Chapter Twenty-Five
“ F ather you cannot just bring Vivienne here and expect her majesty to accept her as a lady-in-waiting!” Lancelot’s voice was tight with frustration by the time Gawain and I made it back to the castle.
I had seen the way his expression slackened with shock when the page came to tell him his father had arrived. I had seen a look just like it before on one of my friend’s faces when their parents showed up unannounced at the dorms in college.
But their shock had been mixed with annoyance at an overbearing parent who was having trouble letting go. Lancelot’s, on the other hand, was a mix of anger and dislike.
I did not know much about Lancelot’s history past the basics, but any parent who made their child’s face look like that must be a real piece of work.
“Why should she mind?” a gruff voice questioned. “Vivienne is a princess—a perfect candidate for someone with so much… esteem as her majesty.”
My brows rose at the clear hostility in the man’s voice and I heard Gawain growl at my side and put his hand on the pommel of his sword.
I reached out and put a hand on his arm, waiting for his blue eyes to shift to me before I shook my head.
The main courtyard of the castle was steadily filling up with the people who worked within coming out to greet our guest and I had no doubt that someone had also run for the fields where Bedivere and Arthur were helping harvest the early summer wheat. I could feel the exertion that Arthur was feeling through the bond, though I knew the shift in my mood would get his attention sooner or later.
“Because she is an omega ! Do you wish for Queen Guinevere to shred her to pieces and rightfully so?” Lancelot’s face was red as it came into view, showing more emotion than I had ever seen from the alpha before.
The man who must have been his father was facing away from me and a shorter girl with long blonde curls hanging down to her waist was standing at his elbow. Wind from their direction blew, carrying Lancelot’s citrusy bergamot and a much sweeter, sugary scent to me. It was definitely another omega all right, but I wondered what he meant by me ‘shredding’ her to pieces.
“I am sure Arthur’s bride can move past the baser instincts of her designation, Lancelot,” the man, King Ban, said with little concern.
“Arthur’s bride,” I finally spoke up, making everyone in the conversation jump. “Is right here.”
The man whirled around and I found, with surprise, that the man looked like a much older, much more angry version of his son. They both shared the same dark hair and eyes, but the man’s expression held no softness or kindness to it.
Lancelot, on the other hand, was already stepping in between his father and what must have been his sister, shielding her.
I couldn’t tell if he was protecting her from King Ban or from me.
Discontent filled me at that and I felt Arthur faintly tug on the bond, feeling the sudden dip in my mood.
“Hello, your majesty, Queen Guinevere,” King Ban greeted, giving me a dip of his chin. I wasn’t sure what the right thing to do in return was, so I just copied what he did, making a note to ask Andrivete about it later.
The man frowned, telling me that I had probably made a faux pas , but I couldn’t find it in myself to care. I had clocked him in one glance with the way the girl seemed to shrink in his very presence. In my time he would be the kind of man that didn’t believe women should have credit cards and that they were inferior in every single way.
My mother did not raise me to take that sort of shit from men—in any timeline—so since I was already batting a thousand on my diplomacy efforts, I chose to ignore the man that was the physical embodiment of a chauvinistic caricature and turned my attention to the girl.
“Hi there,” I said, trying to keep my voice bright. “I’m Queen Guinevere and you must be Princess Vivienne.”
A face peeked around Lancelot and I was having trouble figuring out the resemblance between the two. Where Lancelot was dark and broody, the girl who couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old looked as if she had come straight out of a fairytale. Hell, she even smelled like cotton candy, or whatever the 6th century equivalent to it was.
Her cheeks were still childishly rounded and big brown eyes stared at me curiously if not a little cautiously, as if I could reach out at any moment and eat her alive.
I had not seen many other omegas during my time in the past—I knew they existed of course—but my maids and everyone around me had been a beta or an alpha.
In the future, though, I interacted with omegas every day and while the descenting spray and suppressants helped to quell the somewhat territorial urge we sometimes felt… I had no desire to attack someone so young whose perfume had barely just come in.
“Hello, your majesty,” the girl said, stepping out from behind her brother and dipping into a curtsey.
She was adorable and I was, as always, easily charmed.
“What was this about her becoming a lady-in-waiting?” I asked, stepping in closer and trying not to take it personally when Lancelot’s expression tightened like I would reach out at any moment in order to smack his sister for daring to encroach on my territory.
“It was nothing, your majesty,” Lancelot hurried to say, glaring at his father. “His majesty, King Ban, was just stopping through to rest on his way back to his own territory.”
