Instead, there were only a few faces in the crowd still looking at me with confusion, not to mention the angry alpha who was still glancing between me and Merlin.
“Merlin you had better have a good reason for—” Arthur began but Merlin cut him off, which I had a feeling was a common occurrence with the green-eyed man.
“I will explain everything to you in great detail, my friend, but for now I must speak with the princess for I believe she will have far more questions for me than you will,” Merlin said, tugging me down the little raised crop of land that Arthur had been standing on, leaving the king behind with a dumbfounded look on his face.
“Hey!” I protested as he pulled me out of the crowd into a copse of trees, away from the prying eyes of the partygoers who had all but forgotten about me again.
I yanked my arm out of his grasp and glared at him. “Okay, this is going too far and I’d like to wake up now.”
Merlin’s brown brows drew together as he finally lookedat me for the first time since he’d appeared in a literal crash of lightning earlier. “Whatever do you mean?”
“This,” I said, gesturing to the medieval merrymaking happening behind him. “It’s obvious that I’ve fallen and hit my head—or better yet I somehow got hit by a car coming out of that shitty date with Charles. It was bound to happen eventually with the way people drive in London. I’m in a coma of delusion because we were just in the King Arthur exhibit and I was missing my mom. Really cool, but now I want to wake up, please.”
Merlin was quiet for a moment before he shook his head. “Gwen you were not hit by a car, nor are you in a coma.”
“Then how do you, Merlin, King Arthur’s trusted wizard, know what the hell a car is? That’s not necessarily something a person from medieval England would know. Not only that, aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know,old?Only my mind would conjure you up as a hot wizard, so I must be in a coma.” I pointed at my head for good measure as if a gash from some kind of head injury would reveal itself by doing so.
At least, that was always what the dream psychologists wrote that it would. Acknowledge the dream and it won’t have any power over you anymore.
And yet here I still stood, in a blue dress that I’d never seen before in my life with a damned crown on my head as the not-so-old-and-kind-of-hot wizard looked at me with sympathy.
“Well, for one, you are not the first omega I have pulled through time. There have been others and I have been able to look—and learn—about the modern day through their eyes,” Merlin explained a bit sheepishly, his pale, freckled cheekssuddenly flushing pink. “And while I appreciate the compliment about my appearance, may we focus on the issue at hand?”
My own cheeks warmed and I looked away from those too-bright green eyes that glowed even outside of the little cave I’d awoken in.
Finally, I nodded reluctantly. I really didn’t want to have to go through this whole entire thing, but maybe if he explained, my brain would somehow wake up and I’d be in a hospital in London instead of ancient Wales talking to a bona fide wizard.
“Ten years ago the gods sent me a portent of disaster. My king’s kingdom would fall into despair if he did not find his fated omega—a woman by the name of Guinevere and she would save the future of Logres.”
This was sounding all too-familiar to the story that the docent had been telling in the exhibit before I touched that stupid sword.
“But there was something barring me from bringing her to Arthur to set the prophecy into motion in order to save Camelot. You see, the soul of the omega to be—the one who would unite Arthur with some of his most trusted allies—her soul was lost in a time far in the future.”
Despite still fully believing this was all a dream, his words made my knees feel weak. It was as if everything he said sizzled with asomethingthat I’d never felt before. It skittered along my skin, all of the hair on my body as something deep inside of me seemed to reach out to meet it.
Merlin blinked with surprise and the feeling intensified for a moment until I gasped, then it was gone.
“That doesn’t make any sense because Guinevere doesn’t—” I began trying to explain to him that, in the legend, Guinevere did nothing but stand on a hilltop while her pack was slaughtered by the Saxons. But it was as if something had reached out to grip my throat and I gagged around the words.
I folded at the waist, trying to regain the breath that had just been pulled out of me.
The pain was so intense that I was considering that maybe—justmaybe—my coma theory was wrong. I coughed, trying to clear my throat to tell Merlin that there was no way I was the same Guinevere from the tale. I’d never wantedanyalpha, let alone an entire ass pack during a time when that wasn’t the norm in England.
That was the kind of shit that got you burned at the stake like some of the iterations of the legend foretold and I had no interest in being barbecued for kissing someone I wasn’t meant to be kissing.
“Be at ease,” Merlin soothed and I felt his hand on my back. The same feeling as before filled me, but this time instead of sizzling it felt soothing, almost like it was trying to comfort the strangled sensation I was being racked with. “Do not try to tell me of Arthur’s future, Gwen, as the gods do not like it when their plans are meddled with.”
I shot him a withering look, but as soon as I stopped trying to say the words out loud, the feeling evaporated as if it had never happened at all.
“How much doyouknow?” I asked accusingly, my world starting to crash down around me as I was slowly coming to the realization that I really wasn’t in Kansas—London, I mentally corrected—anymore.
“Some,” Merlin answered with a shrug. “The gods have also only seen fit to show me bits and pieces of Arthur’s future. I do know however, that without you in the mix, it shall be bleak.”
Irritation filled me at hisblaséattitude. “So, what? You’ve just decided to yank me from the future without my permission so that I can fulfill some ridiculous prophecy for you?”
“Well, I prefer to think of it as a portent,” Merlin corrected unhelpfully.
I paused to take a breath, debating on whether or not I really wanted to continue debating synonyms with an ancient wizard or if I wanted to just get to the point. “So, if I help you save Arthur, will you let me go back home?”
