Chapter Seventeen
“ W hat were you thinking?” Lancelot quietly demanded of Gawain later that night after the embers of the fire had died and our queen was sound asleep in her bedroll.
Lancelot had quickly surmised what had occurred between Guinevere and the younger alpha when they both came back from watering the horses soaking wet.
He had made a single comment to Guinevere who had shut it down with that sharp tongue of hers before ignoring every soul at the fire save for little Henry for the rest of the night.
Gawain, however, would not be able to ignore Lancelot in the same way.
“I do not know,” the younger alpha said, putting his head into his hands. “It felt so…”
I watched as he trailed off, his cheeks filling with color again.
Lancelot made a disgusted noise as he shook his head. “It does not matter how it felt Gawain, our king could have you beheaded for such an action. That omega sleeping on the other side of the fire is his wife .”
“But—” Gawain began, clearly about to repeat the nonsense about packs that Merlin seemed hell-bent on forming with us as his fodder. It did not matter to the wizard whether Arthur killed us all if he was so pleased to do so for stepping into his territory. Nay, he seemed stuck on the notion that we would become this pack and protect Guinevere together.
I looked down at my stump before scoffing. I was not able to protect myself, let alone any other living being.
“You were in the wrong, pup,” I told him more harshly than I had intended to. “As long as we are protecting her, she is our queen. You will not approach her again with such intentions until you are explicitly told by his majesty that you are allowed to do so.”
Gawain crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly and looked in Guinevere’s direction. “She did not seem upset about it.”
“ She is ‘ her majesty, ’ and it does not matter how she feels about it,” Lancelot said, his voice harsh. “And she will ride with me for the rest of our journey.”
Gawain opened his mouth in shock, his eyes squinting with anger before he stood up from the ground and stomped off into the forest, leaving Lancelot and me behind.
Lancelot sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face as he shook his head before looking over at me, his dark eyes seeming to try to gauge my expression. “Do you believe I am wrong, Sir Bedivere?”
“I believe that you are doing what needs to be done to return her majesty safely to our king,” I told him slowly, measuring my words. “But I also cannot fault the lad for being drawn in by her majesty. She is unlike anything that we have ever seen in our time.”
Although Lancelot was the most stubborn man I had ever met, even I had been able to see how his eyes followed the omega queen as she moved around the campsite, or how he was almost envious every morning when she chose to ride with myself or Gawain instead of him.
They had argued but it was more like two flames meeting for the first time—a large blaze burning everything and everyone around them—rather than any true animosity.
Just as Gawain desired Guinevere—it was clear to me, who was older than both of them, that Lancelot too wanted to be caught in her pull.
And despite my earlier words to her… I too yearned for even a fraction of her. Much like the flowers my mother used to grow in her little garden that followed the light of day, I too desired to turn my face into Guinevere’s sun and bask in the light.
I hardly knew anything about the omega, but her scent danced through my dreams at night like a specter haunting me.
It would never come to fruition—it could not—but seeing her standing alone in the creek earlier with her dress clinging to curves that I had been so studiously ignoring had tested even my patience.
“It will not end well, Bedivere,” Lancelot finally said quietly, his expression pensive. “Mark my words.”
Later, long after Gawain had returned and silently gone to his bedroll and even Lancelot had leaned his head back to rest his eyes, I sat staring at the near-dead fire.
Deep in my soul I felt as if something had shifted tonight and I knew things would continue to shift until whatever future that Merlin had prophesied came true.
I just wished I was better prepared to face such a thing.
Staring down at my sheathed sword, I lifted it up in my much weaker left hand, flexing my wrist until the sword began to wobble and it toppled to the ground with a soft thud.
Never before had I considered what I was thinking of now, but if fate was going to march forward without any consideration for me or any of the other people involved in this matter, perhaps it was finally time to put down my welding mallet and step back into battle.
I just needed to decide whether this battle to come would be one of wills or a fight to the death.
“I don’t want to ride with you anymore,” Guinevere told Lancelot as she glared over her shoulder at the man.
They had spent the morning bickering ever since the alpha had directed her to his horse rather than mine or Gawain’s.
“I fear the feeling is mutual, your majesty,” Gawain told her dryly as our horses climbed the grassy hill that was the last obstacle in our way to Camelot. “But you will be pleased to know that we are very close to home.”
Guinevere’s warm brown eyes widened as we reached the crest of the hill and Camelot lay in front of us.
While Camelot shared the massive lake with Cameliard, it was an altogether different castle that seemed to glow in the late-afternoon sunlight.
It was a stone fortress that was backed up against the craggy mountain that shadowed the low valley. The harshness of the stone was offset by the many stained-glass windows that sparkled in what looked like a greeting.
When Arthur first settled in Castle Camelot, no one had lived within its walls for nearly twenty years and all of the windows had been smashed in by looters or the stray vagabond looking to use the cavernous place for their own refuge.
Over the past decade, Arthur had made great strides to make the castle a home and a jewel on his crown.
He was meant to be the king of kings and his home reflected that for all who visited to sell their wares or offer their services.
Outside of the high walls of the castle lay a sprawling village that seemed to grow with each passing month as refugees from the various burned out villages settled in and became a part of our little paradise.
Farmlands branched out from there, leading up to the foot of the hill that our horses stood upon.
The winds around us picked up, tugging at our clothes and whipping Guinevere’s dark curls into a frenzy as she fought to hold them out of her eyes so she could continue to look at the place that would be her new home and where she would rule beside Arthur as his queen.
“It’s…” she trailed off, her voice almost reverent.
“It is Camelot,” Lancelot provided for her, his voice softening. “The place where all of those who had no land to call their own come and the place for Arthur, king of kings, to hold his court.”
“I didn’t expect it to be so pretty,” Guinevere said, her eyes wide.
It seemed as if the entire world around us was waking up to greet her with the wind dancing around us and even the sun coming out from behind the gray clouds it had been hiding behind all day to shine warm rays of light onto our skin. Overhead, a falcon screeched, underpinning the splendor of the moment as we all took in the full view of the kingdom.
“As opposed to what, your majesty?” I could not help but ask, curious what she thought about Camelot, the place that was more home to me than any place I had ever lived previously.
Her shoulders rose in a shrug, the tattered sleeve of her dress dipping down to reveal the dirty linen shift beneath. “Aren’t castles supposed to be, I don’t know, imposing? Dark? Built for defense?”
“Make no mistake, your majesty,” Gawain, who had been dutifully silent for the entire morning chimed in, shifting little Henry forward in their shared saddle so he could turn to speak to Guinevere, “Despite its pretty windows and gleaming lake, Camelot has seen more than its fair share of battles. In fact, I hear that the year his majesty moved in ten and five years ago that his castle was besieged by another tribal king who did not heed the words of the gods and was sent flying from the land after the knights caught his men unawares in some of the more narrow parts of the castle.”
If we allowed Gawain to keep talking we would be sitting atop this hill until suppertime, so I gave Evefir’s flank a kick and spurred the horse into motion. “Come, while the view from up here is quite lovely, I am certain his majesty is eager to see you again.”
“I don’t know about that,” I heard Guinevere mumble, but I ignored her in favor of keeping my eye on the distant castle.
All we needed to do was get back to Camelot, then the lines that had been blurred over the past few days would be redrawn and I would be reminded of my place in this world.
I would be alone once more—just how it always should have been.