Chapter Fourteen
T he sound of the clang of swords chased us as I steered Sarion away from the battle.
But it went against every single instinct in my body to leave my comrades behind.
Normally, I was right next to my king, fighting alongside him and protecting his flank, but now I was riding away from him with an omega and a small child clutched in my arms.
Protect , something deep and ancient whispered inside of my mind and I quickly pushed it away.
I had long pushed that voice—that alpha instinct—down. When I was a younger man it had urged me to fight back against the man I called father when he would strike me or spread his cruelty to Vivienne.
However, that would have only led to more turmoil in my already bleak family life, so I had shoved it down, almost cauterizing the sensation until I felt nothing of my designation except for the bloodlust that made me the consummate warrior I was on this day.
And yet, here I was riding away from a battle—away from my king—with an omega that smelled of sweet honeysuckle tinged with fear.
“Stop!” she squeaked, her voice quaking with the rough gallop that I was pushing Sarion into.
I ignored her, my eyes locked onto the distant tree line that would provide a safe cover for us in the event that there were more Saxons awaiting us in the farmlands surrounding the village.
The sounds of the hoofbeats of Gawain and Bedivere’s horses followed closely behind us, making me feel more secure as we approached the edge of the forest. I was not certain if I could protect Guinevere on my own, but I knew if the two of them were with us she would be safe.
“Stop!” she said again and this time I pulled on Sarion’s reins, slowing the panting stallion until his steps stuttered into a slow trot.
“We cannot stop, your majesty,” I told her, keeping my voice even as she straightened in my arms and turned to shoot me a stiff glare. She was putting on a brave expression, but even I could feel the rough trembling of her body and see the wobble of her chin as she spoke again.
“We have to go back—we can’t just leave Arthur alone like that!”
“He is not alone, your majesty,” Bedivere said as he brought his horse alongside mine. “He has the rest of our men there to protect him.”
“It is better for you to be far from there,” Gawain chimed in from my other side. The lad’s face was pale and there was a splash of blood across his tunic from the man he had sliced from shoulder to groin before the man could do the same to Guinevere. “His majesty would not be able to focus if you were there.”
“But what about this little boy? We can’t just take him from his home,” Guinevere protested, reminding all of us that I had not just scooped up our queen.
The little boy in question looked to be about six or seven years old and was grubbier than I had ever seen a child—the parents of the children in Camelot were always fastidious about their children’s cleanliness thanks to the hot springs that had been discovered in and around the hill it was built into.
He was covered in ash and soot from the fire, but I could see that the child had not been clean even before the Saxons had descended upon his village.
He blinked up at me with wide blue eyes filled with fear.
“Stop looking at him like that,” Guinevere scolded, holding the boy close. “You’re scaring him.”
I had not meant to do so, but still I looked away. “We will bring him with us to Camelot and someone will take him in.”
“What about his parents? Won’t he want to be reunited with them?”
I bit my tongue, not wanting to snap at her that the chances of any of the villagers making it out of that bloodbath alive were slim to none.
Albeit against their wills, they had been complicit in the trap that we had found ourselves in. If the Saxons did not tear them down, then Arthur would be forced to.
This boy had, in an instant, become an orphan several times over.
“Your majesty,” Bedivere said gently, always the one to take the lead in situations like this. “There will be no reunification with his parents—at least not in this life.”
“But that’s so unfair,” she cried, her light brown eyes filled with frustrated tears.
I was out of my depth, not accustomed to anyone’s tears let alone the tears of a woman.
Her discontent seemed to waft off of her in sour, floral waves and I could see both Bedivere and Gawain stiffen on either side of me. It seemed that the two of them were more in tune with their alpha instincts, hells even my own numb ones were stirring with the omega’s misery.
I needed to put a stop to it. “It is war, your majesty, people die. That is how life here works.”
Guinevere’s spine straightened as she glared up at me, seeming to forget her sadness for a moment. “I don’t care if it’s war! It’s still sad, don’t you have a heart? Or are you just cold like this to everyone?”
I opened my mouth to respond but she was already turning away from me and holding out an arm to Gawain. “I don’t want to ride with him anymore.”
Gawain easily pulled the queen onto his horse and I had to fight back the sudden urge to yank her back.
I felt oddly… envious of the other alpha as he murmured something softly to the omega and she nodded, leaning her head against his shoulder as she continued to cradle the little boy to her.
Irritation filled my chest and I gripped the reins of my horse even tighter. “Very well, I will ride ahead and see if I can scout a place to stay for the night.”
With that, I kicked Sarion’s sides and pulled away from the group, confusion winning out over every other emotion as I rode away from Guinevere and straight into my own tumultuous thoughts.
Protect , that small voice in my mind whispered balefully.
But I simply ignored and pushed it back down before continuing on.
***
“You should apologize to her, Lancelot,” Bedivere told me later on that night as we sat around a small fire. It was as big as we dared to make it, fearing that any Saxons in the surrounding forest would be able to see our light if we made the flames too tall or too large.
“I have nothing to apologize for,” I told him stubbornly as I continued to polish and clean my sword which had seen about as much bloodshed tonight as the one Bedivere kept hanging uselessly at his waist.
“Then you are a fool,” Bedivere huffed, shaking his head with exasperation.
The omega in question was sitting across from me, though she had not looked my way since I brought them to the small formation of rocks that had created a small cavern-like space to shelter us from the rain that had begun to steadily fall since our disagreement earlier.
It always seemed to be raining around the omega—more rain than I had seen all season.
“Is your name Alex?” Guinevere asked, continuing the little game she had been playing with the silent boy.
The boy shook his head, his eyes steady on the queen as if she was his tether to this world. His grubby little fists hadn’t left her skirts since Gawain had helped her down from his horse earlier and the boy had outright refused to sit with anyone other than her.
