Chapter Three
I stared down one of my oldest friends, watching him shift uncomfortably from foot-to-foot as he shot a look at the omega woman who had fallen out of the sky only moments ago.
She had very nearly been spitted like a roast pig on Excalibur as I had been holding it aloft while I spoke to the crowd.
I had been busily reassuring them with empty promises that I would find an omega queen and secure Camelot’s future. My words had been a lie, one that was meant to give me something I so desperately needed: time.
Time to rid our lands of the ever encroaching Saxons, time to surmise just how they seemed to know the intricacies of our plans and who was the one sharing that knowledge, and finally time for me to make Camelot safe so that when I did eventually bring in an omega queen there would be no risk of her being taken away from me.
I had already watched one person I cared about be ripped from her alpha’s arms and I was not about to repeat the same fate. No, Camelot would need to be an impenetrable fortress where my omega could reside in peace, and Camelot—hells the entirety of Logres—was the furthest from peace as I had ever seen it with the invasion of the Saxons from the too-close shores of the mainland.
Ten years ago Merlin had burst into my chambers in the early hours of the morning, rambling and raving about a portent—one that could change the future of Camelot forever—most of it had been an unintelligible garble, but as I tried to soothe him with a warm drink, he managed to tell me that he needed to go and find my omega and that she would unite my closest allies against the Saxons.
He, however, did not share with me how I would do such a thing and when I awoke to the cold light of day Merlin had vanished altogether.
I had sent my men to search for him for months, but one thing I had learned about my strange friend was that, if he did not wish to be found, then he would not be.
Rather than dwell too much on the missing wizard, I’d thrown myself into building up Camelot. I had only been king for a handful of years when Merlin left us and as such there was much to do. The old castle we had taken over required many repairs. Additionally there were many people who seemed to gravitate to Camelot as they were displaced from their own homes by the invading Saxons.
The once decrepit hamlet had started to thrive and grow under my care and as did my power within Logres. I had been but a boy of ten and five when I pulled Excalibur from the stone and had been declared a king among kings and now I was thirty and a man.
As a boy, I had not understood what being a king truly meant, but now, at twice that age, my youth had faded and I understood the magnitude of every choice made. Of the responsibility for every life lost.
I had told Bedivere of my plans to put off marriage until Camelot was safe, and though I could tell that my oldest friend and closest confidant disapproved of the idea, he still gave me his advice about how to go about side-stepping all of the tribal kings who had been attempting to thrust their daughters upon me tonight.
King Ban had been especially irritating tonight as he put Vivienne, a woman who had been a child less than a year ago, in my sights at every turn.
Though Lancelot was one of my most trusted knights, I had no lost love for his father and I was fairly certain the stoic man felt the same—but I was also certain he would never actually say the words out loud out of a sense of duty.
Even if I was going to search for an omega queen, I adamantly refused to pluck a flower that had yet to fully grow into its roots. No, I needed a hardier, wilder woman to lead Camelot by my side.
As I strode down the hillside in the direction Merlin had disappeared in with the strange omega, try as I did I couldn’t get the taste of the wild honeysuckle that grew on the cliffs surrounding Camelot castle off of my tongue.
The woman had oozed it as she stared up at me with brown eyes that looked like deep pools of amber as she slid down my front and to the ground.
I forced myself not to think about how soft her body felt against mine and I had suddenly regretted my stance on not bedding women until the Saxons had been dealt with. It had been years since the furs of my bed had been warmed by any soul and it was making my head fill with a buzzing warmth now that I had felt the shape of her body under the blue dress that I only vaguely realized matched my eyes.
Nearly every person in the clearing seemed to recognize and accept the woman as a princess and the daughter of King Leodegrance, my closest and most powerful ally, but I had never seen her before in my life no matter what I was told.
As I had pushed through the crowd that was hellbent on blocking my path earlier in my quest to find Merlin and the mysterious woman, it soon became clear that I was not the only one who had been unaffected by what could only be the magic of the gods.
“Your Majesty,” Bedivere greeted as he fell into step next to me. His good hand was resting on the hilt of his sword, gripping the pommel as if he could pull it from its sheath at any moment and defend me, though we both knew that was not and could never be the case again due to the loss of his other hand in battle. “Who was that woman and why are the men calling her a princess?”
