My head whirled around as if I could sense where it was coming from and I found Bedivere falling from his horse to the ground, one of the Saxon’s swords embedded into his shoulder.
Bedivere’s silver eyes met mine as pain flowed down the stretched bond before he cut me off from him—one last gift for me—before the bond snapped away entirely.
I held Arthur to me, wanting to pull Bedivere in as well and try to save him. To save them all.
“Guinevere!” I heard Lancelot roar from somewhere and I turned to find him trying to fight to get to where I was knelt on the ground with Arthur. But there were too many even for the warrior alpha.
His bond pulled taut and I had to look away as it broke.
There was one left. I couldn’t even see where Gawain was, and that was almost worse as I could feel his pain but I couldn’t actually witness his death.
Like the others, Gawain’s bond shattered, telling me he was gone and suddenly I was all alone.
The only heartbeat I felt roaring in my ears was my own and it was absolutely devastating.
In all of the stories, Queen Guinevere had stood alone on that stupid hilltop, her sobs of despair causing the rivers to flood and wash away all of her pain.
But me?
All I felt was rage.
As I looked down at Arthur’s open eyes and thought about my other alphas who were lying close by, I felt anger for the people who dared to take them away from me.
I wanted them allgone.
“Guinevere,” a familiar voice said as hands cupped my face.
I looked up to find a pair of sad, glowing green eyes staring into my own.
“Did you know this was going to happen?” I asked, my voice ragged as I tried to suck in a breath of air and failed utterly. It was like the walls were closing in on me and there was no way out.
Merlin’s smile was sad. “If I had, I would have tried to stop it all.”
“But what about the gods?” I asked, my voice a whisper. “What about fate?”
“Fate is overrated, Guinevere,” he said, repeating the words that I had said to him weeks ago, as the battle continued to rage around us.
Then he leaned in, pressing his lips to my forehead. “Let it all out, Guinevere, and I will fix everything from there. I promise you.”
His words were a trigger.
I opened my mouth and screamed, letting every piece of anger—of rage that had been boiling in my chest at the absence of my bonds with my alphas—pour out of me.
In the stories, the rivers and the lake had risen and drowned all of the Saxons.
In reality it was much faster than that.
Water whooshed around us, cutting off the Saxon’s screams as Arthur’s body was yanked from my arms in the whirlpool vortex that had been created by my magic.
Finally, all was silent as I squeezed my eyes shut, welcoming the suffocation and the death that I was sure would follow.
But it never came.
Instead I was still floating… and yet somehow also breathing?
“You may wake up child,” a familiar voice called to me softly.
I opened my eyes, looking around at my surroundings in confusion. It was vividly black—kind of like that day so long ago when I had fallen through time, only this time I wasn’t falling at all.
