Gwen (Omegas Through Time #3)

Prologue

M erlin stared pensively into the basin of glowing liquid, his eyes tracing the two glowing threads still remaining after he had pulled Eleanor’s string.

There were still two left and there they sat, mocking him as he tried to parse out which thread exactly was hers.

Guinevere . The gods had whispered her name into his ear a decade ago and he hadn’t known peace since.

Merlin wished that the gods would be clearer in their portents and show him the whole picture of the dire future that awaited Arthur—the friend he should have never made in the first place.

When he was sent down from the ether of the universe for the express purpose of guiding the young king of Camelot, the gods had made the both of them the same age making it far too easy to befriend the too-cheerful young boy who treated everyone around him with a fairness that was rare for humans.

Even when people treated Arthur as a motherless orphan of unknown origins, he was still kind and that kindness had bled over into his early reign as the king of Camelot.

And then the gods had sent him visions of a future where Camelot burned to the ground and with it went the hope for any sort of joined Logres. One land where peace lasted longer than a few months and where the squabbling of the tribal kings would finally be over.

Then they whispered her name and sent Merlin a flash of warm brown eyes that crinkled in the corners, and after that, the word pack .

Merlin hadn’t understood it at the time, the word was foreign to him outside of discussions of what to do about the wolf packs that constantly tried to pick off sheep from the flocks on the outskirts of the lower village surrounding Castle Camelot.

Meeting Juneau had changed that. He hadn’t been sure of what to make of the overly talkative omega when he pulled her thread first. She seemed too ill-matched with the rough bikers that she was fated to be with.

Merlin had felt terrible as he watched her try to navigate a modern world that overwhelmed him even just seeing it through her eyes.

But somehow she’d made it work like she was meant to be there the entire time.

That had steeled his resolve for the next thread, and while Eleanor had been much more reticent of her match than Juneau had been, in the end she was happier than she ever could have been in her own time.

Now, he was sure that Guinevere would bring happiness not only to Arthur, but to the three other alphas that he’d seen flash in his mind’s eye as the gods showed him their future.

She was supposed to bring them together as a pack, and in doing so, save Camelot and create the modern world that Merlin had seen through the eyes of the other omega.

He turned his gaze back to the basin again.

“But which one of these is her thread?”

It seemed the gods were playing tricks on the wizard because he could tell that he wouldn’t have enough magic to do the ritual four separate times.

“Damned gods, making a mockery of me,” he muttered and it was almost like their laughter echoed off of the low ceiling of the cave he’d spent the past decade inside of. “Laugh all you like, but what will you do if I pull the wrong string?”

A faint sigh filled his ears as if they wished he would figure it out himself, then an image of him reaching inside of the basin and grasping both strings at once filled his mind.

Merlin frowned. “If I do that I will have depleted most of my magic. It will take months to be able to do even the most basic of spells. How am I to help this omega if I do not possess any magic? And what of the other thread? Do you expect me to not guide the other omega who is going to be unceremoniously yanked from her time and thrown somewhere?”

But Merlin’s questions were met with silence. Then, the air thickened with magic that seemed to seep deep into his pores—the gods were giving him a magical boost.

It still would not be enough to keep him at full power, but it would have to do.

“I just hope you know what you are doing,” Merlin said with a sigh before he began to mutter the magical incantation that would bring Guinevere to the past. To Arthur, Lancelot, Bedivere, and Gawain.

They were all men that were deserving of having the kind of love he’d seen through Juneau and Eleanor.

Merlin just hoped that the omega he pulled would be open to it.

Wrapping his fingers around each of the threads, the heat of them was seared painfully into his palm as he gritted his teeth and finished the incantation.

The sheer amount of power flowing into each of his nerve endings was too much for the wizard and his green eyes rolled back into his head as the image of a woman standing in what looked like some kind of museum filled his mind.

“Guinevere,” he called, his voice hoarse. “I finally found you.”

He managed to whisper instructions to the confused looking omega before everything went black and the last thing he heard was the gods wishing him luck for the long journey that was ahead.