“You do not recognize Princess Guinevere?” I asked, holding my breath tightly in my chest as I waited for an answer from him.
Bedivere shook his head and his dark beard that had been graying more in the last year twitched as he frowned. “No I do not, she appeared in a bolt of light and suddenly King Leodegrance was behaving as if she had always existed. Lancelot and Gawain were with me in the crowd and they seemed as equally flummoxed as I, Your Majesty.”
I nodded slowly, trying to stomach the sheer absurdity of it all. “I also assume you saw Merlin?”
Bedivere’s silver eyes shifted, though I could not tell what the man was thinking exactly. “Aye, I did. I feared my eyes were playing tricks on me, but it was undoubtedly the wizard.”
Bedivere’s words only confirmed that Merlin had not been a figment of my imagination and had returned in tandem with the appearance of the strange omega woman.
“I must go and speak with him.”
Bedivere moved to join me but I stopped him. “You said Gawain and Lancelot were also unaffected by whatever magic has overcome the rest, yes? Go and get them and bring them there.” I pointed in the direction that Merlin had just disappeared in.
“And you will go alone? Your Majesty, it could be dangerous…” Bedivere’s words trailed off at my quelling look before he begrudgingly nodded. “I will go and fetch the others.”
It did not matter in which circumstances led Merlin to return, I knew and Bedivere knew that the man would never hurt me.
He had been by my side since my tenth year, wandering out of a thick mist one morning dressed in rags and wearing a strange smile on his face. Other than Kay, Merlin was the closest thing I had to a brother and he’d proven himself worthy of my trust time and time again. I just hoped things had not changed for him in the past ten years.
I left Bedivere behind, ignoring the rest of those who tried to stop me in my quest to get to the copse of trees, and breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped inside of the tree line and the buzzing noise softened almost immediately.
None had ever spoken of how absolutely chaotic being a ruler could be. Not a day had gone by where I was not constantly needed, and while I loved watching my people thrive, it had begun to wear on me as of late.
The ground crunched under my boot as I followed the sound of Merlin’s voice as he spoke—though it sounded more as if he was arguing—with the woman.
As I grew closer, I was finally able to understand his words better. “The gods have also only seen fit to show me bits and pieces of Arthur’s future, but I know without you in the mix it will be bleak.”
There was a pause before the woman spoke, her voice tight and steely with anger. “So, what? You’ve just decided to yank me from the future without my permission so that I can fulfill some ridiculous prophecy?”
My steps halted. The future? What was this omega saying? The cadence of her words was also strange. I had never heard anyone speak the way she had before—fast and with a simplicity that I was unfamiliar with.
“I prefer to think of it as a portent.”
There was a long heavy sigh from the woman. “So, if I help you save Arthur, will you let me go back home?”
“You would want to return home after finding your fated pack?”
That word was enough for me to start moving forward again. Keeping my footsteps light, I approached where the pair was standing. Merlin had his back to me but I could see the woman’s guarded expression as she glared up at him and shrugged. “Maybe. I’m not really enthused about living in a time where there isn’t any indoor plumbing.”
Yet another unfamiliar word, further confirming that this woman was not from this land, though my mind had still yet to be made up about her being from a time far in the future.
“Gwen, I’ve been searching the future for you for the better part of ten years. In all of my visions of the future you were never unhappy here—”
I was done listening to a conversation about my life without being an active participant.
“Merlin,” I called, struggling to keep my voice even as the woman leaned around Merlin’s shoulder and looked at me with widening brown eyes.
Merlin’s shoulders stiffened before he turned to me with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Arthur—”
“Do not,” I cut him off with a look. “Were my ears deceiving me or did you just utter the words ‘ time travel ?’”
Even just saying them out loud made me feel as if someone was going to pop out of the trees and tell me I was touched in the head.
“I may have…?”
My frown deepened at the wizard. It was not far out of character for him to be secretive—hells I had known that his very existence was mysterious when he walked out of a mist and said my name as if he had known me for eons.
But the time for conundrums had long since passed in the years he had been missing and I wanted an answer. “Explain. Why is it that every soul behind us recognizes a princess that I have never met before and why you have suddenly reappeared after absconding into the night ten years ago.”
