Chapter Fifteen
“ H ow about Liam?” I heard Guinevere’s voice before I saw her and the little boy she had seemingly saved from the slaughter taking place back in his village. “No, you don’t like that one either? Man, kid, you sure are hard to please.”
All the omega received in response was silence and I heard her heave a heavy sigh.
I peered around the massive trunk of the tree they were behind and found Guinevere crouched in front of the boy, dipping a scrap of her dress into the sliver of a stream that cut through the forest and scrubbing at his face with it.
“What about Theodore?” she asked, not giving up.
The boy’s nose scrunched as he shook his head again, trying to pull his face from her hands.
I did not wish to scare the omega or the boy, so I purposefully stepped onto a stray branch on the ground, the snap of it making Guinevere turn to look over her shoulder at me.
“I suppose you’re here to make me apologize for my ‘coarse’ language?”
I frowned. “Why would I do that, your majesty?”
She leveled a look at me—a reminder of our earlier conversation before the hells had broken loose and I hurried to correct myself. “Why would I make you apologize, Gwen?”
Guinevere shrugged her shoulders, turning back to her task of trying to wipe away what looked to be weeks or maybe even months of grime from the boy’s face. “The maids got into the habit of scolding me when I accidentally let the occasional F-Bomb fly.”
“F-Bomb?”
From her profile, I could see her plump lips pull up into a wry smile. “It means ‘fuck,’ I also nearly made my poor maid faint when I accidentally stubbed my toe and sort-of let it all fly. Turns out the words shit, fuck, god damned, ass, and cunt are not appropriate for a ‘lady of my stature.’”
I had to hold back the bark of laughter that was threatening to emerge at her words and Guinevere’s expression grew more mischievous. “Do you think a lady like me shouldn’t say the word ‘fuck’ ?”
Every woman that I knew would rather have been hung by their toes than utter such vulgar words, but they seemed to roll off of Guinevere’s tongue with a practiced ease that made them seem almost natural.
“I would not dare to tell you that there is any one thing you cannot do, Gwen, you are my queen after all.”
This seemed to please the omega and she straightened, her studious scrubbing of the boy’s nearly clean face pausing for a moment as she grinned at me. “Well, at least there are some benefits to being queen.”
Turning to the boy, I found his face to be completely full of golden freckles that were splattered across his nose and forehead. He would need a full dunking in water to come completely clean, but Guinevere had done the lion’s share of revealing the boy’s face.
“Boy,” I said, keeping my voice soft so as not to scare him, “Do you have parents back at that village?”
The boy shook his head.
“Were you an orphan?”
This time there was a nod.
“Do you remember ever having a name?”
The boy shook his head hard.
It was as I had expected. Many times the Saxons razed through villages and the children were left to fend for themselves.
This child was far too dirty even for the child of a farmer which meant that, while the people of the village had likely fed the boy and let him sleep in their barns, he was not their child.
“I see…” I reached out and gave the boy’s dirty hair a pat. “Gwen, why do you not come up with a name for the boy?”
“Me? But I’m not his mom,” Guinevere protested, her brown eyes wide. “Wouldn’t that be wrong especially if someone in Camelot takes him in?”
“Perhaps, but would you rather us keep calling him the boy or—as Lancelot suggested—Urchin?”
Guinevere shook her head, her cheeks filling with another angry flush.
“Then let us give him a name as he will be traveling with us to Camelot over the next few days.”
Guinevere leaned back on her heels thoughtfully, her eyes returning to the boy. “Did you like any of the names I suggested?”
The boy shook his head, his fingers fiddling with the patchy, dirty tunic he was wearing.
“Very well,” she said, dunking the fabric back into the stream and taking one of his arms before beginning to clean with a vigor that the laundress at the castle would have admired. “What about Thomas?”
I sat and watched her work, listening as she fired off different names. Some of the names were familiar to me such as Pengrin, Bors, and Bane, while others I had never heard before in my life.
“Riley,” Guinevere tried, a smile on her mouth as she ran the cloth up and down the boy’s arms, not losing hope when the boy shook his head at each of her suggestions. “Ethan, Oliver, Michael, Henry, Peter.”
