Hugh sat in his usual shadowed corner of the Full Moon pub, and felt like the biggest asshole on the entire planet.

Because you are, his unicorn informed him.

His beast was utterly disgusted with him. Its light was no brighter than a distant star in the depths of his soul. It had withdrawn so far, he probably wasn’t capable of curing so much as the common cold at the moment.

He’d hurt his mate.

He wasn’t sure whether his unicorn would ever forgive him for that. He wasn’t sure whether he would ever forgive himself.

But he’d had no choice. He’d looked into those amazing, vibrant green eyes, and recognized the terrible loneliness hidden behind her aggressive manner. If he’d given her even the slightest hint of encouragement, she would have put her heart into his hands.

And sooner or later…he would have destroyed her.

Better for her to hate him. The way she’d carried herself, the squared set of those strong shoulders and the line of her beautiful, stubborn mouth—he could tell that she was ferociously independent. She’d take his betrayal and use it to armor her soul, so that he’d never be able to hurt her again.

He just wished there was some way he could armor himself against the memory of her heart-piercing eyes.

“Is there something amiss, shield-brother?” John asked from the other side of the table. All six firefighters of Alpha Team had gathered for their customary Sunday evening drink. “You are unusually quiet tonight.”

“Just a headache.” Though in truth, at the moment the customary pain was much less than usual.

Normally, sitting in the busy pub gave him a screaming migraine. The Full Moon was the only pub in Brighton which catered exclusively to shifters. The place was always packed with people hoping to encounter their one true mate, or at least a one-night stand.

With his unicorn shunning him, however, the repulsive mix of lust and desire in the air just gave him a dull ache behind his temples. Even the close proximity of his mated colleagues wasn’t sparking the usual pounding agony.

“Just a headache?” Griff shot him a sidelong look, eyebrows drawing together a little. “You sure that’s all it is?”

Hugh silently cursed himself. It was bloody inconvenient having a colleague who could detect lies. The last thing he needed was to be scrutinized by the griffin shifter’s uncannily perceptive stare.

“Well, it was an eventful day,” he said, which certainly was true. He pushed aside his barely-touched beer. “I’m tired. Think I’ll head home early.”

“Not so fast.” Dai leaned back against the wall, blocking his escape route. “You still haven’t explained what all that was about today, with the wyvern. You always said that if you ever met her in person, you’d blister her ears for the trouble she’s caused you. What happened? Why did you leap to her defense like that?”

Hugh scowled at the dragon shifter. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, I do,” Chase said, putting his drink down. There was an angry glint in the pegasus shifter’s usually laughing black eyes. “From what Dai and John said, you caught her red-handed. What were you thinking, letting her slip away like that? She should be behind bars, not running around loose.”

“Ivy’s not a bad person,” Griff said. “The poor lass has had a tough life, that’s all.”

“So have lots of people.” Chase’s lip curled in disgust. “And yet somehow, most of them manage to survive without resorting to becoming assassins-for-hire.”

Dai sighed. “And now I’m sorry I asked. Do you two really have to have this argument yet again?”

“Apparently,” Griff said. “Since Chase is still being an enormous cock on the subject.”

“I’m not the one who keeps insisting we should all make friends with a vicious criminal!” Chase slammed his fist down onto the table, making the pint glasses rattle. “Damn it, Griff, she tried to murder my mate!”

“No, that was your cousin.” Griff folded his arms across his chest, meeting the pegasus shifter’s glare without flinching. “He’s the one who stabbed Connie with wyvern venom. Ivy never wanted to harm anyone. She’s not responsible for what he did with the poisons he forced her to make.”

Normally, this would have been the point where Hugh leaped in with some cutting remark. He’d always been on Chase’s side in this argument.

But that had been…before.

“The sword is innocent of the hand that wields it, true,” John said in his deep, resonant voice. “But a person is more than a weapon. She should not have allowed herself to be used so.”

“She was desperate, John,” Griff said. “And Chase’s cousin was threatening to hurt her little sister if Ivy didn’t comply with his demands. What was Ivy supposed to do?”

John shook his head, his long indigo dreadlocks shifting over his massive shoulders. “Dishonor is dishonor, no matter the circumstances. I admire your compassion, oath-brother, but you debase yourself by associating with such a creature.”

“She’s not a creature!”

Heads turned at neighboring tables. Hugh realized that he’d half-risen, fists clenched.

“Gentlemen.” Fire Commander Ash’s voice was as quiet as always, but held an unmistakable note of command. “I will not have you disturbing the peace of Rose’s establishment.”

Rose, the middle-aged swan shifter who owned the Full Moon, was indeed giving their corner a narrow-eyed look from behind the bar. All the firefighters subsided at once, like guilty schoolchildren who’d just realized the teacher had returned.

No one wanted to get on the wrong side of Rose…mainly because it would also mean attracting Ash’s wrath. And the Phoenix was not someone you wanted to piss off.

Not for the first time, Hugh wondered just what was Ash’s connection to Rose. It was clear the pair had some sort of history, but the Phoenix was even more closed-mouthed about his secrets than Hugh himself. For her part, Rose seemed entirely oblivious to the fact that she had the most powerful shifter in Europe wrapped around her little finger.

“Now,” Ash said, fixing Hugh with his unnervingly calm, fathomless eyes. “I would like an explanation, Hugh. Why did you break protocol by removing the witnesses from the scene?”

“I just…” Hugh’s hands clenched on the edge of the table. “I just felt sorry for her, okay?”

Griff’s eyebrows shot up. “Who are you, and what have you done with our paramedic?”

“Hugh, you never feel sorry for anyone,” Dai said. “You once berated me for three solid minutes while I was literally bleeding out on the floor.”

