I did not need to share a bond mark with the omega to know that my words had hurt her feelings.
Guinevere looked as if she wanted to turn tail and run, but then she tilted her chin up defiantly and repeated the question she had first asked me earlier. “Can you teach me how to wield a bow and arrow?”
I sighed, scrubbing a hand over my face. It seemed that I would not be getting rid of her so easily. “Why do you wish to learn such a thing, your majesty?”
“So that I can protect myself,” she said without an ounce of a jest in her voice.
Holding back the scoff that threatened to emerge from my mouth, I shook my head. “We will protect you, your majesty, you do not need to learn to do so yourself.”
“But what if you aren’t there? Or what if you are the one who is hurt?” Guinevere insisted, her eyes slanting away from mine as if she knew something I did not.
“Then I advise you to run,” I told her plainly. “If there is such a foe that defeats myself and the rest of his majesty’s knights, then there are not enough arrows in the realm to protect you.”
“Even with my magic?”
I had very little knowledge of magical practices, but even I knew that water was the element of healing—not battle. “Perhaps if you were able to control fire…?”
Guinevere’s expression twisted into a puckered expression as she rolled her eyes. “Sorry, no fire here, that was the other omega.”
“Other omega?” I asked, frowning. “What other omega do you speak of?”
Guinevere slapped a hand to her mouth as if she had revealed too much. “Uh…shit, Merlin asked me not to tell anyone about this.”
I just waited, watching as the omega’s shoulders sank in surrender. “Fine, I’ll tell you, but if you rat me out to Merlin, I’m going to shave you bald in your sleep.”
Guinevere jerked her head in the direction of a log that had been carved out by one of the men to serve as a bench. Once we had settled she took a deep breath.
“Apparently, when Merlin was doing his fancy time-travel magic there were two other omegas who he pulled through time first.”
“That was… reckless of him,” I finally said after searching my mind for the right word. Merlin, despite his strange personality and eccentricities, had never struck me as the sort of man to be reckless before.
“Even he admits that much.” Guinevere’s voice revealed a fondness for the wizard that shocked me. I knew that he was teaching her how to wield her magic, but they seemed much closer than I thought possible.
A thread of envy filled me so suddenly that I had to hold back the growl that I would be unable to explain. My inner-alpha stirred from the slumber I had forced it into and perked up, emboldened by Guinevere’s scent.
Mate, mate, mate, mate,my mind chanted maddeningly.
“But apparently,” Guinevere continued, oblivious to my inner-battle. “One of the omegas could control fire and the other could control the air—just add in earth and you’ve got yourself a royal flush of magical omegas with me being about as useless an element I could get.”
I did not know what a royal flush was but I could hear the frustration in Guinevere’s voice.
“Do you not like your water abilities?” I asked, letting my curiosity get the best of me.
“It isn’t the flashiest power—and I can’t do much with it anyway right now,” Guinevere said with a shrug of her slender shoulders as she reached up to twist at her hair. “I wish I could do more than just make sprinkles of water fall from the sky. I can’t even do anything with it once it starts to gather yet.”
To be able to do that was far more impressive than she knew. Learning from Merlin who had always been unnaturally gifted in magic thanks to his mysterious origins must have been a bittersweet experience for her.
The urge to reassure her filled me, and despite my reservations, I did.
“My mother used to tell me about the water gods when I was but a boy,” I began, thinking of the woman with hair the color of gold thread and a voice so melodic that it could put me to sleep within the first few moments of a story and yet I could hardly remember what her face looked like. “She used to tell me that Logres was once connected with the land across the river and the water gods benevolently created gentle shores full of fish. That is, until one day when a greedy man stole from the gods and they began to rage over their gifts being taken for granted by selfish humans. Water then fell from the sky so quickly that soon enough Logres was cut off from the mainland and there was no longer enough territory for the people to live comfortably and that is why the tribal disputes began.”
“I’ve never heard that story before,” Guinevere murmured, her brown eyes wide with interest.
“It was passed down by my mother’s family who used water as their sigil—they looked at themselves as the keepers of the water gods’ will—though I never believed in such things myself.”
“This is a world full of magic and you don’t believe in the gods?”
I snorted at that and shook my head. “It is not that I do not believe in the gods, your majesty, but that I do not believe the gods to be benevolent.”