There was so much venom in Lancelot’s words that it made me realize that his tone when he spoke to me was nowhere near the same.
Was it a little fucked up that that fact flattered me? Maybe. Was I still going to let it give me little itty bitty butterflies in my stomach as I watched what amounted to a pre-Medieval Kardashian family beef unfold before my eyes? 100%.
What can I say? I was a woman with simple, if not questionable tastes.
Ban’s eyes narrowed at his son. “That is not quite the reason, your majesty, Queen Guinevere.”
“Oh?” I asked, bemused by the man’s audacity. I may not know much about the machinations of polite society in this day and age, but I did know that foisting your child on someone was bad manners in any time period.
Not that I would have minded the young woman being foisted on me as a lady-in-waiting. She was adorable and I was, at the end of the day, a giant softie.
“My daughter,” Ban gestured to the teenage girl still peeking out from behind Lancelot’s elbow. “Princess Vivienne of Benoic. I would like for you to take her under your wing as a lady-in-waiting. Train her in the ways of a queen as she will be one someday.”
“And where, pray,” I started slowly, measuring my words. “Will Princess Vivienne be queen?”
All eyes turned sharply to the man, Lancelot’s jaw tightening so hard that I was sure if I put my ear up to it I would be able to hear popping.
“The princess is already betrothed to my son, Prince Mordred,” Morgana’s voice cut through the courtyard and the small crowd that had gathered whirled to find the queen standing at the main gate to the castle with her son and an older man who I recognized from his presence at my wedding to Arthur. King Lot looked nothing like Gawain—his hair nearly completely gray and thinning on all sides and his skin was marked with liver spots from age.
But it wasn’t his clear age difference with his wife that was the most shocking, but instead the completely glazed over expression in his blue eyes.
Confused whispers filled the courtyard and I felt Gawain stiffen at my side.
Agravaine—Gawain’s oldest brother and one of Arthur’s most trusted knights—stepped forward, his face twisting into a frown as he stared at the king. “I fear there may be a misunderstanding, your majesty King Ban, as I am my father’s heir. Not Mordred.”
The temperature dropped around us and I found myself stepping back into Gawain’s sturdy warmth.
King Lot stepped forward, summoning a louder voice than I thought possible from such a man, and addressed the crowd as if he was the king of Camelot and not my husband. “I have decided that, upon my death and as the only child of a living wife, I wish for Mordred to take over as my heir.”
Chaos erupted at the man’s words. Even the men who were accompanying their king were exchanging shocked looks as they stood in their green livery.
Gawain’s gasp was ragged and when I turned to look at him I found his blue eyes wide as he stared at his father with disbelief.
Agravaine’s face began to grow red as his mouth opened and closed silently before his hand twitched to the polished pommel of his sword—whether to draw it to fight his father or just for a sense of security after having the rug so soundly pulled out from under him I wasn’t sure.
A cacophony of angry voices surrounded me: Lancelot yelling at his father, his bark sharp, Agravaine finally finding his ability to speak only to begin protesting his disinheritance, the people around us talking loudly about what they had just witnessed, and above it all Morgana’s shrill laugh as she sniped back at her stepsons.
“Stop,” I said far too quietly, my ears buzzing as anxiety over it all came crashing down around my shoulders.
Rain began to fall overhead in thick fat drops.
“Gwen,” Gawain’s voice was next to my ear as his hand pressed comfortingly into my back, but I could barely hear him over the buzz of noise around me.
Panic clogged my throat as the arguing continued and I finally put my hands over my ears. “Stop!”
My voice rang out over the din and it was quickly followed by screams as fist-sized pieces of hail began to fall from the sky.
A firm chest pressed into my back as Gawain covered my head with his body, his sage scent filling my nose. I heard him grunt in pain above me, but I didn’t know how to stop it.
People began to run to avoid the hail that I couldn’t seem to get under control, the magical core which Merlin had struggled to teach me how to call to was alight with energy that seemed to build with my panic, making the hail fall harder.
“What is going on here?” Arthur’s booming voice filled the courtyard and with his arrival the hail stopped completely, the last ball of ice thudding to the ground at my feet.
Peering from underneath Gawain’s arms, I found him pushing through Lot’s men, flanked by Merlin and Bedivere on either side.
I had never seen Arthur look so furious before.
His cheeks were flushed red as he surveyed the wreckage and I could feel his end of the bond light on fire with anger.
I met his gaze that flickered from me to the alpha standing over me, watching it soften for the briefest of moments before he whirled on Morgana.
“What is the meaning of this?”
His words held a clear command in them, making every other alpha in the vicinity flinch as he barked his words at his half-sister.
