“Very well,” she said, dunking the fabric back into the stream and taking one of his arms before beginning to clean with a vigor that the laundress at the castle would have admired. “What about Thomas?”
I sat and watched her work, listening as she fired off different names. Some of the names were familiar to me such as Pengrin, Bors, and Bane, while others I had never heard before in my life.
“Riley,” Guinevere tried, a smile on her mouth as she ran the cloth up and down the boy’s arms, not losing hope when the boy shook his head at each of her suggestions. “Ethan, Oliver, Michael, Henry, Peter.”
The boy reached out and gave Guinevere’s hand a tap.
“Peter?” she repeated the last name she had suggested.
The boy shook his head.
“Henry?”
The boy nodded his head up and down, a sudden smile on his face.
“So you want to be called Henry then? That’s a good name—lots of kings are named Henry.”
I had never met a king named Henry before, so I assumed she was talking about the future.
The boy—now Henry I supposed—seemed pleased with his new name.
“Come, let us getHenryback to the camp so that he can sleep,” I told her gently.
When Guinevere frowned at me before looking at the dirt still smudged on the boy’s neck and on his ankles I just huffed a soft laugh. “You will not be able to get him completely clean with just a stream, Gwen, he will need a full bath.”
“I suppose,” Guinevere said resignedly before standing up and dusting the dirt from her tattered skirt. “Well, come on, Henry,let’s go back to the fire. Maybe Sir Bedivere will have some more of that jerky for you to eat.”
Henry seemed cheered by her words, even scurrying ahead of us and back towards where we had set up camp.
When he disappeared into the dense forest, I felt Guinevere’s hand on my arm stopping me from following.
She looked suddenly nervous—the air was palpable with it and my own heart started to thud with an anxious fervor as she nibbled on her lower lip.
“I am sorry for putting you all in a shitty position. I know you would have rather stayed back to protect Arthur.”
I shook my head, unsure of how to tell her that, the moment that I saw that Saxon man coming in her direction with his sword raised, I had not thought of anything but protecting her.
“And I should have never allowed you off of my horse,” I pointed out. “Are you cross with me for putting you in danger because I could not keep you secure in my saddle?”
“No, why would I be?” Guinevere’s nose scrunched in a way that I found utterly charming and I had to force myself to look away from her for a moment to steady myself.
Lancelot’s earlier words still sat heavy in my chest. Despite Guinevere’s disheveled appearance and her insistence that I refer to her informally, she was still my queen and the wife of my king.
Earlier when he bade us to take her and protect her, there had been no mention of Merlin’s portent—how could there have been?
Our goal at that moment had been to protect Guinevere, but now that things had calmed down considerably and we were alone, I found myself lost in my imagination of things that could be if we actually became a pack.
Most alphas could only dream of acquiring their own omegas. Though most noble houses tended to produce alphas andomegas in spades, the fairer designation was still much rarer than their counterpart.
A third son of a king and his second wife was not at the top of many father’s courting lists when they looked to marry their omega children off.
My prospects had been slim the moment I entered the world as a red, squalling baby. Or—they had been—until Merlin had dangled a new path forward in front of my eyes.
I would not dare to covet my king’s wife, Ishouldnot covet my king’s wife…
But one glance at Guinevere’s scrunched nose and soft smile was making me consider the impossible.
“What?” Guinevere asked, noticing the shift in my expression. She leaned in so close that I could almost taste the sweetness of her scent on my tongue. Her eyelashes were thick, fanning out against her high cheekbones as she blinked at me, her full lips pulling down into a frown as she reached up to touch her chin. “Is there something on my face?”
