Chapter Twenty-Four
T his shall never work, I thought to myself as I pulled the string of my bow back and loosed an arrow at random, hardly aiming for the hay bale target at the end of the range.
The arrow soared wide before embedding itself into the soft earth.
It will end in disaster for us, my mind continued to ramble as I pulled another arrow from my quiver and nocked it again.
Another voice, the one I had spent most of my days ignoring ever since that first night when I caught Guinevere’s scent on the wind, whispered through my mind louder than ever before: but you want her .
My arrow slipped from my fingers, clattering to the ground at my feet and causing the bowstring to snap painfully against my bare wrists.
I should have been wearing my leather bracers to protect the sensitive skin there, but I had put them aside remembering one of my father’s favorite punishments for me.
If I failed at my task, then the task should hurt so that I would not fail again.
I picked up the arrow and nocked it again, pulling my arm back against the tension from the weapon and aiming for the target.
Release .
The arrow sailed through the air and I thought for certain it would hit its mark… right up until it skidded into the ground just before the hay bale.
Another failure.
My mind was too chaotic to practice, but I did not want to go back into the castle. No, they were there.
It had been two weeks since Arthur summoned us to his study. Two weeks since I had been avoiding them. My so-called-pack.
I could not bear to watch them come together in secret when I refused to allow myself to do the same.
Every moment I briefly considered it, thinking about the purse of Guinevere’s full lips or the way her hair seemed to sway down the small of her back as she walked, my father’s words pushed me away again.
Alphas who are victims to their instincts are no better than animals, he had said as he brought a switch across my back for daring to growl at him after my alpha designation awakened when I was a youth.
The voice of my inner-alpha had gone blessedly quiet after that—or so I had thought.
Now it was roaring to the surface with a vigor that scared me and that tenuous control that I had always maintained was close to snapping forever.
Frustrated, I snagged another arrow, nocked it, and sent it flying. This time it made it into the middle of the target and the roiling feeling in my stomach calmed.
Then I heard her voice behind me.
“Can you teach me how to do that?”
I jerked around to face her—the woman who had been taunting my every waking moment and every single dream in my sleep—and snarled.
“Do not sneak up on a man with a weapon,” I told her harshly, watching her flinch back away from me with wide brown eyes.
My inner-alpha protested at the rough treatment of the omega, of our omega, but I ignored it just as I always had.
“Lancelot!” Gawain snapped with more ferocity than I had ever heard from the other usually amiable alpha.
Realization that I had just shouted at a queen rippled through me and I bent at the waist into a bow. “My apologies, your majesty, I did not realize it was you.”
There was a beat of silence that stretched agonizingly between us. Guinevere cleared her throat, waiting for me to straighten and look at her before she spoke again.
“You can make it up to me by teaching me how to shoot that,” she said, pointing at the bow still clutched in my hand.
“I can teach you, Gwen,” Gawain offered sweetly, a soft smile on his face as he practically bounced to her side. “I am almost as good a shot as he is.”
Guinevere’s expression was fond, her cheeks filling with a warmth that sent a shock of envy coursing through me.
“I’m sure, Gawain, but I would like Lancelot to do it. You already said you would teach me how to play the lute, right?”
Gawain deflated slightly, but nodded.
Guinevere reached out to give the man’s hand a pat. “Can you give us a few minutes?”
Gawain nodded again before walking far enough away that he could no longer hear us, but not far enough that he could not keep a watchful eye on the omega standing in front of me.
“I see he has already begun his courtship of you then?” I asked, failing to keep the sour note from my voice.
Guinevere’s dark brows drew together as she frowned at me, crossing her arms over her chest as she observed my stiff stance with a keen eye. “Yes he has, but we are taking things more slowly than Arthur would like.”
I snorted at that. If Arthur had his way he would have had us bed her, bond her, and be done with it—or that was how it had seemed that day in his study.
“I will not court you, your majesty,” I told her honestly, guilt seeping in when I watched her flinch slightly from the passion in my words. “I cannot. It goes against every vow I took to serve my lord.”
“Even if he orders you to?” she asked, turning away to hide the hurt in her eyes as she glanced down the range.
A ragged sigh left me as I shrugged. “Why do you even want me? I have done nothing but avoid you, your majesty.”
I hurried to add that last bit so as not to sound completely disrespectful.
“I noticed,” Guinevere said dryly, tugging at the golden threads on her deep brown dress before reaching up to tap the tip of her nose. “But I can’t help it and you know that as well as I do. You are one of my scent-matches.”
I did. With her standing as close as she was, her sweet, floral perfume seemed to waft off of her in waves that beckoned me to come closer and get a better smell. But I could not. “I may feel that way about your scent, your majesty, but should we not move past our baser instincts?”
