micah

“Movie’s ready!” I called from the couch. It had taken me far too long to get the app set up for us to watch the premiere of the space movie Archer had been waiting for, but I finally got it.

Archer had been hinting about it for the past three days and he came home to see me cussing at the stupid screen over a passcode not working—one I’d just created at that.

“Yes!” he squealed. “Let me pop some corn.”

I got off the couch and went to the kitchen to help.

“Where is it?” he asked.

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