A feeling of hurt that I had pushed off telling myself that Merlin would not disappear without good reason reared its ugly head as I glared at the man. He had been my closest confidant and friend. Hells, he was the reason I had pulled a blasted sword out of a stone all those years ago.
And he had left me to flounder as a young king trying to find my footing in an increasingly chaotic Logres.
“It is very complicated…”
Anger surged in my chest at his words. “Uncomplicate it then.”
I watched as both Merlin and the woman flinched back at the tone in my voice, but I was finished playing the magnanimous king when there were forces at work that seemed to have me at their very center without my consent.
Merlin took a deep breath, his bright green eyes squinting at the corners as he grimaced before starting to speak. “Ten years ago I received a portent from the gods—the same way I did when it was time for you to claim Excalibur and become the king of kings.”
I had been a scrawny lad of ten and five then when Merlin shook me awake, his normally affable expression completely gone as he told me in a monotone voice that it was time.
He had refused to explain himself until Sir Ector brought us to the festival surrounding a shining sword embedded into a rock.
“They whispered to me that I must find your fated omega. The one who would save Logres from certain annihilation. Only she would give you the tools you need to save this land, Arthur.”
My brows raised, but before I could say anything the woman next to Merlin scoffed. “And how am I supposed to do that? I think you’ve grabbed the wrong woman because I have no skills that would be transferable to ancient England—I have a theater degree for crying out loud!”
Her voice was sharp and confident, very different from the soft spoken women that had been presented to me by their fathers all evening, as was the stubborn set of her chin and the flash of anger in her brown eyes.
Despite my reservations, I found myself curious about the woman who appeared in a flash of light. Who exactly was this creature who spoke her mind to a king without fear? There were knights of my very own round table who still stuttered over their words at times when speaking to me face to face.
Merlin turned to her, his lips pulling up in the corners at her words as if he was charmed in spite of being the target of her anger. “I did not grab the wrong woman, Guinevere. You have been fated to come to this time from the moment you drew your first breath and your mother named you as such.”
I watched silently as Guinevere’s face crumbled into some kind of unspoken grief that I recognized all too well. The honeysuckle perfume that hung around her like a shroud soured with it.
The urge to soothe her pain inexplicably filled me and I found myself taking a step back away from her out of fear that I would instead reach for her hands and give them a comforting squeeze. A single, solitary purr tried to rattle up my throat but I held onto it with a tight grip, pressing my lips together.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. All of this is some crazy comatose dream conjured up by my brain because I was stupid enough to walk into the King Arthur exhibit at the museum. None of this is real,” she said, but even as she spoke I could tell she did not fully believe her own words.
I returned my attention to Merlin. “How is it that an omega is supposed to save Logres?”
In my experience, omegas served two purposes: to soothe an alpha’s rage and to bear him healthy alpha and omega children. Outside of that their presence was a constant danger to everyone around them.
After all, there was no telling what would happen to an omega and her alpha if a stronger, more malicious alpha happened upon her scent.
Images of the aftermath of what happened to Sir Ector and Lady Anna when I was a young king flashed in my mind, reminding me exactly why I had been so reluctant to accept any queen—omega or not.
Guinevere seemed unhappy with my words as she crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her chin up stubbornly. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’ll have you know that omegas can do everything alphas can.”
Her words snapped through me like a whip and I reeled back as her anger was suddenly directed at me. “I did not mean any offense, my lady, but in this land omegas only cause death.”
Brown eyes blinked hard once before she opened her mouth to continue to argue with me, but Merlin’s voice cut through our heated exchange.
“Enough!” The exclamation echoed through the clearing, a magical undercurrent turning the air around us alive with an inhuman crackle.
Merlin’s curls lifted with it as he glared at the two of us, his expression stony as his eyes seemed to glow even brighter.
“The portent is clear,” he said, his voice taking on an almost sing-song quality as he spoke. “Guinevere, the omega out of time, will bring light back to Logres and create a world for future kings to come. With her king by her side and his pack, they will show the world that as one, we will fall, but as many we will triumph.”
Then Merlin stumbled back as if the magic was pulled from his body and went down onto one knee, a wheeze rattling out of his chest as all of the color drained from his face.
“Merlin?” I asked with concern and watched with shock as he careened to the side with a thud.