Arthur pulled me onto his lap with a sigh. “It is never ending, little queen, there were many renovations I wished to see finished before we had to weather an invading force here at Castle Camelot, but that must now wait so that she can be ready when the scourge makes it to our valley.”
I didn’t know much about the state of things in Logres, though I was fairly sure that was on purpose on my alphas’ part. They seemed to want to insulate me from the hard truth that was coming whether we liked it or not: the Saxons were coming and they were bringing numbers far larger than anything they had ever faced before.
It was the final battle. The one that was supposed to end with all of my pack dying and leaving me alone again.
I opened my mouth to tell Arthur as such, just as I had tried countless times over the past few weeks since my heat, but yet again the familiar twisting in my gut told me that the gods had not lifted their taboo on it yet.
Instead I closed my mouth. I had been working tirelessly to try and get better with my healing magic—the only thing I could think of that would save Arthur and the rest if they fell during battle.
I had gotten much better at it, but I still needed to be close by and there was no way in hell any of them would let me go on a battlefield.
“Do not look so worried, Guinevere,” Arthur murmured, kissing away the furrow in between my eyebrows. “Nothing will happen to you.”
“It isn’t me I’m worried about,” I told him, holding his face in my hands. “It is you,andLancelot,andGawain,andBedivere,andMerlin.”
I listed off each of their names, realizing now just how much I had to lose.
Before, losing my mom the way I had, had crushed me. She was my entire world and her leaving me behind had left an indelible mark on my soul.
But now? Now my world had expanded and my soul was caught in between the five men who seemed to light it on fire and make me feel more alive than I had ever felt before.
I was standing on the precipice of fate and I was afraid I wouldn’t survive if even one of them left me.
It was why I never allowed myself to try and find love in the future. No pack had been worth risking the hurt. Though, as it turned out, the pack thatwasworth risking it was just living centuries in the past. I just needed to find out how to stop the inevitable.
“You worry overly much,” Arthur told me, his next kiss landing on my nose. “We have fought many a battle together, this one will be no different.”
Then his lips pressed into mine, but I just wanted to scream at him that this battlewasdifferent. But the gods would definitely give me a divine sucker punch to the gut if I even tried to do that.
So I just put my arms around his neck and sighed against his mouth. “Come to bed with me?”
Arthur glanced from me to the papers on his desk. He clearly had a lot more work to do tonight, but even still he lifted me up into his arms and carried me off to our bed to make love to me until the sun started to grow high in the sky.
“Saxons in the east!” someone cried the next morning as we stood in the courtyard. Arthur and the rest had been readying themselves to ride out on patrol when one of the knights—a mannamed Sir Lionel I believed—galloped in on his horse shouting his proclamation.
The man slid off his horse, out of breath as he bowed to Arthur.
“Report,” Arthur ordered, his entire demeanor shifting from playfully relaxed to serious as his end of the bond grew quiet. He was shielding me from his emotions, probably to protect me, and I wanted to yank on the little thread connecting us, but thought better of it once I heard the next words out of the knight’s mouth.
“I saw the Saxon’s banners raised alongside that of Lothian and Gorre about a half a day’s ride from here. They are on our borders!”
People began to shout, their panic rising at the knight’s proclamation.
“Enough!” Arthur’s bark filled the courtyard, echoing off of the stone walls of the castle. Everyone flinched at the sheer power of it, some even inclining their heads and showing the column of their necks—an instinct that was as old as time for omegas, alphas, and betas who were lower on the power totem pole than Arthur.
Arthur turned to Kay, who had been hovering at his elbow and listing off everything that needed to be done for the day before Lionel had interrupted. “Gather all of the people from the village, tell them to bring anything that they can carry into the castle walls. Then take the men and light the fields on fire.”
“On fire?” I asked, my voice barely above a squeak as Kay jumped into action, calling out the names of some of the men in the crowd to help him.
“Yes, my love,” Arthur said, his voice low as he drew me into his arms, his allspice scent doing little to soothe my worries, but I found myself burying my nose in his neck anyway. “We mustnot give the Saxons any resources to use should they lay siege to the castle.”
Things were happening too fast and I wished time could stop for just a damned minute so I could catch up.
But Arthur was already pulling away, turning from being my alpha into being the king his people needed to survive.
Holding a hand to my throat, I watched with growing panic as Arthur continued to give orders, sending his men scurrying to complete them as rain clouds began to gather in the sky—whether conjured by me or the sheer desperation in the air I wasn’t sure.
“It is happening again,” a small voice said from next to me, nearly making me jump out of my skin.
