The Last Unicorn’s Mate (Sheridan Pack #9)
Prologue
The Past
The alpha mare studied her people and saw the hopelessness on too many faces.
She, herself, struggled to hide her own despair.
Their world was dying. Unicorns were caught in the middle of a battle between the wolf shifters and the witch covens who, in their righteous beliefs, thought shifters were abominations of nature.
While witches used the elements to give them power, shifters used innate magika to shapeshift.
Sounded more like jealousy than anything else, but that spiteful envy was destroying everything. Witches released the red death to eliminate the wolves, but there were more shifters than just wolves. Little did the witches realize they were all losing.
“Is this all of us?” her husband, the lead stallion, asked in a subdued tone.
“Unfortunately,” she replied.
Although unicorns were safe from the death of the plague, their numbers were decimated because they held the only cure.
Their horns contained healing silver magika, derived directly from the divine energy nexuses cris-crossing the earth.
They’d been pursued and hunted to near extinction from not only shifters desperate to cure themselves, but also the witches who did not want them cured.
The alpha mare raised her hand to silence the herd. Everyone fell silent, watching her intently.
“We’ve come to a crossroads,” she said softly. “We cannot continue as we were, so choices must be made. Our kind has been devastated by those we previously called friends. Their lives spared at the expense of ours.”
“They sacrifice us!” a cry rang out.
“They do not value us!”
“They kill without mercy.”
“Not even our foals are exempt from their desperation.”
“I know,” the alpha mare whispered achingly. “My own child was killed for his horn.”
Everyone fell silent. Her son was to be the next lead stallion, one day finding his own alpha mare to continue the herd. But that was all gone now.
“What are we to do?” someone asked.
She glanced up at her husband and he nodded his support.
“We must disband our herd,” she replied, sadness ringing through every syllable. She wiped a tear off her cheek. A gasp swept through the assembled, and a plethora of shaky comments came forth.
“But we’ve never lived on our own.”
“How are we to survive without a herd?”
“Will we someday be a herd again?”
The questions overlapped one another.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “What I do know in this moment of time, is we must fade into memory. There is no place left for us in this world. The wolves and the witches have to believe that we are extinct. If we do not disappear, then we will truly be the last of our kind.”
The herd stayed silent, but she saw the acceptance of her words.
“How?” one man asked.
“We use our magika to shield our scent. Live as a human. Protect our foals. Raise them with the knowledge of who they are, but that we must stay hidden no matter what.”
“Are we to leave the other shifters to die?” Everyone looked at the woman who spoke. “The felines and avians. Everything else. They’ve never harmed us.”
“Are you willing to die for them?” someone demanded.
“No, but their children are dying too,” she said softly. “Surely there is some way to help them.”
While the debate raged between them, the alpha mare thought about what was right. Her people came first, but a unicorn’s nature was one of nurture whenever possible.
“One gyre,” she said.
The debates abruptly ended as everyone turned back to her.
“For those who are willing to give one last gyre of our horns.”
“To who? Witches will not use a spiral to heal the plague they started.”
“We’ll find an enchantress,” the alpha mare said. “They are healers as well.”
Slowly, one by one nodded their agreement. Some even grew their horns in order to break off the top spiral, or gyre. The alpha mare collected them and handed them to her husband for safekeeping.
“This will be the last time we meet as a herd,” she finally said. Emotion welled up in her eyes, and tears ran down her cheeks. “Hide yourselves. Never reveal your true nature. May the light carry you.”
This was the end of the unicorns.