“Iambeing careful,” I called back, scrabbling when my boots failed to make purchase before I recovered and was able to pull myself up and onto the ledge.
“I swear she is more dangerous during this time than she ever was in the past,” Lancelot commented dryly as they followed behind me at a much slower pace.
“You didn’t have to watch her ride into the middle of a battle without a care for her safety, Lancelot,” Bedivere shot back and I could almost hear him shaking his head with disbelief.
After meeting both Lancelot and Arthur in the museum that day, we had gone searching for the other members of our pack—which was made easy seeing as Arthur was as much a king in this life as he had been in his past life.
Literally, his last name was King. His company specialized in commercial real estate and I was pretty sure he had more money than most men on the planet. While he may no longer be the King of Camelot, he was definitely still the king of his own empire.
Thanks to Arthur’s seemingly endless resources, Bedivere had been found first in the northernmost point of Scotland in a tiny village just outside of Inverness.
There he worked as a hobby blacksmith specializing in Celtic knot jewelry as a way to soothe himself after losing his hand during the war in the Middle East years before. Arthur, it turned out, had purchased several items from his shop, though they had sat in a drawer in one of his homes until a few months ago when he reawakened and had given them to me.
There were lots of little things like that that seemed to connect my pack—even before they knew they were my pack.
I had worn the jewelry Bedivere had made on my wrist and neck when we went to go and meet him. At first, Bedivere had been incredulous about the whole thing, not allowing me to touch him at all as we tried to explain who he had once been.
Finally, I had been forced to reach out and touch his face in order to reseal our bond and he had quickly melted after that, his silver eyes filling with the same sort of recognition that Arthur and Lancelot’s had that day when I reappeared in the museum.
He had then proceeded to spend the next month scolding me for riding into battle when I had no business being involved in such things and I enjoyed every minute of his nagging.
“She’s just eager to find Merlin, as we all are,” Gawain said, his voice light and happy as he brought up the rear of our pack’s impromptu hike up the mountains surrounding where Camelot once stood.
Gawain had taken some time to find—mostly thanks to the fact that he was sporting bleached hair and a surprisingly attractive nose piercing now.
Funnily enough, he was now a part of a rock band that was incredibly popular across the world—a rock band that had gone through my Spotify rotation more than once before I fell into the past.
The Emerald Nightswere one of Trini’s favorite bands and she had just about passed out once she learned that their lead singer was a member of my new pack.
We had gotten tickets to their concert and Gawain had actually spotted me in the crowd, making it easier to reignite our bond after the show when he invited me backstage. None of his bandmates understood his sudden desire to settle down with a pack he barely knew… but how were we supposed to explain our entire backstory without sounding absolutely crazy?
Everything was as it should be—well, almost as it should be.
There was one member of our pack that was still missing and he had been the hardest to find. I wasn’t sure how the gods had expected me to locate him when any magic he possessed seemed to have faded from the land completely.
The one conclusion we had come to was that the gods must have returned Merlin to his cave after he split himself in two in order to bring the rest of the pack back. If we could find the cave, then surely Merlin must also be there.
It felt sound to me, but after three months of combing the countryside around where Camelot used to be, we were no closer than we had been before.
As I scrambled up yet another rock face, my boots slipped and I began to fall.
Firm hands pressed into my back as the pale faces of my packmates came into view.
“What did Ijustsay, Guinevere?” Arthur asked, still in the habit of calling me by my full name.
“Sorry,” I told him sheepishly as I let him pull me down from the rocks. “I just feel like today is the day we find him.”
I had said the same thing yesterday, and the day before, but it was that hope that kept me going to find the final piece of our pack and of my soul.
“I understand,” he told me gruffly as he placed me firmly on my feet again, “but you cannot do it alone—especially not in your condition.”
His hand slipped down to press into the swell of my belly.
That had been another happy surprise that I had learned of weeks after returning to the future.
After vomiting everywhere for three days straight after Arthur found me in the museum he insisted I go to see a doctor and it was there they told me I was almost eight weeks pregnant.
Apparently, my memories of the past weren’t the only thing I had brought along with me back to the future.
