“So soon?” I squeaked, the gravity of the situation suddenly hitting me. When Merlin had been talking about marriage and a pack earlier that had all been… hypothetical in my mind.
Now it was very, very real.
“I don’t want an alpha, remember?” I said, managing to keep my voice light.
“You are not getting just an alpha, Gwen, you are getting a king,” Arthur told me with a finality that scared me. “I want to save my kingdom and if marrying you will get me there then the choice is obvious, is it not?”
“Does it not matter what I want?”
“Do you wish to return to your own time? Perhaps once we have fulfilled the gods wishes they will give you what you want,”Arthur offered though it was clear he didn’t like what he was saying. “Think of it as an arranged union where two parties agree for the betterment of both.”
A contract marriage. It sounded like something out of a mafia romance not the period piece that I had found myself in.
“And what about Merlin saying you need a pack to do it?”
Arthur’s jaw tightened. “What was foretold will be,” he said ominously.
And I didn’t believe him one bit.
“You aresogoing to get me burned at the stake,” I muttered under my breath, thinking of the iteration of the legend where instead of Arthur accepting a pack he found Guinevere and Lancelot in an embrace and killed them both. Truly the most gruesome version that I was half-afraid we were hurtling towards now.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing,” I said, hurrying around his bulk before turning on my heel to look at him. “So contract marriage, got it, no feelings and no touching.Aye aye, Captain.” I gave him a mock salute that he clearly had no ability to appreciate because he just frowned at the motion.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a very strange way of speaking?” Arthur asked as he watched me go.
“Speak for yourself, your highness,” I called, continuing to walk backwards, wanting nothing more than to find my way back to my bed, hoping that going would somehow make me wake up from this insane dream I was having.
“Arthur,” he corrected, making me stop in my tracks. “You may call me Arthur, and while this union may be arranged, Guinevere, be under no impression that it will not be a true marriage between you and me. While fate may decree that you will take a pack into your bed, I will have no other than my bonded omega. Know that.”
The ferocity in his words sent an odd shiver down my spine. It wasn’t fear necessarily, but something that collected in my core—almost an anticipation. It was a sensation that I often ignored and suppressed with pills.
I said nothing to him in return, and instead, scurried away from him like the coward I was. My thoughts were stormy as his sweet and spicy scent seemed to chase me down the dark corridors of the castle and back to my room.
It’s just a contract, I told myself later as I curled up on the down mattress and forced myself to go to sleep.
Just a contract—there’s no way I would actually fall in love or be attracted to someone from the past… right?
Chapter Seven
“It is a surprise how quickly these nuptials have been planned,” Gawain commented from his place next to me as we watched Leodegrance’s servants decorate his great hall for what was amounting to the royal wedding of the ages.
The lad was busily tuning the strings of his lute which I swore was in his hands more often than the sword I had made him this past winter.
While Gawain was a commensurate swordsman, the wooden instrument would always be his first love—even as a maid fluttered her heavy gold lashes at the youth before hurrying away with a giggle and a sashay of her full hips.
“The king wants this done before we return to Camelot,” I reminded him, moving my knee so that the sword perched on it could be polished at a different angle.
In the five years since the loss of my right hand, simple tasks were still awkward at times and trying to polish a sword one-handed was one of the worst, but I wantedExcaliburto shine on Arthur’s hip when he took his marriage vows.
Whatever those vows may look like.
After Arthur left the clearing followed by Lancelot, Merlin had offered no more explanation for his explosive words other than:fate is fate.
He must have known how they sounded because after uttering them he shot us a sheepish smile before disappearing himself only to reappear a few days later looking decidedly less pallid than before.
My eyes found the wizard in question across the hall where he was listening to whatever Sir Lamorak was saying with disinterest. He seemed almost normal if not for the leg of a roasted pheasant that he was consuming at an alarming rate.
