Mate him! Her wyvern’s animal lust swept through her, nearly burning away all other thought. Mate! Now!
Despite her wyvern instinct and her own desire, Ivy held onto control by her fingernails. She worked him harder, channeling all her own desperate longing into giving him pleasure.
He was her mate. She wanted to do this for him. It was the one thing that she could do for him.
“Ivy!” he cried out, arcing up. “Ivy!”
Chapter 23
Goodbye, whispered his unicorn.
Chapter 24
It was so quiet.
Hugh couldn’t get used to the echoing silence in his own head. He’d always thought of his unicorn as a quiet presence, but now…now he knew the difference between quiet and nothing. He kept holding his breath, listening for a whisper that would never come again.
“Hugh?”
He jumped, coming back to himself. “Sorry. Keep zoning out. This is damned peculiar.”
From the expressions on his fellow firefighters’ faces, damned peculiar were not the words that they would have chosen. Dai and John were both staring at him as if he’d misplaced a limb. Griff didn’t seem able to look at him at all. Chase had his back pressed into the corner, all his usual laughter drained from his face. Only Ash was as expressionless as always.
It was strange, seeing them all crowded into his kitchen. It was even stranger to just see…them. They all seemed oddly different now that he could only see their physical forms. No hint of the powerful energies hidden underneath their skins; no subtle brush of their minds against his. He couldn’t even sense that they were shifters. They could have been any ordinary group of humans, for all he could tell.
And they didn’t hurt. There wasn’t even the faintest trace of pain, despite their proximity. He’d never truly realized how omnipresent his headaches had been. Now, instead of the familiar dull ache, there was…nothing.
It was so quiet.
Chase cleared his throat. “Uh, Hugh? You still with us?”
Damn it, he’d drifted off again. “Right. Sorry. What was I saying?”
“You were explaining,” Dai said very carefully, as if he thought Hugh might have lost the ability to understand simple English along with his unicorn, “why this is a good thing. Again.”
“Yes. That was it. Anyway, I know it’s going to be hard for you to understand, but—what do you mean, again?”
The rest of Alpha Team exchanged glances. He wondered if they were talking to each other telepathically. He didn’t have the foggiest clue anymore, of course.
“Shield-brother.” John Doe stumbled on the name, the faint melody of his sea-dragon accent more pronounced than usual. “You have now told us how this loss is actually a blessing three times, by my count. There is no need to repeat the chorus. If this is truly what your heart desires, then we…we rejoice with you.”
“No, we don’t!” Chase burst out. The pegasus shifter gestured at Hugh, his mouth twisting with distress. “How can you look at him and say this is right?”
“This is right,” Hugh said firmly. “And you’re all going to be happy for me.”
Chase raked a hand through his black curly hair, making it stand on end. “But you’ve lost your animal. You’re not—this can’t have been what you wanted. Did that damn wyvern talk you into it?“
“Ivy did exactly what I wanted,” Hugh said icily. He hoped that Ivy—who was in the front room explaining things to Hope separately—couldn’t overhear any of this. “And don’t any of you dare make her feel worse. She’s having a hard enough time as it is.”
The way that she’d jerked away from him, the terrible look on her face when she’d realized what had happened…that had been the worst part of losing his unicorn.
He’d tried to reassure her that it was all right. That everything was fine. That for the first time in his life he was without pain. He didn’t think she’d even heard his words. She’d just stared at him, eyes blank with shock and horror, as if she could see some wound that he didn’t even feel.
He didn’t know why she’d reacted like that. This had been her idea in the first place. This was what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? Why was she now creeping around as if it hurt to look at him?
Perhaps she was just feeling guilty at having taken his animal, but in the silence of his soul, he feared that it was more than that. Was there something wrong with their bond now? Something he could no longer sense himself?
He waited for his unicorn’s reassurance that they were still her mate, as she was theirs…but none came.