“Merlin was in the midst of his explanation when he took ill, though I am sure he will continue now that he is well again.” All of the earlier worry that he had for me seemed to have evaporated again as he remembered why I had returned in the first place.
I hesitated, trying to find the words. The gods had neglected to give me tact when they formed my person, so I was afraid I would make things worse with my explanation.
“Oh, for goodness sakes,” Gwen muttered under her breath as she stepped up to my elbow and faced the four alphas with a toss of her curly hair. “A pack is one omega and multiple alphas or betas all bonded together.”
Apparently, Gwen also shared my lack of tact because all four heads whipped in her direction, their mouths were agape as they stared at her as if she had grown a second head.
“Pardon?” the word rippled out of Arthur’s chest in a guttural growl. His gaze shifted to me and when I didn’t deny her words his face flushed red. “I willnotshare my omega.”
“And I won’t be anyone’s omega,” Gwen shot back petulantly. “So you don’t have to worry about a damn thing,your majesty.”
As the two began to bicker, their audience’s heads bounced back and forth as they continued to trade barbs with each other.
“Well,my lady, I do not know what sort of future you come from, but here in this time omegas require an alpha’s presence to survive.”
“Oh yeah?” Gwen took a step forward and fearlessly pressed an accusatory finger into the man’s chest. “Well, in my future, you’re—”
Gwen gasped as whatever she had meant to say was trapped in her throat. In her anger with Arthur she seemed to have forgotten the taboo on telling us parts of the future that she knew.
She doubled over with a cough and all of the fight seemed to blow out of Arthur as he reached for her, his angry expression slackening. “Guinevere?”
But Gwen was already straightening and holding her hands out in front of her in order to ward him off. “Don’t. My body is already not listening to me despite my suppressants, I don’t need you touching me and making it worse.”
A twinge of guilt filled me with her words because I had a hand in causing her current predicament. My magic, when it threaded its way through the universe to grab her, had wiped any impurities from her body—including the pills that many omegas of the future took to ward off their estrus and dull their senses to the world around them.
I had only briefly seen them in Eleanor’s time in Colorado when Clint offered them to her for her heat as soon as she had fallen into his arms from the 1800s.
“I was only trying to assist,” Arthur said, but still he held up his hands and stepped back from her, turning to me again. “Merlin, what could the gods mean by this‘pack’business?”
“Omegas are stolen from their beds far too often by rogue alphas and alphas have engaged in territorial disputes over their omegas more often than any of us would care to admit,” Bedivere cut in, surprising everyone in the clearing as we looked to the normally silent alpha. “It is not so bad now thanks to you, my king, but it still does happen. You understand that better than most.”
Arthur flinched away from the other alpha’s words, likely remembering the end his foster-father and mother had faced regardless of Arthur’s ability to protect them.
“Packs are the norm in the future,” Gwen chimed in, seemingly surprised that she’d been able to say the words at all, before her lips pulled up into a wry smile. “Huh, it seems like I can saysomethings.”
Arthur ignored Gwen’s words before shooting me a plaintive look. “I cannot imagine that I would desire to ever share my omega with any other soul, Merlin, it is against my very nature. Who would you and the gods possibly have me share with?”
This would be the hardest part of all of this. Getting Arthur, who was the epitome of the alpha designation, to accept not only one other alpha into his union with Gwen, butthreewould be a testament to the fate that the gods had set forth. If it was anything other than that, then I knew it would have been a complete failure.
I glanced over at Gwen who seemed to know what I was about to say next, her brown eyes slanting towards the men standing behind Arthur. They hadn’t been introduced to her yet, but I knew that an omega’s instincts were never wrong.
“You will not have to look far, Arthur,” I began slowly, lifting a hand to gesture to the three alphas. “The men who will be a part of the first ever pack in Logres are already here.”
Chapter Five
Ihad never much liked the wizard standing in front of me.
Merlin had always feltoddto my senses, as if he was an existence on this plane of life that should not be here.
When my father first sent me to train with the knights of Camelot as a youth, Merlin’s strange green eyes looked at me as if he was seeing more than just me and it had always sent shivers down my spine.
While every other soul had searched for the wizard after his disappearance ten years ago, I had secretly been glad of it. Camelot had become my home, and I was of the opinion that magic only brought danger.
And now he was back with a strange omega in tow—one who dared to argue with my king with no shame.
That was nearly unheard of. Many of the tribal kings, my father included, liked to bluster at Arthur, but none would darespeak to him the way this woman was let alone press such an impudent finger into his chest.
My hand had twitched to my sword upon seeing it until Bedivere’s steady hand capped my shoulder and he shook his head before speaking aboutpacks.