Guinevere shrugged. “I thought so too—at first.”
When I was small, the steward of my father’s castle had taken me out in his boat onto the wide river that lined our lands and taught me how to use a fishing rod. He had meant it as an act of peace amongst the cacophony that was my daily life, but I had always found the practice frustrating and dull. At least, I had until one day when I hooked an especially large trout. I had never truly felt exhilaration until that moment and the gleam of pride in the steward’s eyes had solidified the memory for me forever.
Now Guinevere was baiting me as if I were that fish, tugging on the more curious part of me to ask her what she meant by her words, urging me to give in to her sweet scent and beautiful face.
I sent a quick prayer of thanks to the gods that I was a man and not a fish and I turned away from her.
“You don’t want to know why I changed my mind?” Guinevere asked, sounding surprised.
“I do not,” I told her pertly as I began to practice again, withdrawing an arrow from my quiver and hoping against all hopes that she would just go away and stop her blasted temptation.
I heard a very feminine huff from behind me before I released the arrow, smiling with satisfaction as it hit right where I had been aiming.
Continuing to ignore the omega, I grabbed another arrow.
On the third arrow I heard her speak again, so softly that I worried I had imagined it. “You smell like bergamot.”
I froze. There it was again, the hook for a fish held out by the clever fisherman.
And maybe I was no better than the fish because I let the bow drop to my side before I shot her a glance over my shoulder. “What does bergamot smell like?”
“Like lemons and oranges—do you know what those are? They’re citrus fruits.” Guinevere asked and suddenly she was at my elbow, her brown curls brushing past my arm as she stared down the range at my impaled target.
“I know of neither of those, your majesty, but we have something called citron—does that suffice?” I finally answered after a moment, thinking of the trees that grew around my father’s castle. Their scent was tart—sour—so if that was what Guinevere said I smelled akin to I was not certain that it was a good thing.
Guinevere thought about my words for a moment before giving me a slight shrug. “Maybe, I would have to see one. But your scent is citrusy and just a little bit woodsy.”
“Woodsy?”
“Mhm, like if I was to go and stand in the middle of the woods over there and peel one of those citron fruits you mentioned. That’s bergamot.”
Her words painted a vivid picture in my mind and I found my face warming despite my determination to keep myself impassive when it came to this omega.
Guinevere rounded to my front, blocking me from continuing my target practice, and tilted her chin up so that she could look me in the eye. “What do I smell like to you?”
The few days that she rode in front of me on my horse had given me much time to think about such things.
If I closed my eyes and attempted to imagine where in the world I had experienced her scent before then it would most certainly be the cliffs just to the west of Arthur’s territory.
There, bright pink honeysuckle tumbled down the rockface, the scent of it brought up with the crash of ocean waves.
That was what Guinevere smelled like to me. Wild and unpredictable.
But I did not tell her any of that, no, the only words that came out of my mouth sounded about as poetic as an epitaph on a gravestone. “You smell of flowers.”
Guinevere’s dark brows rose. “Just flowers?”
“Just flowers,” I confirmed, feeling guilt creeping in. “Now, may I return to my practice?”
I did not need to share a bond mark with the omega to know that my words had hurt her feelings.
Guinevere looked as if she wanted to turn tail and run, but then she tilted her chin up defiantly and repeated the question she had first asked me earlier. “Can you teach me how to wield a bow and arrow?”
I sighed, scrubbing a hand over my face. It seemed that I would not be getting rid of her so easily. “Why do you wish to learn such a thing, your majesty?”
“So that I can protect myself,” she said without an ounce of a jest in her voice.
Holding back the scoff that threatened to emerge from my mouth, I shook my head. “We will protect you, your majesty, you do not need to learn to do so yourself.”
“But what if you aren’t there? Or what if you are the one who is hurt?” Guinevere insisted, her eyes slanting away from mine as if she knew something I did not.
“Then I advise you to run,” I told her plainly. “If there is such a foe that defeats myself and the rest of his majesty’s knights, then there are not enough arrows in the realm to protect you.”
“Even with my magic?”
I had very little knowledge of magical practices, but even I knew that water was the element of healing—not battle. “Perhaps if you were able to control fire…?”
Guinevere’s expression twisted into a puckered expression as she rolled her eyes. “Sorry, no fire here, that was the other omega.”
“Other omega?” I asked, frowning. “What other omega do you speak of?”
Guinevere slapped a hand to her mouth as if she had revealed too much. “Uh… shit , Merlin asked me not to tell anyone about this.”
I just waited, watching as the omega’s shoulders sank in surrender. “ Fine , I’ll tell you, but if you rat me out to Merlin, I’m going to shave you bald in your sleep.”
