CHAPTER FOUR
∞∞∞
Mystified, Ilona followed Turner into the farmhouse.
She felt a bit as if she were floating just a few inches shy of the ceiling.
Everything was happening so fast, and she still wasn’t quite sure that she believed it.
She had shown up at some random farmhouse in the Illinois cornfields; she’d been menaced by a unicorn; and now she had found her fated mate.
She would have been lying if she said she’d never thought about it.
When Macy introduced her to Luca, their bond had been immediately visible.
They were so well-suited to each other that it was hard to imagine a world where they weren’t together.
Sure, she’d been envious, especially because it was clear that things with Ruth weren’t going to get much better, but it wasn’t like she would have ever expected something like that for herself. Fated mates were shifter territory.
Except now it had happened to her, and she knew, like she knew that her hair was dark and that over-mixing the batter would make your muffins turn out as tough as old shoes, that her life was about to change.
Weirdly enough, that wasn’t the source of her surprise.
No, it was the fact that something in her was just fine with all this, that she was eager and excited to see where It went.
Ilona realized with some chagrin that it had been so long since she had gotten excited over something that it felt strange.
Her thoughts were spiraling into a dark place by the time Turner led her into the kitchen and stepped aside to let her see.
In the dim afternoon light, she blinked around at the bold mint of the painted cupboards and the sweet pink detailing.
The tile backslash was the same sweet pink, and, together with the white quartz counter-tops, the effect was a pastel dream with gingerbread men come to life or little unicorns made out of fondant.
“I’m borrowing this place from a cousin,” Turner said. “I admit that I’m going to have some questions for them when they come back around.”
“This is very pretty,“ she started to say, but then she blinked, looking closer. “Is that a convection oven?”
“I give up, is it?”
In another man, it’d be a joke. With Turner, it was a genuine inquiry.
She circled the kitchen island and then squatted down in front of the oven, stroking the knobs with one finger.
Whoever owned this oven had taken incredible care of it.
She could see the wear in a few places—it wasn’t unused or pristine.
Instead they had simply given it the love and care it needed after all the food it had made, and Ilona bounced to her feet, a rush of fierce joy coursing through her.
“Yes! Yes, it is! That is a convection oven, and, unless I miss my guess, it’s one of the best models to come out in the last ten years. Your cousin sure knows how nice this oven is. I can’t find any damage at all—they must have treated it like a princess.”
“Okay, I’ve been using the microwave and the electric kettle. What does the convection part mean?”
“It blows hot hair through the entire chamber in addition to roasting or broiling what’s inside. You can use it to ensure that your Thanksgiving turkey cooks all the way through or to make sure that your souffle doesn’t fall over because it’s having bad day.”
“So this is a good thing?” There was a tiny smile on Turner’s face, and she laughed out loud.
Before she knew what she was doing, she leaned over and grabbed Turner into an enormous hug.
It was the only response that made sense.
Suddenly she was aware of how hard his body was, how good he smelled when she pressed her nose to his shoulder, how incredible it was when his arms came up to circle around her.
I’m safe. I’m home, she thought, and she didn’t realize she had said it it out loud until Turner caught his breath. For a second his arms tightened around her as if he couldn’t ever bear to let her go, and then he loosened them reluctantly.
“You are always safe with me, and I will always be a home you can come to, no matter what,” he said.
She wasn’t sure which one of them moved first. She wasn’t thinking about it, but the truth was that she had perhaps been thinking about it ever since she laid eyes on him. He was handsome, maybe even beautiful, but that wouldn’t have been enough to get her to kiss him out of the blue.
Maybe he was the one who kissed her, then, and, God, but she would give him all the money she had and probably some that she didn’t if only he didn’t stop.
His mouth came down over hers, and, at the first touch of their lips, a shock traveled from her heart to every other part of her. She felt as if, for the first time in her life, she was all the way awake, and she had never imagined awakening could be so wonderful.
Ilona was the one who recklessly deepened the kiss.
All she knew was that she needed more of this man, that she might actually wail if he stopped.
When he pulled his mouth back from hers, she actually did whimper, but he didn’t go far.
Instead, he paused with his lips just a few inches from hers, and he had to try twice before he could speak.
“Thank you.”
“You sound as if you really mean that.”
“I do. If there wasn’t a pregnant unicorn in the barn, I would show how very much I mean it.”
“Promises, promises,” she said pertly, and she watched with fascination as a heated darkness swept over Turner’s features.
Suddenly she remembered the wolf’s ferocity and single-minded intensity, and imagining all of that transferred to the man in front of her made her both slightly faint and very, very eager.
For a moment, it looked as if they were both going to get what they wanted, but then there was a sound like a combination of a bagpipe and a shriek.
Without a single hesitation or moment of doubt, she ran back to the barn, hot on Turner’s heels.
Maisey was still in the corral, thank goodness, but she was pacing back and forth in agitation.
She tossed her head as if to get rid of a fly that wasn’t there, and, as they watched, she rose half off her forelegs, making small kicking gestures that threatened to become the real thing.
The moment she saw Ilona, however, she visibly relaxed.
All of the tension went out of her, and, with a soft whicker, she pressed herself against the slats of the corral.
She was so enthusiastic that she made the wood shake, and Ilona hurriedly came to attend her, reaching up to scratch her along her cheeks and behind her ears.
The sigh she made was nearly human in its satisfaction, and something in Ilona calmed down as well.
“You have a real way with her,” Turner murmured. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this. For everything. Maisey's really special all on her own, but she’s also just very special to me.”
“Tell me.”
