Even despite butting heads with Lancelot or Bedivere’s rejection of me couldn’t keep the instinctual part of me, the part that hovered in the back of my mind always, from not being curious about them. From wanting them.
And Arthur? Arthur made me feel secure with just one touch of his hand and the crinkle of his blue eyes as he teased the panic out of me with a soft humor that I didn’t know a man who had seen battle for most of his adult life could possess.
It felt like peace—but the kind of peace that was balanced precariously on a razor’s edge—ready to fall at a moment’s notice and send me spiraling back into the darkness.
“I have been wounded before,” Arthur pointed out gently. “This gash is hardly the worst of it, see?”
His callused hand wrapped around my fingers and pulled them up to the scar tissue littered all over his chest. “This wound came from a barbed arrow—it was a nightmare to get out.”
He moved our hands down cataloging all of his injuries.
A slash across his chest from a stray sword, various cuts from being knocked off of his horse, more arrow injuries, and finally, the wound which was still seeping red blood in a cruel reminder that the alpha in front of me was indeed mortal.
“It is not my first wound, little queen, and it will not be my last until the Saxons are chased out of this land for good.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the Saxons were never purged from England—not completely anyway.
In the future, most people argued about whether the legend of King Arthur was real or not, but the Arthur standing in front of me was very real and still very injured.
“Trust in me, Guinevere,” Arthur’s voice was so faint I had to lean in to hear it. “I will not allow you to be alone again.”
“You don’t even know me,” I pointed out stubbornly.
“I do not need to know you,” he said firmly. “Every piece of my soul tells me that you are my queen and mate, the rest will come with time. At the very least I will no longer have to worry aboutyoursafety.”
I frowned up at him with confusion. “What do you mean?”
Arthur’s heart rate picked up underneath my fingertips as his soft smile faded. “The day of the ambush I was terrified that you would be killed and I would not be able to stop it. It was as if Sir Ector and his wife were being massacred before my eyes all over once again and I was reminded of why having an omega is a dangerous business in Logres.”
Arthur continued, “Just as I was sure you were about to be cleaved in two by that Saxon invader, Lancelot was there and I knew with every fiber of my being that you would be safe if you were with him, Gawain, and Bedivere. It was the strangest sensation…”
The alpha trailed off, his expression contemplative as he shook his head, chasing whatever thoughts must have been rattling around in his mind.
“What does that mean?” I asked, my fingers curling into a fist on his chest just over the first scar he’d told me about. “That you’re accepting this whole pack thing?”
“I am not certain,” Arthur answered with a shrug. “Though I must admit it was a relief to be able to fight in that ambush and every single skirmish after that with the knowledge that you were safe with my most trusted men.”
There was so much to unpack with his words, but I never got the chance because there was a knock at the door.
“Arthur?” Merlin’s voice came through the wood. “I am here to look at your wound.”
I opened my mouth to continue questioning him and exactly what his thoughts were, but Arthur gave me a gentle shake of his head and mouthed the word‘later.’
Then he turned over his shoulder and called to the wizard: “You may enter.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Ifelt as if I had been run over by a car. Those amazing metal contraptions from the future were always something I fixated on when I was able to look through the eyes of Eleanor or Juneau, but I also knew that they must hurt a great deal if they struck someone…
And, as the people from the future would often say: I felt like shit.
I had been just about to tuck into a bowl of steaming stew that Mistress Morris had put in front of me when a familiar itching sensation filled me.
Many things had changed around Castle Camelot in the years that I had holed myself up in my cave, but the cook’s ability to throw things into a pot and produce the most mouthwatering dishes had not. All I wanted to do was unhinge my jaw, devour the hot food (my tongue be damned), and crawl into my rectorythat I sincerely hoped had been dusted in the past decade before falling into a deep, and I do mean deep, sleep.
But alas, the gods waited for no man, especially not their proverbial errand boy.
Whenever they wanted me to see something that they had once shown me of the future they would create a buzzing sensation in my chest that was impossible to ignore.