The boy reached out and gave Guinevere’s hand a tap.
“Peter?” she repeated the last name she had suggested.
The boy shook his head.
“Henry?”
The boy nodded his head up and down, a sudden smile on his face.
“So you want to be called Henry then? That’s a good name—lots of kings are named Henry.”
I had never met a king named Henry before, so I assumed she was talking about the future.
The boy—now Henry I supposed—seemed pleased with his new name.
“Come, let us get Henry back to the camp so that he can sleep,” I told her gently.
When Guinevere frowned at me before looking at the dirt still smudged on the boy’s neck and on his ankles I just huffed a soft laugh. “You will not be able to get him completely clean with just a stream, Gwen, he will need a full bath.”
“I suppose,” Guinevere said resignedly before standing up and dusting the dirt from her tattered skirt. “Well, come on, Henry, let’s go back to the fire. Maybe Sir Bedivere will have some more of that jerky for you to eat.”
Henry seemed cheered by her words, even scurrying ahead of us and back towards where we had set up camp.
When he disappeared into the dense forest, I felt Guinevere’s hand on my arm stopping me from following.
She looked suddenly nervous—the air was palpable with it and my own heart started to thud with an anxious fervor as she nibbled on her lower lip.
“I am sorry for putting you all in a shitty position. I know you would have rather stayed back to protect Arthur.”
I shook my head, unsure of how to tell her that, the moment that I saw that Saxon man coming in her direction with his sword raised, I had not thought of anything but protecting her.
“And I should have never allowed you off of my horse,” I pointed out. “Are you cross with me for putting you in danger because I could not keep you secure in my saddle?”
“No, why would I be?” Guinevere’s nose scrunched in a way that I found utterly charming and I had to force myself to look away from her for a moment to steady myself.
Lancelot’s earlier words still sat heavy in my chest. Despite Guinevere’s disheveled appearance and her insistence that I refer to her informally, she was still my queen and the wife of my king.
Earlier when he bade us to take her and protect her, there had been no mention of Merlin’s portent—how could there have been?
Our goal at that moment had been to protect Guinevere, but now that things had calmed down considerably and we were alone, I found myself lost in my imagination of things that could be if we actually became a pack.
Most alphas could only dream of acquiring their own omegas. Though most noble houses tended to produce alphas and omegas in spades, the fairer designation was still much rarer than their counterpart.
A third son of a king and his second wife was not at the top of many father’s courting lists when they looked to marry their omega children off.
My prospects had been slim the moment I entered the world as a red, squalling baby. Or—they had been—until Merlin had dangled a new path forward in front of my eyes.
I would not dare to covet my king’s wife, I should not covet my king’s wife…
But one glance at Guinevere’s scrunched nose and soft smile was making me consider the impossible.
“What?” Guinevere asked, noticing the shift in my expression. She leaned in so close that I could almost taste the sweetness of her scent on my tongue. Her eyelashes were thick, fanning out against her high cheekbones as she blinked at me, her full lips pulling down into a frown as she reached up to touch her chin. “Is there something on my face?”
Surprised, I stumbled back a step, my ears feeling as if they would burn right off of the side of my head if I remained in such close vicinity to the woman in front of me. “No, your majesty, nothing is on your face.”
Guinevere puffed out her cheeks in irritation. “You keep doing that. I want you to at least call me Gwen when we’re alone.”
“It is difficult for me,” I told her, avoiding her gaze. “I was always taught by my mother to treat women—especially women in higher positions than me—with the utmost respect.”
“Sounds like she’s a smart woman,” Guinevere said dryly, crossing her arms over her chest as she tossed her dark curls over one shoulder, sending a wave of her perfume in my direction. “But did she also tell you that when a woman asks you to refer to her by a certain name that you probably should do that or face her wrath?”
“No,” I murmured, my voice so soft that she had to lean in a bit to hear it. “I am afraid she died before she could reach that lesson.”
Guinevere blinked before her cheeks flushed pink. “Oh shit, I’m sorry. Jeez, it seems I can’t seem to have a conversation with any of you without putting my foot straight into my mouth.”