Turner’s face softened, and he reached through the slats to offer Maisey his hand. The unicorn gave it a cursory sniff without shaking Ilona’s hand from her head, and then, almost grudgingly, she lipped at Turner’s palm, making him laugh softly.
“She was the first unicorn I ever saw. My folks are biologists, both of them, and I grew up with the sad fact that unicorns had gone extinct in the United States. Too many people and towns, too few forests, same old terrible story. Canada has two herds, Scotland and Mongolia have a few more, but that is it. And then one day, my parents took me camping to Devil’s Lake in Wisconsin.
“That place is incredible, water and forests and rocks that’ve been there since the glaciers moved on. I couldn’t get enough of watching the sky brighten first thing in the morning. While my parents were still asleep, I’d creep down to the lake wrapped in my blanket just to take it all in.
“And then one morning, not long before we had to make the trip back home, there she was, as undeniably real as the rocks or the water. She’d come down to drink, and she was practically a baby.
I could see how thin she was. Her beard wasn’t in yet, and she still carried her tail up and cocked like a foal.
Still, she was incredible, and I watched her, my breath held, not daring to move, for forty minutes. ”
“And then somehow you found each other again?”
“Ha, there’s no somehow about it. She’s from one of the herds in Canada, way up north, and believe you me when I say that the shifter conservationists up there have got a lock on each and every one.
They’re numbered, and they’re tracked, and when one goes wandering, they find out about it.
When I saw Maisey in Wisconsin, that was her first trip south.
My parents called it in, and a team came down that month to bring her back.
It was three wolf shifters working out of an RV, one driving and two others herding her back home. ”
“They couldn’t just, I don’t know, get her into a van or something?”
Turner reached over and ran a finger along the unicorn’s horn. Up close, she could see that it was a natural honey-gold, the material close to deer antler.
“This is even harder than it looks, and if you piss off a unicorn, even a young one, she will use it. If they got her safely into a closed van, there’s a better than average chance that she’ll break it off, and that’s got some real nasty health outcomes and, weirdly enough, some social ones as well.
She wouldn’t be able to defend herself when sparring with her age-mates, and that can get deadly.
No, it took them a good month to get back, but that’s the best way. And then she did it again.”
Ilona made a choked sound, gazing at the unicorn who was so sweetly nuzzling her hand.
“You are a troublemaker!”
She didn’t think unicorns understood English, but this one gave her a smug look before moving her head so that Ilona could find the perfect spot to scratch. Turner laughed softly, a sweet rumble that Ilona could feel straight down to her toes.
“She is. She does this every few years, to the point where we’ve set up an alert system and people are on rotation to get her back home. I did it once a couple years back. It’s a pretty good time. This time, she turned up off the US side of Lake Superior, and she was pregnant.”
“Long trip back for an expectant mother!”
“Exactly. So she’s here in Illinois where I can keep an eye on her ‘til she pops, and then we’ll see about what comes next. If she’s gonna insist on coming down, maybe it’s time we start looking into reintroducing unicorns into the states. God knows the water supply needs it.”
“Er?”
“Oh, that’s one of the true stories. There’s that legend about unicorns purifying water, and according to modern water testing, that’s true. They’re sort of enormous, walking water purification tabs.”
He said it so matter-of-factually that Ilona snorted a laugh.
She had started today with nothing to think about except all the things she’d messed up, and apparently this whole time, she could have been thinking about the water purification qualities of unicorn.
Another unicorn legend occurred to her suddenly, and she blinked.
“So. Unicorn legends and specifically how Maisey seems to think I hung the moon. Is this that thing about unicorns liking virgins? Because, not to put too fine a point on it, but wow, that’s not—”
“Not all the legends are true,” Turner said, grinning. “They do form fast attachments to people sometimes. Rare, but it happens. In this case, I know how she feels.”
Ilona laughed before she realized that Turner was serious, and, on impulse, she reached up with her free hand, running the tips of her fingers across Turner’s cheek and the line of his jaw.
The scrape of his stubble against her skin sent a shock of intriguing pleasure through her, and that was before he made a pleased rumbling sound and nudged closer.
“Oh, you’re handsome,” she said without thinking, and Turner opened his eyes with a lazy smile.
This close, she could see the green flecks embedded in the gray, and there was something about it that was so very wolf-like it took her breath away.
He was more than a man, no matter how attractive he was—he was a man with a wolf in his head and his heart, and, in that instant, she could see the wolf, and the wolf could see her.
Hello, beautiful one. I adore you already, and I will only adore you more with every day that passes.
It wasn’t the sense of love and warmth that startled her. It was her own longing answer to it, and that was harder to believe in than the unicorn.
She took a step back from man and unicorn both, startled, and she could see that there was a moment where Turner meant to follow her before he reluctantly restrained himself.
Maisey, under no compunctions to mind her manners, uttered a sad, impressively loud whining sound, but then she settled back, mercifully calm and quiet.
“I’m sorry—”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Turner said firmly. “You go at your own time, and I’ll be right there with you. And happily it seems like Maisey agrees with me. I need to stay and keep an eye on her, but if you want to get to baking, I think you might have a bit before she gets to missing you too bad.”
“And you?”
“Oh, well, I miss you already, but I know there’s cookies to be made.”
There were, and Ilona puzzled over the stab of regret she felt as she made her way to her car to grab her groceries. It was silly. She was only going into the house, there was no great tragedy here.
Nevertheless, she stole a look over her shoulder to where Maisey was submitting to an ear rub from Turner, and she wanted to be with them again so deeply that it ached.