“Alex?” Gawain remarked, “Of course his name is not Alex, what sort of name is that?”
“It’s a perfectly normal name!” Guinevere insisted with a sniff, her little note wrinkling at the teasing from the alpha. “There are lots of Alexes where I’m from.”
“There is none that I know in Logres, your majesty,” Gawain shot back, his eyes dancing in the firelight.
It seemed that the younger lad had quickly grown accustomed to his role as our queen’s favorite, even going so far as to hold out a bit of dried jerky for her which she gratefully took and split with the little boy.
“Fine,” Guinevere said with a huff. “I guess I’ll try more ancient sounding names then.”
She then started to rattle names off around a bit of jerky.
“Claudas?”
Shake.
“Galahad?”
Shake.
“Gorlois?”
Shake.
The little boy seemed a bit frustrated and he opened and closed his mouth several times before sighing.
“Perhaps he will tell us when he feels comfortable, your majesty,” Bedivere called out to her, making her brown eyes shift in our direction for the first time since we had gathered around the fire.
She looked at me for a blink before her gaze turned completely to Bedivere. “But what are we supposed to call him if we don’t know his name?”
“Urchin.”
The word left my lips before I could stop it and all eyes panned to me once again.
Guinevere’s shoulders stiffened and her face flushed with anger as she shook her head roughly. “What is wrong with you? Did someone shit in your Cheerios this morning or are you always like this?”
Every person around the fire seemed taken aback by the queen’s rough language as she got to her feet, grabbed the little boy’s hand, and stomped off into the dark.
“Do not go far,” I called.
She held up her middle finger over her shoulder. “Go suck a dick!”
Silence reigned over our little group for a few minutes accompanied by the odd crackle of the little fire here and there.
“Our queen is definitely…” Bedivere trailed off slowly, his silver eyes seeming to glitter in the dim firelight. “ Odd .”
“I have never heard of such language coming from a lady, much less a queen,” I muttered under my breath as I slid my sword back into its sheath.
“I like it,” Gawain said, a grin on his face as he continued to stare off in the direction that Guinevere had disappeared in as if he were a lovesick dog.
“It is not for you to like,” I told him pertly, gripping the hilt of my sword as my thumb traveled the well-worn path of the decorated pommel as I had done thousands of times in my life.
“Why not?” Gawain asked, his brows drawing together as he held his lute close to his chest, not actually strumming the instrument as any sort of music could draw unwanted attention, but like my thumb with my sword pommel, Gawain had his own comfort objects.
“She is our queen. The wife of our king. Your eyes may look upon her as a servant, but you should not look at her like you have been any longer.”
Bedivere ran a contemplative thumb along his jaw, his eyes glancing between Gawain and me. “Why do you say that, Lancelot? Do you not believe in the words of the gods?”
I scoffed, shaking my head. “And you do? In what realm would we, Arthur’s knights, be accepted into his wife’s bed?”
“It is more than that and you know it, Lancelot,” Gawain shot back, his expression hurt. “It is a pack. A family.”
“It does not matter how much you yearn for a family, Gawain, relying on the words of a wizard who disappeared for a decade will not get you one.”
My words were harsh and I watched the other alpha flinch away from them as if I had actually reached out to strike him with my hand.
Gawain’s grip on the neck of his lute tightened, his knuckles turning white. “If you truly believe that, then why did you pull Gwen up onto your horse before I could earlier?”
I had no answer for the man, so instead I looked away from his accusatory eyes.
I was not sure why I had rushed for the queen. One moment I had been next to Arthur and the next my mind was telling me that I needed to head for her even before the Saxons had revealed their trap.
Gawain had been the closest and would have easily been able to snag the queen back into the saddle, but my hands were already reaching for her and the little boy, pulling her up from the ground and to safety.
At that moment there was not a soul in that village that could have convinced me that they could have protected Guinevere better than I and I hated it. It went against every single thing that I had told myself to avoid.
I did not believe in the gods—not in the way that some thought that they did not actually exist—but rather that they would do nothing for me.
After all, I had spent years in my father’s house, rotting away whilst he made my life a living hell, and the gods had done nothing.
Now they wished for me to share in something that should have nothing to do with me? Why? What was their goal?
I was not so important that I would think that I deserved to be anywhere near the fiery omega. No, my father had made sure that my self-worth was non-existent and I knew that I did not fit in with such a lofty fate.
“Still, you must apologize,” Bedivere repeated himself, his voice more grave and full of disappointment than it had been before. I hated when the older alpha was angry with me, but I refused to show it. “To her majesty and to Gawain.”
I turned to do so, but much to my surprise Gawain had disappeared from his spot across the fire.
“Where has he gone?” I asked with a frown.
The side of Bedivere’s mouth pulled up into a wry half-smile. “While you were busily brooding, Sir Gawain went to go and find our wayward queen.”
“And you just let him? Bedivere, I assumed you knew better than to feed into the lad’s romantic sensibilities like this.”
Bedivere shrugged one muscled shoulder. “Mayhaps I am a bit of a romantic myself.”
I lifted a brow, staring at the older alpha. “So may I assume that you are also interested in our queen?”
This time the man just shook his head, giving a hearty laugh. “No, I am too old for such things.”
The hypocrisy of his words were not lost on me and I found myself rolling my eyes as I stood to follow Gawain before he got himself into trouble.
“You are but eight years older than Arthur, Bedivere, and yet you speak as if you have one foot already in the grave.”
Bedivere, always one to want the last word, just held up his stump. “It is not a foot, but I do already have one hand in the grave, Lancelot.”
With a wry shake of my head, I stepped out of the light of the fire and into the dark forest intent on finding the trio that had disappeared into its depths.
I just had not yet decided what I would do once I found them.