But then I reached up and felt the scars along my neck and just behind my ears. Bond marks.
They were all quiet, dormant even, and I stood abruptly as I realized that while none of what I had just experienced was a dream, I also didn’t know how to get back to them.
Turning blindly, I moved to run out of the exhibit. To do what, I wasn’t sure, but instead I ended up running headlong into a broad chest and causing the person to drop the leather padfolio they were carrying.
“Oh shit! I’m so sorry!” I apologized sheepishly, my brain moving a million miles a minute as I tried to reconcile with the fact that somehow, some way, I had been returned to the future—centuries after my pack had been alive and had died.
Then the person who I had run into spoke and I froze on the spot.
“It’s all right, are you hurt?” the man said as I looked up into a pair of icy blue eyes.
It was Arthur standing in front of me in the flesh and I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
He was dressed in a fancy suit and his hair was much shorter than it had been in the past, cropped close to his head, but it was undoubtedly still my husband.
“Arthur,” I gasped raggedly, thinking about the last time I had seen him and the way his lifeless eyes had looked as I cradled him in my arms.
Arthur’s brows furrowed in polite confusion as he offered me a smile. “Yes, that’s me, how did you know such a thing?”
Still frowning, he reached for the padfolio, his skin brushing against mine, and I felt a sparkle of magic zip in between us as his bond mark on my neck began to burn as the thread connecting us lit up again.
The man in front of me shifted, his eyes flashing a glowing white before his mannered expression dropped and he gasped as if the air had been knocked completely from his body.
“Guinevere,” Arthur rasped, recognition in his eyes finally as he stared at me as if I were a ghost. “It’s you.”
I nodded, swallowing the sudden lump in my throat before throwing my arms around his neck and inhaling his familiar allspice scent deeply. His arms tightened around me, nearly cracking my spine as he held me close.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he murmured into my ear, completely ignoring the crowd around us who had begun to whisper.
“How is this possible?” I asked, pulling away so I could look closer at his face. Everything was the same, the same reddish-gold hair, sharp jaw-line, icy blue eyes, and even the timber of his voice. This was my Arthur in the flesh, but how was he in the future like this?
“I do not know,” he told me honestly with a shake of his head, the back of his fingers brushing down my cheek. “I have been living here my entire life searching for something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I felt it had something to do with all of this, though, as if my life revolved around a man who shared the same name as me.”
I watched as he gestured to the exhibit around us.
“I collected all of these, trying to find out why I felt so connected to them. People called me crazy for wasting so much of my fortune on these artifacts, but now I understand why I felt the need to collect them,” he told me, his hands cupping my face as if he was afraid to let me go.
“You’rethe anonymous donor?” I asked, shocked that he had been so close to me and yet, before today, we would have walked right past each other and been none the wiser to our fate.
“Mr. King, are you all right?” another familiar voice asked, causing me to stiffen.
I looked up into the face of Lancelot, who was dressed in a similar suit with a smartphone clutched in his hand. His hair was pushed back out of his face and he had a stylish slit in his eyebrow now, but regardless it was most definitely my broody alpha.
“Lancelot,” I said, practically melting with relief to see his face.
He frowned at me. “Sorry, do I know you?”
“Lance,” Arthur said softly as he held a hand out to the man. “Do you trust me?”
Lancelot frowned at him, his dark eyes darting between the both of us. “With my life, sir, you know that.”
Arthur nodded as if he expected an answer like that. “Then give me your hand.”
Lancelot hesitated for a moment before he obliged.
I reached for him, my fingers sliding into his, a smile already on my face as I felt the spark of our bond rekindle back to life.
“Guinevere, you must be careful,” Arthur’s voice called reproachfully as I scrambled up the rock face faster than the rest of the pack.
