“Oh, sorry, I’ve been so rude, not introducing you!” Kira said, throwing her hands up and turning to Caleb. “Sorry – I forget you’re new in town, because it just feels like I’ve known you forever now, and – um.” Kira cut herself off, her face coloring a little – something that Caleb had to admit he found utterly beguiling. “Sylvie, Gale – this is Caleb. We just met. He’s my – um. I – I guess you could say that we – uh –”
“We’re mates,” Caleb said firmly. If Gale was a unicorn and Sylvie was his mate, then there was no point in dancing around it. They’d know what he meant, and they’d understand what he and Kira were to each other.
Beside him, he could sense Kira’s confusion as she looked up at him, her mouth going wide.
“Caleb –”
“It’s all right, Kira,” Sylvie said reassuringly, glancing up at Gale, who nodded at her, as if to affirm that it was all right to reveal what he was. “I know what he means. Because Gale is my mate.”
Kira gasped, her eyes going wide. “Gale? Gale is – a dragon?!”
Caleb didn’t miss the way Gale’s shoulders stiffened slightly as she said it, but he didn’t really blame him – he might have had the same reaction if someone had called him a unicorn!
“No – not quite,” Gale said, shaking his head. “But I am a shifter. A unicorn shifter.”
“A – a unicorn shifter?” Kira’s mouth was hanging open, her eyes wide. “All – all this time, you’ve – you’ve really been a unicorn?!” She turned to Sylvie. “And you didn’t tell me?! I thought you were my friend!”
Sylvie laughed lightly, raising her hands. “I’m sorry! I did want to tell you – but you have to admit, it’d be kind of a difficult thing to believe, right? And honestly, it’s a little bit complicated. People don’t really know about shifters – telling you about Gale meant revealing the truth about all shifters, and we weren’t sure we wanted that responsibility. But believe me, it’s been tough sometimes keeping it to myself.”
“Wow. Okay. I just – wow.” Kira shook her head. “And here I thought I had some mind-blowing news to tell you. And it turns out you’re married to a unicorn.”
Sylvie laughed. “Believe me, Kira – if you’ve found your mate too, then I am pretty mind-blown. And happy for you. You won’t know what’s hit you for a while, but it’s all worth it.”
Sylvie put her arm around Gale’s waist, while he rested his arm on her shoulder, both of them looking as deliriously happy and content with each other as Caleb had always dreamed he’d be with his mate, if he ever managed to break the curse and find her. And now, it seemed, he’d found her despite the curse – but he still needed to try to find a way to break it.
“I’m sorry if I was a little… well, tense, before,” Gale said, a smile on his face. “It was a bit of a surprise – sensing a dragon shifter out of nowhere like that. I’ve been getting a bit of a weird feeling the last few weeks, but I wasn’t sure if it was just my unicorn acting up.” He frowned slightly. “But how long have you been in town now?”
“Just a couple of days,” Caleb said. “But it wasn’t just your imagination. There have been dragons around – and these ones you can definitely get a bad feeling about. Tongle & Heit Developments is a completely dragon-run organization.”
Sylvie sucked in a quick, shocked breath. “The developers who’re trying to buy up the parklands? They’re dragons?”
Caleb nodded. “That’s right – that’s why they’ve been so persistent. Other developers might pack up and leave, but Tongle & Heit… well, it’s clear they want the Girdwood Springs parklands to add to their hoard. And getting between a dragon and something it wants… well. It’s not easy. So I’m helping Kira to find the documents she needs to prove the land is held in trust.”
“That’s actually what we came here to ask your help with,” Kira said. “Well, part of it. Uh.” She glanced up at Caleb. “Do you want to explain the bad luck curse, or shouldI?”
“Okay, okay, wait just a second,” Sylvie said, holding up her hands. “This sounds like a conversation that calls for tea. And cake. A lot of cake.”
* * *
As it turned out, the conversation did run a lot more smoothly over cake – it helped, Caleb supposed, that it was literally the most delicious cake he’d ever eaten in his entire life. But he supposed it made sense, given it had all been made with spices and other ingredients that had been grown by the hand of a unicorn.
“… So, you think eating these deadly mushrooms is the key to breaking this curse,” Sylvie said slowly, frowning.
“They’re not always deadly,” Kira told her. “If they’re prepared in a certain way, then apparently they’re completely fine. I just don’t know how to do it – you know what a lousy cook I am.”
“And even if I did know, I wouldn’t want to risk it,” Caleb said. “I’m just as likely to set all the mushrooms on fire accidentally as anything else. The curse has a way of creating these kinds of situations.”
“I can imagine,” Gale said, wincing. “I wasn’t under what you’d call a curse when I first arrived here, but my unicorn’s magic was definitely out of control – everything I touched burst into flower. I couldn’t do a thing without risking everyone seeing it. It wasn’t as bad as what you’ve had to deal with, but it wasn’t exactly convenient, either.”
“Oh – what solved it in your case?” Kira asked, leaning forward.
“Finding Sylvie.” Gale smiled. “Sorry – in my case, it was just my unicorn having a temper tantrum, so once it got what it wanted it calmed down a bit. This is something completely different.”
Caleb sighed. “Yeah. I wish finding my mate had cured this, but enough things have happened over the past couple of days to convince me that even though Kira and I have found each other, I’m still under the curse.”
“Well, how about you show me the mushrooms you found?” Gale asked. “I haven’t seen them before, but if they have any magical properties, my unicorn will be able to sense them. Perhaps I’ll even be able to figure out what we need to do with them.”
After Kira had passed him the bag filled with mushrooms, Gale carefully sprinkled a few of them out onto a napkin to make sure they stayed together, before just as carefully resealing the bag.