“You deserved it,” Hugh retorted. “And you were perfectly fine. It takes at least five minutes to bleed to death from the femoral artery.”

Ash tapped one finger on the table, drawing their attention again. “Hugh, while I appreciate your professional desire to put the needs of your patients first, the police were not pleased by your actions today. They have submitted a formal complaint to me.”

“So?” It wouldn’t be the first—or even the fifth—black mark he’d collected. “You going to fire me?”

A hint of exasperation entered Ash’s usually impenetrable expression. “You know that your talents are invaluable to the team. Nonetheless, I would appreciate it if you would refrain from putting me in a difficult situation. Again.”

Hugh dropped his gaze, feeling a twinge of guilt. The Phoenix had always shielded him from questions, providing a safe space where Hugh could secretly put his power to good use without attracting too much attention. Hugh would forever be grateful to him for that. The Phoenix deserved better from him in return.

“Sorry, Commander,” he muttered. “It won’t happen again.”

“Pity it’s not likely to,” Chase said, picking up his beer. “But if you do somehow find yourself dangling that damn wyvern over an elevator shaft again in the future, do us all a favor and drop the vicious little bi-”

It wasn’t a conscious decision. Before Chase had even finished the sentence, Hugh was vaulting across the table at him, driven by pure, white-hot fury. His fist connected with the pegasus shifter’s nose with a very satisfying crunch.

Chase toppled backward in a crash of breaking glass. Griff and Dai shot to their feet, grabbing Hugh’s arms to restrain him. The searing pain of their bare hands jolted him back to his senses.

“What the hell, Hugh?” Chase sounded too startled to be angry. He struggled upright, blood streaming down his face. “What in God’s name is the matter with you?”

His chest heaved, his own breath sounding loud as a chainsaw in the deathly silence. Every shifter in the pub was staring at him in frozen shock.

“Hugh!” Rose descended on them like a small, plump thundercloud, her dark eyes flashing. “Heaven knows we all want to thump Chase sometimes, but you know there’s no brawling in my pub.”

“My sincere apologies.” Ash’s hand closed like a manacle around Hugh’s wrist. Hugh's skin prickled with the not-quite-pain of being touched by someone who wasn’t a virgin, but who’d been celibate for decades. “Gentlemen, assist Rose in cleaning up this mess. Hugh, outside. Now.”

Hugh had no choice but to follow Ash out of the pub. His face burned at the scandalized whispers rising in his wake.

Ash barely waited until the door had closed behind them before rounding on him. The Phoenix’s expression was as controlled as ever, but heat radiated from him like a bonfire.

“Explain,” Ash said, his voice ice-cold.

Hugh scrubbed both hands over his face, struggling to get a grip. His unicorn was still ablaze with fury, wanting nothing more than to charge back into the pub and skewer Chase. He breathed deep, deliberately drawing in Ash’s faint smoke-and-scorched-brass scent. The Phoenix was alpha enough to make even his unicorn grudgingly settle, subdued by the presence of an even greater power.

His first instinct was to invent some lie, claim that he was just stressed and overworked…but he owed Ash the truth.

“Ivy’s my mate,” he said, reluctantly.

The shimmering heat haze surrounding Ash disappeared, as abruptly as if Hugh had dumped a bucket of water over his head. He regarded Hugh for a long, silent moment, his dark eyes even more unreadable than normal.

“I take it,” the Fire Commander said at last, “that this is not cause for celebration.”

Hugh let out a hollow bark of laughter. “It’s an utter disaster.”

“Because of what she is?”

“No.” Hugh leaned back against the old stone walls of the pub with a sigh, tension draining out of his shoulders at last. “Because of what I am.”

Ash’s eyebrows drew down, very slightly. “I do not follow.”

Hugh gestured at his own forehead. “You know my…handicap?”

Hugh had been forced to tell Ash the real reason for his migraines, around the time that Griff had met his mate. The Fire Commander had needed to know, since Hugh’s issues with the unchaste had started to affect his ability to work as closely with the team.

Ash blinked, which for him was a rare display of extreme surprise. “Your sensitivities extend even to your mate? Her touch would cause you pain?”

Hugh’s mouth twisted. “It’s worse than that. Let’s just say that there’s more than one reason why there aren’t many of my kind.”

Unicorns had been hunted nearly to extinction during medieval times. As far as most shifters knew, they were extinct. But even before they’d been targeted for their horns, they’d never been numerous.

A unicorn could mate…but only at a terrible cost.

It would be worth it, his unicorn said softly, in the depths of his soul.

Hugh shook his head free of the ridiculous thought. He absently rubbed his left bicep, tracing the lines of ink hidden under his sleeve.

“I can’t have a mate, Ash,” he said. “And that’s why I don’t want the rest of the team to know about her. The damn idiots would never let it go. I wouldn’t be able to explain without revealing what I am.”

Ash was silent for a moment. “Even if you are unable to…there are other ways of showing love.”

“You think I haven’t thought of that?” Hugh snapped. “Could you be around your true mate, every day, unable to claim her?”

Ash’s gaze flicked sideways, to the closed door of the pub. “It is preferable to never seeing her at all.”

“No, it’s not,” Hugh said. “Better to cut her off cleanly, rather than torment us both with something we can never have.”

“I thought that too, once,” Ash said, very quietly. “But you will find that it is not so easily done.”

Hugh looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”

The hint of human warmth in Ash’s face fled, his expression hardening back into its usual impassive lines. “I was merely referring to John and Griff. They too attempted to deny their mates. You know how successful they were.”

“I’m not them. I’m used to dealing with constant pain.” Hugh straightened, setting his shoulders. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my mate. Even from me.”