I was unfamiliar with the saying, but I understood the gist. “It is no matter, she died when I was still a young boy.”
“That just makes me feel worse, Gawain,” Guinevere said, her hands coming up to give her hair a tug. In the few moments we had been speaking face to face like this it had become obvious that, when the omega was nervous, she tended to not know what to do with her hands. They always seemed to flit and flutter about like anxious butterflies looking for a place to land. “It’s like when I first met Bedivere and I didn’t see he only had one hand. I asked him why he wasn’t a knight anymore and he just held up his empty sleeve.”
She put her face in her hands, but a surprised laugh bubbled out of me at her words as the image of Bedivere’s face when she asked that question rose unbidden into my mind.
Truthfully, the alpha likely appreciated her question—too often his missing hand was the first thing many noticed about him. For Guinevere to speak with him as if he was still whole would have definitely endeared the omega to him.
“I am sure Sir Bedivere was not upset with you,” I told her, still chuckling. “He is not one to hold grudges.”
“ Still , I know so little about any of you. All of the stories didn’t really tell me about your personalities they were all about—” Guinevere’s words stuttered as her lips pressed together and she rolled her eyes, letting out a closed-mouth huff.
“Will the gods not let you say anything about our future?”
Guinevere shook her head. “No.”
“What of other things about the future?” I asked curiously, trying to imagine what the world of the future was like.
This time she just shrugged. “I can say some things—I haven’t really tried it. Every time I try to say too much I get a divine sucker punch from the powers that be.”
I was steadily growing accustomed to Guinevere’s odd way of speaking as she began to chatter about what sounded like a completely separate world from the one I knew.
The firelight was visible as we strolled slowly in the direction of our camp. I was hesitant to quicken my step, afraid I would lose out on my moment to have Guinevere all to myself. I slowed, nearly to a stop, forcing her to keep pace with me.
“And we have things like cars and planes and trains which makes things so much easier than horse travel,” Guinevere continued, chattering about things that I had no basis of comparison for.
“Did you not enjoy riding on Breac?” My horse was the most docile in the castle stables—even most of the other knights would comment on how smooth a gait he had.
“It wasn’t that,” Guinevere hurried to reassure me. “He is a nice horse—but bouncing around on the back of a horse is a very different experience to the cushy seat of a car—especially ones that are heated.”
Her words were foreign to me, but I nodded along anyway.
“Cars aren’t the only amazing thing in the future. Music has come a long way too! You like music, right? I heard you play on the lute at my wedding and it felt like I could just close my eyes and melt into it.”
I found myself preening under her sudden praise. My music was too-often seen as a silly talent that was useless to most of the knights of Arthur’s round table—though there was none who enjoyed it more than the knights during our long nights around a campfire. They were the first to request I play and they were also the first to make a jest about my love for music.
But none had ever complimented me without also telling me that it was a useless skill for a knight to have.
Guinevere continued, oblivious to the sudden shine in my eyes and the warmth in my chest. “We have cool instruments too like pianos, guitars, and even some brass instruments—”
She stopped, her eyes wide as the tops of her cheeks turned pink. “Am I rambling? People always tell me I ramble when I get too excited about things.”
“I do not mind rambling,” I told her with a soft smile. “I have always admired people who can say what they are feeling at any moment and believe they are much stronger for it.”
Guinevere’s steps stuttered and I reached my hands out to catch her, worried she had tripped over one of the stray roots underfoot.
When her face turned up to me I could see the sparkle of unshed tears glittering in her eyes.
“Are you well?” I asked, suddenly worried that I had said something to offend her.
“No,” she said, shaking her head hard, “It’s just—my mom used to say something like that to me when I was younger so it made me think of her. She liked when I rambled.”
“Then she and I are of the same mind.”
The words were filled with a warmth that surprised me.
Every moment I spent with the omega next to me felt full of astonishing moments such as this. From the way she spoke differently to her unabashed fierceness, it was clear that Guinevere was not of our time.
And that I was completely and utterly fascinated by her.