The others’ speech was an odd mix of modern and old, but they erred on the side of modern as it's what their current bodies had been born with in this time. I’d even heard Gawain referring to something as‘dope’the other day which had thrown me for a complete loop.
Merlin slid into the empty seat next to me, his white eyes shifting to me and crinkling in the corners as they drifted down to Addie’s sleeping face.
“Let’s dig in,” Clint boomed as everyone reached for the food in the center of the long table that was situated on the back deck of the Calloway house.
A din of conversation filled the air and after I finished my own burger I leaned back in my seat to watch.
A year and a half ago I had never felt so alone. Every day was spent going to work, going home to my empty flat, and realizing I had no one to really call my own.
Now I had all of that and more.
“To time travel!” Arthur said suddenly, lifting his glass of sweet tea up high. “And all that it has brought into our lives!”
The gathered group, nearly twenty strong, lifted their glasses.
“To time travel!” they chorused.
I glanced over at Merlin who’s smile had turned almost contemplative as he lifted his own glass and met my gaze. “And may we never do it again.”
Extra Heat Epilogue
My feet were chilled as I padded barefoot through the house, confusion and a still lingering heat filling my body as I searched for my pack.
I had awoken alone in my nest—something that didnotsit well with my inner-omega.
It was my first heat since returning to the future and it had gone nearly the opposite from my last one.
There were no invading forces, no brainwashed alpha, and certainly no stake that people were trying to burn me at, but right now none of that mattered if I couldn’t figure out where my alphas had gone and why they had left me all alone in my nest.
“Making me go look for them,” I grumbled under my breath as I stared out of the large windows that lined the corridor of Kingswood Manor, the home that Arthur had purchased years before meeting me again. It was built in the late 1700’s by anouveau riche American who had been obsessed with the King Arthur myth and had been convinced (and correctly so) that this lake had been the site for the legendary king and his round table.
Unfortunately, after that man had passed his children had struggled to maintain the manor and it had changed hands several times until Arthur bought it. He told me that, despite all of the homes he owned, this was the place he felt the most attached to—which made perfect sense now that he realized exactly who he was.
Pressing my forehead into the glass of the window, I let it soothe my fevered skin as I watch as, in the distance, the sun began to rise over the mountains making the lake start to sparkle through the heavy mist that obscured everything, including the remnants of Castle Camelot across the water.
In all of my research about what had happened to our friends after the final battle, of which I couldn’t find much, it had been clear that the castle had been abandoned shortly afterwards. Sir Kay, who had seemingly survived, left with his wife and his brood of children, traveling to a different land to the north, bringing Princess Vivienne along with them.
They had all, of course, been named different things as history still believed the story of King Arthur to be a myth, but I had found long obscured gravestones in a castle graveyard in Scotland that I was pretty sure were theirs.
And the only reason I had been able to find them at all had been through backwards mapping through the current monarchical line. The gods hadn’t been kidding when they told me that it had been my fate to save Henry so that his line could rule England.
Truthfully, there was very little left of our beloved Camelot, something that I knew each of my alphas and Merlin grieved separately for in a confusing tangle that I could often feel down the bond.
Each of them had been born into new, unique lives that were completely apart from who they had been in the past, but even still their old memories had melded together with their new ones as soon as our bonds snapped into place and I was sure it was a total mindfuck for them.
Thankfully, Lancelot had gotten a degree in psychology before he began to work as Arthur’s assistant and had insisted on playing our pseudo-therapist through everything. It was not lost on me how absolutely ironic it was that my pack’s least emotive member was now the one getting everyone to open up about their feelings, but I didn’t mind so much. I kind of liked it when he used his therapy-speak on me.
Our lives had slowly but surely moved forward from our time in the past. This house had quickly become our home when our bonds reignited and where we spent most of our time when Arthur wasn’t traveling for work.
It was where we had brought our baby home and cared for her in her first weeks and months. Our family pictures now covered the walls, something that Bedivere—ever the staunch traditionalist even in this time—had grumbled about not being period accurate. In the end, though, he had been the one to hang most of them himself.
“You are supposed to be in your nest, my queen,” Gawain growled in my ear as I was swept off of my feet and into his arms.
Bright blue eyes met mine, his pupils already blown from being in such close proximity to an omega in heat and his nostrils flaring as he inhaled a deep drag of my scent.
“I would still be in my nest if I hadn’t woken up all by myself,” I pointed out, pouting for good measure.
“We were trying to squeeze in a quick shower and Merlin wanted to check on the baby,” Gawain explained as he reached for a panel that had been built into the cloth wallpapered wall. “I found her in the east wing, heading back to the nest now.”
