“I’m sorry,” I repeated again, guilt filling my chest. “I didn’t mean to.”
Gawain’s warm hands wrapped around mine, pulling them away from his wounds and around to his front.
“It was just a bit of ice, Guinevere,” he told me seriously despite the blood still leaking from the cut above his eye. “Nothing more.”
He kept telling me it was fine but that did little to quell the nasty feeling in my gut. If only I had better control over my emotions—over my magic.
I couldn’t even heal the wound over Gawain’s eye.
Frustrated, I called on that same stupid core of magic that had gone haywire moments ago and gasped inwardly when the magic came to me like a playful kitten, almost apologetic for what it had just done to me before.
Healing is all about intention,Merlin had explained during one of our lessons.Try it with me.
Then he took a knife and sliced a long cut down his arm.
I hadn’t been able to do anything that day despite my desperate desire to stop the bleeding, but now my magic felt more pliable—malleable even.
Nibbling on my lower lip, I gathered water from the air and cupped it in my palm, watching how it shone almost silver in the light.
I want to heal,I thought as hard as I could,I want the wound on his forehead to close and for the bruises to go away.
Gently I pressed my hand to Gawain’s brow, willing the skin to knit itself together again with every fiber of my being.
Then, to my surprise, it did.
I gasped, pulling my hand away as the water splattered to the floor.
All of Gawain’s wounds were gone, the cut over his eye just a faint pink line instead of the bleeding wound it had been.
“I did it,” I managed, my voice full of awe. “Holy shit, I did it!”
Without thinking, I launched myself forward into Gawain’s arms with a laugh.
His chest was warm and I could smell his sage scent better directly from where his shoulder met the nape of his neck.
I froze, realizing that I had crossed a line and I wasn’t sure how the alpha would feel about it.
But then one of his warm hands splayed flat over my back and the other cupped the back of my head, gently urging me to look at him.
The normally affable alpha was staring at me with a mix of longing and a bit of reticence about our current, very compromising position.
Arthur had all but given his blessing to form a pack, but over the past two weeks everyone had settled into an easy routine—Bedivere and Gawain accompanying me most days while Lancelot avoided me like I was the plague.
Something had shifted today when I insisted on following Lancelot out to where he was shooting arrows. Not only between me and Lancelot, but also between me and Gawain. It had been the first time that I had actively sought one of them out and I wondered if Gawain thought it was because I was ready to accept more alphas into the pack.
Was I ready?
After that day on the journey to Camelot where we almost kissed, Gawain had kept everything platonic and friendly, but now the way he was looking at me was anything but.
I wanted him. His scent made my insides twist with need and my instincts were all but screaming at me to do something,anything, to make him mine.
But then there was the fact that, if I chose to do this, there would be no going back. With Arthur, I had just reached a comfortable ease as his wife… was it too soon to do this whole pack thing? Would it make him angry with me? Jealous? Could he potentially hurt Gawain?
Gawain, as if seeing my emotions etched across my face, began to let go of me. “My apologies, Gwen.”
My mind shouted at me not to let him go, my inner-omega grappling for the surface of my thoughts in a near tantrum.
I reached out with one hand, cupping his chin and pulling him to me.