“Morgana, I protected you from invaders and I invited you into my home and this is how you repay me? By bringing your theatrics to my people and upsetting my wife?”
Morgana, for the first time since she had triumphantly announced her son’s betrothal, faltered slightly at Arthur’s reaction.
She opened her mouth to say something but Arthur cut her off. “I expect now that your husband has come to retrieve you that you will leave at first light.”
Then he turned and walked across the courtyard, his boots crunching into the ice beneath his feet as he made his way to Agravaine, whispering something I couldn’t hear into the man’s ear and waiting for him to nod before he looked at me again.
“Gawain,” I said, giving the alpha’s arm a gentle pat, “I don’t think ice will fall from the sky anymore.”
“Are you certain?” Gawain asked, finally leaning back and showing me his face which had several small cuts and one nasty gash just above his eye.
“Why didn’t you protect yourself?” I gasped, nearly reaching up to touch the wound but stopped, reminding myself that we were in front of many people.
“You are my queen, your safety is my first priority always,” Gawain said simply, his blue eyes crinkling in the corner as he offered me his same sweet smile that was marred by the trail of blood trickling down the side of his face.
Warm hands slid under my elbow, turning me away from Gawain where a second set of brighter, icier blue eyes found mine. “Are you well, my queen?”
Arthur’s allspice scent filled my nose, chasing away the panic and anxiety that had threatened to take over and I found myself melting into his arms for a moment.
“Sorry,” I muttered into his shirt which smelled of freshly tilled earth and sweat from his long day helping in the field. “I didn’t know how to handle it on my own. Maybe I’m really not cut out for all this queen stuff.”
“You did well,” Arthur purred, his words warm with affection.
Then his voice hardened again as he addressed the crowd. “Any who are not my people may leave—it is high time Camelot had no guests again so that I may enjoy my new marriage with my wife.”
Several voices began to argue but Arthur ignored them all, lifting his voice so that he could be heard by all. “It was not a request but an order, or would you like to see what the steel of my knights feels like? Though I may be magnanimous, I am still the king here and my men will respond in kind to such disrespect towards me.”
At that, the sound of swords unsheathing filled the courtyard.
Lot’s men shifted uncomfortably, their hands moving to the pommels of their swords but Morgana lifted a hand to stop them.
It was not lost on me that the woman seemed to be the one calling the shots and not her husband.
“We will go, Brother.” I felt Arthur stiffen at her casual way of referring to him. “But I do hope you will come for your only nephew’s wedding once it is planned.”
Ban and Lot’s men began to trickle out of the courtyard and as I watched Lancelot’s father reach out to yank Vivienne by the arm—presumably to drag her with him—I stepped out of Arthur’s arms and in their path.
“To answer your question,” I told Ban, only looking at his daughter who was wide-eyed with fear as her eyes ping-ponged from Arthur to the men who still held their swords aloft. “I do need a lady-in-waiting. Princess Vivienne would be most welcome to stay in Camelot with me.”
Ban’s eyes lit up with triumph, but I did not care what the man thought, I just knew that this girl needed protection from whatever fate her father and Morgana seemed to be weaving for her.
“I do not believe—” Lancelot began to argue, probably still thinking I would bite the poor girl’s head off for daring to be an omega in my castle, but Arthur’s growl stopped him.
“Sir Lancelot, you would do well not to go against your queen’s wishes. If she desires for the princess to stay, then stay she shall.”
Ban released Vivienne’s wrist. “Then I shall—”
“You will leave, King Ban, as I am sure your territory misses your governance dearly.” Arthur’s tone brooked no argument.
The two kings stared each other down, one past his prime and the other practically oozing with power before Ban finally inclined his head and left both of his children behind without so much as a goodbye.
Arthur jumped into king-mode, doling out tasks with a finesse I was jealous of. “Lancelot, you will see Lady Andrivete and have her settle your sister in, Bedivere, please take a group of men to make sure our guests make it to the border of our territory without further… interference , and, Guinevere, will you please see to Gawain’s injuries?”
“Will you be okay here?” I asked, eyeballing where Ban was now speaking quietly with Morgana.
Arthur cupped my face in his hands, his thumb tracing a soft circle on my jaw. “Yes, now go or I fear you will conjure a snowstorm next.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I mumbled.
Arthur’s chuckle vibrated through his chest. “I was ‘joking’ as you say, little queen, now go before Gawain leaks all of the blood in his body from that cut over his eye.”
I whirled around to find Gawain looking decidedly more pale than before, though there was still a dopey smile on his face.