Guinevere jerked her head in the direction of a log that had been carved out by one of the men to serve as a bench. Once we had settled she took a deep breath.
“Apparently, when Merlin was doing his fancy time-travel magic there were two other omegas who he pulled through time first.”
“That was… reckless of him,” I finally said after searching my mind for the right word. Merlin, despite his strange personality and eccentricities, had never struck me as the sort of man to be reckless before.
“Even he admits that much.” Guinevere’s voice revealed a fondness for the wizard that shocked me. I knew that he was teaching her how to wield her magic, but they seemed much closer than I thought possible.
A thread of envy filled me so suddenly that I had to hold back the growl that I would be unable to explain. My inner-alpha stirred from the slumber I had forced it into and perked up, emboldened by Guinevere’s scent.
Mate, mate, mate, mate, my mind chanted maddeningly.
“But apparently,” Guinevere continued, oblivious to my inner-battle. “One of the omegas could control fire and the other could control the air—just add in earth and you’ve got yourself a royal flush of magical omegas with me being about as useless an element I could get.”
I did not know what a royal flush was but I could hear the frustration in Guinevere’s voice.
“Do you not like your water abilities?” I asked, letting my curiosity get the best of me.
“It isn’t the flashiest power—and I can’t do much with it anyway right now,” Guinevere said with a shrug of her slender shoulders as she reached up to twist at her hair. “I wish I could do more than just make sprinkles of water fall from the sky. I can’t even do anything with it once it starts to gather yet.”
To be able to do that was far more impressive than she knew. Learning from Merlin who had always been unnaturally gifted in magic thanks to his mysterious origins must have been a bittersweet experience for her.
The urge to reassure her filled me, and despite my reservations, I did.
“My mother used to tell me about the water gods when I was but a boy,” I began, thinking of the woman with hair the color of gold thread and a voice so melodic that it could put me to sleep within the first few moments of a story and yet I could hardly remember what her face looked like. “She used to tell me that Logres was once connected with the land across the river and the water gods benevolently created gentle shores full of fish. That is, until one day when a greedy man stole from the gods and they began to rage over their gifts being taken for granted by selfish humans. Water then fell from the sky so quickly that soon enough Logres was cut off from the mainland and there was no longer enough territory for the people to live comfortably and that is why the tribal disputes began.”
“I’ve never heard that story before,” Guinevere murmured, her brown eyes wide with interest.
“It was passed down by my mother’s family who used water as their sigil—they looked at themselves as the keepers of the water gods’ will—though I never believed in such things myself.”
“This is a world full of magic and you don’t believe in the gods?”
I snorted at that and shook my head. “It is not that I do not believe in the gods, your majesty, but that I do not believe the gods to be benevolent.”
If they were such a thing, they would not have put such a dangerous fate on my shoulders and the shoulders of the other three men that were seemingly supposed to change the course of history with the woman sitting next to me.
Silence hung in the air after that, the distant whinny of a horse the only noise in the sunny glade as Guinevere continued to twist her curls, deep in thought.
Finally, she spoke again. “Why don’t we start as friends?”
“Friends?”
“Yeah, friends. You teach me how to use one of these bows and arrows and I promise to dunk myself in the bath beforehand so I don’t bother you with my scent,” Guinevere said as if her scent was something unpleasant.
I should have denied her right away, but her hopeful expression tugged at a piece of me that I could no longer ignore.
“Very well.” I agreed finally with a sigh and stood, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. Her fingers were soft and warm as they wrapped around mine and I had to push back the desire to lean forward and brush my lips against her knuckles to test just how smooth they were. “I will teach you archery and—”
“Sir Lancelot!” a young page boy called as he hurried in our direction, holding his hat to his head as if he feared it would fall off in the rush.
Gawain, who had been keeping his distance, suddenly approached us at a fast clip, making it to where we were sitting by the time the boy did.
“What is it?” I asked, standing and placing my bow on the seat behind me.
The boy pulled in a ragged breath, putting his hands on his knees for a moment before he spoke in between gasps. “Your. Father. King. Ban. Is. Here.”
“ What ?” My voice was incredulous as I grabbed the boy’s skinny shoulders and jerked him upright so that he was looking me in the face. “Why is he here?”
But the boy just shook his head as he finally seemed to be able to string sentences together again. “Dunno, sir, but his majesty sent me to get you. The Benoic flag was spotted up on the hillside.”
I let go of the boy and hurried around him, leaving Guinevere behind as my mind raced.
Why had my father come? Why had he not sent word ahead of him? What could he possibly want?
But whatever his reason, I knew that nothing about it could be good.