Merlin seemed surprised, his green eyes widening inexplicably. “You would want to return home after finding your fated pack?”
It was my turn to shrug and cross my arms over my chest. “Maybe. I’m not really enthused about living in a time where there isn’t any indoor plumbing.”
I didn’t really believe in fate and the king whose arms I’d just landed in didn’t seem to either.
Merlin’s expression fell and I tried not to feel guilty as his eyes looked as if they were about to fill with tears. “Gwen, I’ve been searching the future for you for the better part of ten years. In all of my visions of the future you were never unhappy here—”
“Merlin,” a voice came from behind the wizard’s shoulder.
I tilted to the side so I could look around him and found the king in question taking long strides in our direction, his face clearly displeased with what he was seeing.
Merlin’s eyes closed and he let out a soft groan like he wasn’t ready to face the king yet, but even still, he straightened with a smile and turned to look at the approaching alpha.
“Arthur—” he began magnanimously as he held his arms open, but it was Arthur’s turn to cut the wizard off before he could say anything.
“Do not,” he warned, glancing between me and Merlin, his bright blue eyes taking us in before he spoke. “Were my ears deceiving me or did you just utter the words ‘time travel’?”
Merlin looked as if he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I may have…?”
“Explain,” Arthur demanded, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Why is it that every soul in that party recognizes aprincess that I have never met before and why you have suddenly reappeared after absconding into the night ten years ago.”
“Well, it is very complicated…”
I wanted to chime in with my own opinion about the entire situation, still angry that I’d been pulled so unceremoniously from my timeline and shoved into the arms of an alpha I’d never met before.
But Arthur was already speaking again.
“Uncomplicate it then.”
His tone brokered no room for excuses, which made sense seeing as the man in front of me was, after all, a king.
Chapter Three
Istared down one of my oldest friends, watching him shift uncomfortably from foot-to-foot as he shot a look at the omega woman who had fallen out of the sky only moments ago.
She had very nearly been spitted like a roast pig onExcaliburas I had been holding it aloft while I spoke to the crowd.
I had been busily reassuring them with empty promises that I would find an omega queen and secure Camelot’s future. My words had been a lie, one that was meant to give me something I so desperately needed: time.
Time to rid our lands of the ever encroaching Saxons, time to surmise just how they seemed to know the intricacies of our plans and who was the one sharing that knowledge, and finally time for me to make Camelot safe so that when I did eventually bring in an omega queen there would be no risk of her being taken away from me.
I had already watched one person I cared about be ripped from her alpha’s arms and I was not about to repeat the same fate. No, Camelot would need to be an impenetrable fortress where my omega could reside in peace, and Camelot—hells the entirety of Logres—was the furthest from peace as I had ever seen it with the invasion of the Saxons from the too-close shores of the mainland.
Ten years ago Merlin had burst into my chambers in the early hours of the morning, rambling and raving about a portent—one that could change the future of Camelot forever—most of it had been an unintelligible garble, but as I tried to soothe him with a warm drink, he managed to tell me that he needed to go and find my omega and that she would unite my closest allies against the Saxons.
He, however, did not share with me how I would do such a thing and when I awoke to the cold light of day Merlin had vanished altogether.
I had sent my men to search for him for months, but one thing I had learned about my strange friend was that, if he did not wish to be found, then he would not be.
Rather than dwell too much on the missing wizard, I’d thrown myself into building up Camelot. I had only been king for a handful of years when Merlin left us and as such there was much to do. The old castle we had taken over required many repairs. Additionally there were many people who seemed to gravitate to Camelot as they were displaced from their own homes by the invading Saxons.
The once decrepit hamlet had started to thrive and grow under my care and as did my power within Logres. I had been but a boy of ten and five when I pulled Excalibur from the stone and had been declared a king among kings and now I was thirty and a man.
As a boy, I had not understood what being a king truly meant, but now, at twice that age, my youth had faded and I understood the magnitude of every choice made. Of the responsibility for every life lost.
I had told Bedivere of my plans to put off marriage until Camelot was safe, and though I could tell that my oldest friend and closest confidant disapproved of the idea, he still gave me his advice about how to go about side-stepping all of the tribal kings who had been attempting to thrust their daughters upon me tonight.
King Ban had been especially irritating tonight as he put Vivienne, a woman who had been a child less than a year ago, in my sights at every turn.
