No, said a different voice.
It was almost Ivy’s, but not quite—harsher, wilder, with a core of utter certainty. Emerald eyes flashed in his mind, staring into his soul with the merciless focus of a hunting predator.
We will have all of you, Ivy’s wyvern snarled. How dare you hide? All of you is ours, always, forever. You are our mate, and we claim you, NOW!
A storm of wings and fury struck through him, even more intense than orgasm. The wyvern dove into the void at his core without hesitation, disappearing into the darkness.
And then—
Chapter 31
She’d killed him.
For five agonizing seconds—the longest five seconds of her life—she was certain that something had gone terribly wrong. Hugh’s head snapped back, his whole body seizing as if in a fit. He jerked apart from her, toppling off the bed with a crash.
“Hugh!” she shrieked, all of her afterglow extinguished by stark terror.
A blinding flash of light made her instinctively throw an arm across her face, shielding her eyes. A gust of wind blew back her hair. She tasted the scent of fresh rain and bruised greenery in the air, like a forest in the wake of a thunderstorm.
Her wyvern slammed back into her soul with the force of a comet. She’d dimly been aware of it separating from her during the overwhelming ecstasy of mating, but now it was back in its accustomed place in her mind, green-scaled sides heaving with exertion.
There, it said, sounding tired, smug, and not in the least concerned.
The eye-searing blaze faded to a shimmering glow. She dropped her arm, blinking in the sudden soft, golden light.
The unicorn staggered to his feet, uncertain as a newborn fawn. He stared at her with wide, sapphire eyes, looking even more astonished than she was.
“Hugh,” she whispered. And then, louder, a shout of pure joy: “Hugh!”
Hugh’s ears flicked back and forth, as if he was still trying to work out what had happened. His shining horn scythed the bedside lamp off the side table as he swung his head round to inspect his own white flanks. He lifted each front hoof in turn, stamping horseshoe dents into the bedroom carpet.
What the devil? he said in her mind, sounding utterly dumbfounded.
“You’re back.” She scrambled off the bed, flinging her arms around his shining neck. His fur was soft as velvet against her naked skin. “Oh, Hugh, you’re back!”
Fingers trembling, she brushed his sweeping mane back from his forehead. His horn was no longer only silver. Now, a gleaming line of pure gold spiraled up the long length, shining bright as the rising sun.
She traced the gleaming path, feeling how it thickened a bit near the base, where Gaze had cut him. There was no sign of that dreadful wound now. His horn shone from base to tip. Where once it had shimmered with faint, firefly motes, now it glittered with white-gold sparks.
“You’re healed,” she said, tears streaking her cheeks. “Hugh, your horn. It’s healed.”
He went cross-eyed, as if trying to see his own forehead. Even on a unicorn, it was an undignified look. Ivy broke into giggles, her legs giving way underneath her. She collapsed back onto the bed, shaking with laughter and gratitude and sheer disbelief.
Hugh blurred, shifting back into human form. He stood there, naked, looking down at his own hands with a lopsided, bemused grin. Still gasping for breath, Ivy pulled him down next to her. She wound arms and legs around him, kissing him indiscriminately over lips and jaw and neck.
“But how did this happen?” she asked, breaking off for a moment. “You didn’t suspect this could happen, did you?”
“Not in the slightest.” He traced a circle over her heart with one finger. “I think it was your wyvern. I felt her go…into me, somehow. And she pulled out my unicorn.”
He was hiding. Her wyvern yawned, flipping its wings as though it hadn’t done anything extraordinary. We didn’t like that. We wanted all our mate. All of him, ours, always.
“Did you hear that?” Ivy asked him, curious. “Can you still hear my animal?”
He shook his head. “No, she’s gone back to you. I can only hear my own now.” A soft, wondering look came into his eyes. “It isn’t quiet anymore.”
She snuggled into his shoulder, idly tracing the lines of his tattoos. “What does your unicorn say? Where was it?”
“It doesn’t really know. It remembers going, and then…it was back.” He was silent for a long moment, his fingers running lightly up and down the length of her spine. “I think it was always still there. Just lost. It was driven down into some deep, dark place by the sexual energy we created.”