It was most definitely worse than all of the TV shows I had ever watched. There was what looked to be a six inch gash in Arthur’s side just below his ribcage. Not only that, but one glance at the angry red skin around the cut told me that it was either on its way to being infected or was already infected.
I tried not to gag as I quickly looked away from the wound, my stomach flipping. “Where are your healing supplies?”
Arthur’s amusement through our shared bond was almost palpable as he pointed to the little cabinet that sat next to the much larger armoire that Andrivete had shown me earlier in the day.
Opening up the cabinet, I realized just how out of depth I was. I knew the basics of wound care—disinfect, slap someNeosporinon it, and wrap it to keep dirt out of it.
Hell, if I needed to, I could probably also do some stitches thanks to my long years as a theater kid. I had sewn many costumes in my time and I assumed skin couldn’t bethatmuch different.
But the contents of the cabinet were far past any knowledge that I could bring to the situation. There were various herbs in glass jars with no labels and dozens of little wooden boxes containing who the hell knew what.
“Do you require me to tell you what is in each receptacle, little queen?” Arthur asked and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I fear I may perish before you can figure it out on your own.”
I turned to shoot a glare at him. “Someone tried to skewer you like ashish kebaband you still think it’s funny to make a joke about it?”
Arthur’s bright blue eyes filled with confusion. “What is a‘shish kebab’?”
“Skewered meat,” I told him absentmindedly as I tried to remember the remedies my crunchy friend in college had waxed on about every time we met for coffee.
She had been the kind of girl who believed wholeheartedly in holistic medicine whereas I’d always been a sucker for modern medicine and used to joke with her that my penicillin would outweigh her essential oils any day.
And now here I was staring at the contents of a cabinet that she probably knew all about and I was kicking myself for not listening more closely to her ranting about what things I should try before resorting to good oldNeosporin. I sincerely hoped she was laughing at me somewhere in the future because this was nuts.
“Guinevere,” Arthur said, suddenly behind me as he reached out to loosen my grip on the doors of the cabinet. “I have treated my own wounds before, this is not new to me. What has shaken you so much?”
“I’m not shaking,” I protested stubbornly despite the vibrations ricocheting through my limbs even as I spoke.
Gentle hands gripped my hips and forced me to turn so that I was looking at his gentle-but-stern face. “You and I are both aware of each other intimately, little queen, as such I can feel the panic you believe you are holding inside.”
I sighed, inhaling a lungful of his allspice scent as I tried to recenter myself.
The moment I had felt his pain through the bond when I was standing in the bathing room all of my fears had come crashing down on me.
It was a harsh reminder of what the end of our story was supposed to be. Back in the future I had studiously been ignoring the gaping loneliness that I had felt after my mom died, throwing myself into work and completely pulling in on myself.
She had been my best friend and I never wanted to feel like I had felt the day she’d died… but Arthur didn’t know any of the intricacies behind who I was because, despite how close I felt to him, we were still mostly strangers. All he could feel was what were the emotions that were coming down our shared bond—and that was all. It wasn’t like he could read my mind in order to see into the shattered bits of my psyche.
“Do you remember when I told you that I didn’t want any alphas or a pack?” I asked, my voice quiet.
He nodded. “I do. You were fire and brimstone as you poked me in the chest and outright refused to marry me—such a thing is not easily forgettable.”
Arthur’s eyes danced with a mirth that made my lips start to pull up into a smile, but instead I forced myself to focus.
“I still stand by that, Arthur, I’m afraid to let myself get close to you,” I paused, giving myself a moment to suck in another steadying breath. “My mom was my favorite person ever. Then she died and I was all alone—even in a world full of technologyand medical advancements they couldn’t save her from her illness. Here there isn’t any of that technology to protect you. All it takes is one stray arrow or someone getting too close to you and it will all be over.”
I thought I had time to try to figure out how to save Arthur and prevent his death, but what I failed to realize that the Saxons weren’t just going to fight him in one big blaze of glory at the end of his life, no, Arthur and his men were at war and with war came the potential for death at any moment.
This place was so different from the stories that it made me realize that they were just that: stories passed down from mouth-to-mouth and inflated to make Arthur seem like an invincible being until he falls in a famed, mythical battle and dies. The spirit of leading one country under one king may have lived for a long time, but Arthur had died at a relatively young age right at his prime.
But now, glancing down at his wound that still oozed blood, it was becoming abundantly clear to me that I could lose him in a moment and that scared the shit out of me.
I didn’t know the alpha very well, but even I could admit that his very presence seemed to soothe the nerves that had been frayed ever since my mom’s funeral. Everyone here kept talking about fated mates and our pack being fated, but in the 21st century, such a thing was more of a trope in romance novels—not actually something that I had ever expected to find.
Whenever Trini used to bring up how she felt that her pack was meant to be and that she felt like they were fated mates, I used to give her some heavy side eye. At the time I had never believed in that sort of stuff and my mom had been a pragmatist to the core. She had never needed anyone, so why should I have needed anyone either?
Then I touched that stupid sword and everything I knew had been turned on its head.
Suddenly, the four alphas who were, as decreed by the gods, supposed to be mine smelled heavenly—like their scents had been hand-picked to suit me. In the future, the omega center had tried in vain to have me meet alphas whose scents were too bitter or too sweet, never seeming to be the right fit for me, but Arthur, Gawain, Bedivere, and even Lancelot, all smelled like a peaceful, rainy afternoon in my flat. It made me feel calm, and safe, something I wasn’t used to feeling anymore.
