and we follow the small shore around to the structure just as a door opens, welcoming us home.
Epilogue II
Eliph
“Do not overexert yourself,” I murmur to my mate as I help her up the stairs to her condo. “I do not know how you talked me into this. We shouldn’t have even been thinking of leaving the grotto so soon to our foal’s birth.”
My mate glances back at me over her shoulder, her coal black eyes shimmer subtly with a gleam of purple as she grins.
“Hey, you are the one who got me knocked up in a hurry. Whatever happened to unicorns being slow to breed?” she quips with a chuckle that never fails to send a lick of excitement through my blood. “Or should I remind you that you also never mentioned the fact that once I get to be in my third trimester that I will be stuck in my fetch form until our baby is ready to be born? Well, the baby is ready, and I have two legs again. I want my baby born here around my family.”
She waggles a finger at me, and I captured it in my hand and plant a small kiss at its tip.
“Some details escaped my memory,” I admit, “but traveling here while you carry our foal...”
“Is a great idea,” she interrupts. “I want to share this with my family, and you did promise a visit.”
“That I did,” I sigh in agreement. “I just didn’t imagine that you would wish to travel the portal while it is nearly your time for birthing. I made a perfect place within the grotto for our foal, and now it will be at least four months before he will be old enough to safely travel the portal with us.”
“And you did a wonderful job,” my mate consoles me with a brush of her lips against mine. “I just know that it will be the perfect place to raise our son. But first family. We will have all the time in the world with our baby in the grotto, afterward.”
“I worry, Ahandral, but I can deny you nothing,” I murmur as I loop my arms around her, holding her close against me.
And because of that I have jealously protected her every step of the way as we traveled through the human world. I protected her with every magic I could think of and kept an illusion over her at all times so that no one would guess she is a unicorn’s mare. Even the possibility that someone might suspect makes my blood run cold with true terror.
I know that she senses my fear because her small hand pats mine where it is clutched protectively around her belly.
“It’s going to be okay,” she assures me quietly.
“Yes, of course,” I breathe and relax my grip on her as the door opens and a familiar human offspring stares at us in surprise.
I almost don’t recognize the female because Harriet has sprouted up over the last year by a few inches and her face has become more angular as it has lost some of the baby roundness, but the squeal of happiness she lets out is full of the same, familiar enthusiasm that makes me smile. With a tiny, excited hop, she throws herself into Steph’s arms with enough strength that I stiffen a little and open my mouth to protest.
“Don’t worry, a bit of jostling won’t hurt that baby any,” a warm voice speaks at my elbow and I turn to greet my mate’s dam.
Her smile is genuine as she looks me over, her eyes lingering on my horn for a moment and then on Steph’s before making a satisfied hum in her throat as her eyes drop down again at my mate’s rounded belly.
“Well, it does seem that everything has worked out just fine between the two of you,” she drawls with a low chuckle. “My baby has her eyes all lit up in a way I thought I would never see again, and she’s got someone to love and dote on her like she deserves. I can’t say exactly how I feel about the horn, but I suspect it will grow on me. You do love and dote on her right,” she says as she squints at me.
“Of course,” I reply with a small frown, unable to see why anyone would doubt that.
“That’s an understatement,” my mate teases as she gently extracts herself from Harriet to rejoin me at my side. She threads her fingers through mine as