Page 3 of Delivered to My Shadow Unicorn Alphas

We had moved on from the mate subject quickly. It was a sore spot for us both. We unicorns had a limited time to search and I feared living in the mountains, despite the peace, was stopping us from finding our mates.

We couldn’t just live in a city and let anyone find out about us.

There had to be a way for us to find our mates.

Chapter Three

Amber

I left the book club meeting with half a dozen leftover cookies and a knowledge I had been the reason we had to discuss the same book the following week. Instead of continuing to talk about the book we were reading, the whole group had become absorbed in playing a game of what-if. As in, what if Amber dates a wolf/bear/dragon/goblin. Cindra had the goblin idea, but I had not checked that as a possibility. Too many fairy tales read as a child where the goblin played an unpleasant or scary role for me to be willing to date one. They all had me imagining the possibilities, picturing myself with a wolf shifter in my bed and a bunch of cubs rolling around my feet. It happened in the books we read…why not in real life?

All the way home, I had to try to stay focused on the road while imagining a date with different types of beings. A wolf who always opened the car door for me. A lion roaring with approval at my new dress. A dragon flying me to his cave to meet his sister’s hatchlings. A world had opened up before me where nothing was out of the realm of possibilities. But by the time I got home, it was all sounding a lot less possible and a lot more like something out of the pages of a romantic fantasy.

Why would they want me? The heroines were usually beautiful and smart and unique in some way. Unless I were to meet a jaguar shifter who needed some research for a doctoral thesis, there were going to be too many other females who could attract their attention.

Leaving my cookie plate and keys on the counter, I padded into the bathroom and turned on the taps, adding a generous pour of plumeria bubble bath to the tub before going into my bedroom to undress. I returned and sank into the scentedfroth, the bubbles tickling my nose. A romance heroine would probably have brought a glass of wine, maybe lit a candle, turned on soft jazz, but the bath alone was a rare luxury for me. Not because I couldn’t take one every evening if I chose but because I rarely pampered myself.

Yeesh, how could I think a vampire would find me sexy when I made so little effort. I lay back and closed my eyes, pushing aside anything more than the warmth seeping into my muscles. When I climbed out and reached for a towel, wrapped it around me, I’d come to a conclusion about the whole app thing.

Mostly, I was open to meeting any kind of a paranormal creature just for the experience. Would romance blossom? Probably not. I hadn’t had much luck in the human world, and I couldn’t imagine being more interesting to someone who could turn into a tiger, but it sure would be fun to meet them. I crawled into bed, too tired even to read, my eyes closing almost as soon as I clicked the bedside lamp off.

Sometime later, I woke from a dream whose details I couldn’t summon even in the moment. But a faint feeling of magic hung over me, likely as a result of joining that silly app. I plumped my pillow and rolled over, with no hope of getting back into the dream and seeing where it led. Or where it had been even.

After ten minutes or so, racing thoughts making it clear I wouldn’t be getting to sleep under any circumstances—at least not soon—I reached for my phone on the nightstand charger. A little surfing sometimes helped me get drowsy.

But instead of watching videos, I opened the Mail-Order Matings app. If it was a scam, what would it serve? I paid my bills, but I didn’t have enough money to be worth catfishing. And it just felt like a real site. I’d joined a few over the years but neverwas contacted by anyone I wanted to meet in real life. It would be a lot of work to fake something this realistic.

If I were to show up next week and tell the book club girls that I had a date with someone really exciting…a shifter? What would they say? Would my mom even believe me if I told her?

And what could it hurt? I scanned bio after bio, not just shifters but anyone different from me. Which wasn’t hard because there didn’t seem to be many ordinary humans there. And then I spotted a unicorn. Were they real?

Only one way to find out for sure. Crossing my fingers and possibly my eyes, I typed a message.Would you like to chat?Only after hitting send did I realize I was not only possibly waking him up but also sounding desperate or maybe creepy. It was the middle of the night, after all. I searched for anundofunction without success. About to put my phone down and bury my head in my pillow, I received a reply.

Sure!

Tentatively, I typed,Are you really a unicorn?

Haven’t you seen my bio? I’m the sparkly white unicorn with the longest horn in the whole app.

Was a long horn a euphemism for something else? Or a sign of it like hand/foot size in humans? I was not going to ask that. Instead, I said,What do you do?

Do?The typed word even looked confused.I like to run on the beach and ride roller coasters. But it says all that in my bio.

I mean for a career?

He launched into a description of his job, which, somehow, was the most boring one in the world. It involved data, which I usually found interesting but even with his long sparkling horn, he was duller than me and had not, as he finally admitted, run on the beach or ridden a coaster since high school.

At least it made me sleepy.

I added some things to my bio, hoping for something a little more interesting to talk about.Looking for two or more mates.Just out of curiosity.

Chapter Four

Shaman

Juven handled most of our financial stuff but, once in a while, I tried to make myself useful and checked everything over. He invested well for us, and we had enough for a lifetime and even more and could be generous with our means.

I clicked on the email icon and saw a few updates from distant family. There weren’t many of us, so, though we lived far apart, we stayed in touch.

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