He held out the crook of his elbow to me as if he was about to escort me to a ball and not to treat the cut on his face and I accepted it wearily, worried the swaying alpha would drop at any moment.
“It doesn’t seem to be stopping,” I told Gawain later as I pressed a cloth to the cut over his eye which had started to swell purple. “I’m so sorry for hitting you.”
I had apologized over and over since we made it to Gawain’s chambers, a small room filled with comfortable looking furniture. His lute, which I hadn’t seen since my wedding, lay against the wall next to the small fireplace.
“It is no matter, Gwen,” Gawain said, seeming to bask in my attention. “Though I do think I prefer your rain.”
“Me too,” I told him dryly as I pulled the cloth away, frowning as the blood welled up again.
Then my eyes caught the already forming bruise on the side of his neck, trailing underneath his shirt.
“Take it off,” I said, nodding at the tunic shirt.
Gawain shot me a goofy grin. “Your majesty, I am but a youth, you must treat my feelings and my body delicately.”
I rolled my eyes. Apparently none of these alphas could take anything seriously today. “Take it off so I can see your wounds, you dolt.”
Still smiling, Gawain pulled his tunic over his head, revealing a roadmap of bruises and welts along his shoulders and back from being battered by my ice. When I reached out to touch them Gawain hissed with pain.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated again, guilt filling my chest. “I didn’t mean to.”
Gawain’s warm hands wrapped around mine, pulling them away from his wounds and around to his front.
“It was just a bit of ice, Guinevere,” he told me seriously despite the blood still leaking from the cut above his eye. “Nothing more.”
He kept telling me it was fine but that did little to quell the nasty feeling in my gut. If only I had better control over my emotions—over my magic.
I couldn’t even heal the wound over Gawain’s eye.
Frustrated, I called on that same stupid core of magic that had gone haywire moments ago and gasped inwardly when the magic came to me like a playful kitten, almost apologetic for what it had just done to me before.
Healing is all about intention, Merlin had explained during one of our lessons. Try it with me.
Then he took a knife and sliced a long cut down his arm.
I hadn’t been able to do anything that day despite my desperate desire to stop the bleeding, but now my magic felt more pliable—malleable even.
Nibbling on my lower lip, I gathered water from the air and cupped it in my palm, watching how it shone almost silver in the light.
I want to heal, I thought as hard as I could, I want the wound on his forehead to close and for the bruises to go away .
Gently I pressed my hand to Gawain’s brow, willing the skin to knit itself together again with every fiber of my being.
Then, to my surprise, it did.
I gasped, pulling my hand away as the water splattered to the floor.
All of Gawain’s wounds were gone, the cut over his eye just a faint pink line instead of the bleeding wound it had been.
“I did it,” I managed, my voice full of awe. “Holy shit, I did it!”
Without thinking, I launched myself forward into Gawain’s arms with a laugh.
His chest was warm and I could smell his sage scent better directly from where his shoulder met the nape of his neck.
I froze, realizing that I had crossed a line and I wasn’t sure how the alpha would feel about it.
But then one of his warm hands splayed flat over my back and the other cupped the back of my head, gently urging me to look at him.
The normally affable alpha was staring at me with a mix of longing and a bit of reticence about our current, very compromising position.
Arthur had all but given his blessing to form a pack, but over the past two weeks everyone had settled into an easy routine—Bedivere and Gawain accompanying me most days while Lancelot avoided me like I was the plague.
Something had shifted today when I insisted on following Lancelot out to where he was shooting arrows. Not only between me and Lancelot, but also between me and Gawain. It had been the first time that I had actively sought one of them out and I wondered if Gawain thought it was because I was ready to accept more alphas into the pack.
Was I ready?
After that day on the journey to Camelot where we almost kissed, Gawain had kept everything platonic and friendly, but now the way he was looking at me was anything but.
I wanted him. His scent made my insides twist with need and my instincts were all but screaming at me to do something, anything , to make him mine.
But then there was the fact that, if I chose to do this, there would be no going back. With Arthur, I had just reached a comfortable ease as his wife… was it too soon to do this whole pack thing? Would it make him angry with me? Jealous? Could he potentially hurt Gawain?
Gawain, as if seeing my emotions etched across my face, began to let go of me. “My apologies, Gwen.”
My mind shouted at me not to let him go, my inner-omega grappling for the surface of my thoughts in a near tantrum.
I reached out with one hand, cupping his chin and pulling him to me.
The night we had nearly kissed before, Bedivere had interrupted us, but now there was nothing to get in our way as our lips met.