Page 4 of Delivered to My Shadow Unicorn Alphas

I was answering one of my cousins when a pop-up caught my attention. I nearly clicked on the X to make it go away until I read the contents of the ad.

An app that helped people find their mates. Mail-Order Matings.

Could it be that simple?

Download an app. Find a mate. If so, why hadn’t we heard of it before? Probably because we lived in the mountains, far from the threat of hunters or any chance of finding our mates.

Juven didn’t like technology. He utilized it for what we needed, but that was about it. I, on the other hand, embraced it.

I wasn’t getting any younger, either. The curse of being a shadow unicorn was that we had to find our mates before turning thirty, and I’d just had my twenty-ninth birthday. Time was running out for us. We went about our day as if our mate would simply show up, but no one showed up in our community. Females who wanted a unicorn as a mate didn’t stumble into the haze that wove between the trees up here. It was time I did something about the issue at hand.

I downloaded the app on my phone and lost a good part of my day signing up and filling out the answers to the questions.Would I be open to sharing a mate? Would I be willing to be a part of a reverse harem?

If it meant finding my fated mate? I didn’t know. Those were questions that went unanswered. Once I found her, I would have to explore what that meant for our future, though I couldn’t imagine sharing. I’d never known a unicorn who had more than one mate.

I turned off my phone and retreated to the greenhouse. Shaman had gone to the small city at the base of the mountain for supplies. While we tried to keep our community as self-sustaining as possible, there were things we simply couldn’t make or keep. The basics—bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits—we had. But for chocolate and other important items, we had to outsource. Plus, Juven would shop for others on his monthly trip.

In the greenhouse, my vegetables and herbs flourished. We were in the middle of a blistering summer, and my tomatoes proved the point. Ripening at a fast pace, they would provide a perfect complement for dinner.

Plucking the suckers from my tomato plants, I heard my phone beep. Not a regular text message but a new sound. Huh.

Perhaps a notification from the new dating or mating app.

Crossing to the other side of the greenhouse, I picked up my phone and saw that I had a match.

Already? Only a few hours since I signed up. Could this app find a potential mate so fast?

Her name was Amber. She had long, black hair and even darker eyes. She wasn’t smiling in the picture, but mischief sparkled in her eyes.

Mate. This is our mate. Find her.

“Mate? This is the first person I matched with. It doesn’t happen that easily. Does it?”

She is ours.

Ours. His and mine, though we were one, we were also separate beings. Two sides of the same coin. Sure, she was beautiful, and I felt an instant attraction, but I didn’t fully trust my unicorn at this point. He was desperate for a mate. There was a deep-rooted need for him to ensure our line continued.

I read on. She was smart. Listed some causes she was interested in. She was in a book club and put her favorite movies asLord of the Rings, the trilogy. If that wasn’t a sign, I didn’t know what was.

At the bottom of her profile was a link to send Amber a message.

I hovered my thumb above the button, ready to send her a message, when I saw a point in her profile I’d overlooked. Two or more. She wanted two or more mates.

This was what I was afraid of. Unicorns, and especially shadow unicorns, weren’t polyamorous and didn’t get into reverse harems. We simply didn’t.

Even if I considered sharing a female, it would only be with Juven, the one person in the world I trusted absolutely. And two males to one female would most certainly guarantee offspring. Wouldn’t it?

Goddess, no. There was more to mating than offspring and the continuing of my line. I wanted love and companionship and someone to hold at night. Would that be the same if Juven were holding her too?

I had to find out. No more matches needed. Amber was the one for me.

Chapter Five

Juven

Someone was shoving my shoulder and, since I was dead asleep, that person was going to get a piece of my mind. “What?” I yelled out after scenting Shaman.

He was my brother in all ways but blood, but he was in trouble.

---