Chapter Forty-Six
W hen I came to, I was kneeling on a hardwood floor, staring at my legs which were clothed in a pair of blue jeans that I only vaguely recognized.
“Many people believe that the legend of King Arthur was spawned by the people who had to live through the Saxon invasions—people needed something to believe in and a legend about a man who pulls a magical sword from the stone is exactly what the doctor ordered,” the docent continued her story, her voice filled with the wonder and awe of someone who had spent their life studying something.
I was too disoriented to care.
For a moment, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all some weird hallucination—my mind conjuring up an entire story because I was feeling desperate and lonely after a bad date.
But then I reached up and felt the scars along my neck and just behind my ears. Bond marks.
They were all quiet, dormant even, and I stood abruptly as I realized that while none of what I had just experienced was a dream, I also didn’t know how to get back to them.
Turning blindly, I moved to run out of the exhibit. To do what, I wasn’t sure, but instead I ended up running headlong into a broad chest and causing the person to drop the leather padfolio they were carrying.
“Oh shit! I’m so sorry!” I apologized sheepishly, my brain moving a million miles a minute as I tried to reconcile with the fact that somehow, some way, I had been returned to the future—centuries after my pack had been alive and had died.
Then the person who I had run into spoke and I froze on the spot.
“It’s all right, are you hurt?” the man said as I looked up into a pair of icy blue eyes.
It was Arthur standing in front of me in the flesh and I could hardly believe what I was seeing.
He was dressed in a fancy suit and his hair was much shorter than it had been in the past, cropped close to his head, but it was undoubtedly still my husband.
“ Arthur ,” I gasped raggedly, thinking about the last time I had seen him and the way his lifeless eyes had looked as I cradled him in my arms.
Arthur’s brows furrowed in polite confusion as he offered me a smile. “Yes, that’s me, how did you know such a thing?”
Still frowning, he reached for the padfolio, his skin brushing against mine, and I felt a sparkle of magic zip in between us as his bond mark on my neck began to burn as the thread connecting us lit up again.
The man in front of me shifted, his eyes flashing a glowing white before his mannered expression dropped and he gasped as if the air had been knocked completely from his body.
“ Guinevere ,” Arthur rasped, recognition in his eyes finally as he stared at me as if I were a ghost. “It’s you.”
I nodded, swallowing the sudden lump in my throat before throwing my arms around his neck and inhaling his familiar allspice scent deeply. His arms tightened around me, nearly cracking my spine as he held me close.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he murmured into my ear, completely ignoring the crowd around us who had begun to whisper.
“How is this possible?” I asked, pulling away so I could look closer at his face. Everything was the same, the same reddish-gold hair, sharp jaw-line, icy blue eyes, and even the timber of his voice. This was my Arthur in the flesh, but how was he in the future like this?
“I do not know,” he told me honestly with a shake of his head, the back of his fingers brushing down my cheek. “I have been living here my entire life searching for something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I felt it had something to do with all of this, though, as if my life revolved around a man who shared the same name as me.”
I watched as he gestured to the exhibit around us.
“I collected all of these, trying to find out why I felt so connected to them. People called me crazy for wasting so much of my fortune on these artifacts, but now I understand why I felt the need to collect them,” he told me, his hands cupping my face as if he was afraid to let me go.
“ You’re the anonymous donor?” I asked, shocked that he had been so close to me and yet, before today, we would have walked right past each other and been none the wiser to our fate.
“Mr. King, are you all right?” another familiar voice asked, causing me to stiffen.
I looked up into the face of Lancelot, who was dressed in a similar suit with a smartphone clutched in his hand. His hair was pushed back out of his face and he had a stylish slit in his eyebrow now, but regardless it was most definitely my broody alpha.
“ Lancelot, ” I said, practically melting with relief to see his face.
He frowned at me. “Sorry, do I know you?”
“Lance,” Arthur said softly as he held a hand out to the man. “Do you trust me?”
Lancelot frowned at him, his dark eyes darting between the both of us. “With my life, sir, you know that.”
Arthur nodded as if he expected an answer like that. “Then give me your hand.”
Lancelot hesitated for a moment before he obliged.
I reached for him, my fingers sliding into his, a smile already on my face as I felt the spark of our bond rekindle back to life.
“Guinevere, you must be careful,” Arthur’s voice called reproachfully as I scrambled up the rock face faster than the rest of the pack.
“I am being careful,” I called back, scrabbling when my boots failed to make purchase before I recovered and was able to pull myself up and onto the ledge.
“I swear she is more dangerous during this time than she ever was in the past,” Lancelot commented dryly as they followed behind me at a much slower pace.
“You didn’t have to watch her ride into the middle of a battle without a care for her safety, Lancelot,” Bedivere shot back and I could almost hear him shaking his head with disbelief.
After meeting both Lancelot and Arthur in the museum that day, we had gone searching for the other members of our pack—which was made easy seeing as Arthur was as much a king in this life as he had been in his past life.
Literally, his last name was King. His company specialized in commercial real estate and I was pretty sure he had more money than most men on the planet. While he may no longer be the King of Camelot, he was definitely still the king of his own empire.
Thanks to Arthur’s seemingly endless resources, Bedivere had been found first in the northernmost point of Scotland in a tiny village just outside of Inverness.
There he worked as a hobby blacksmith specializing in Celtic knot jewelry as a way to soothe himself after losing his hand during the war in the Middle East years before. Arthur, it turned out, had purchased several items from his shop, though they had sat in a drawer in one of his homes until a few months ago when he reawakened and had given them to me.
There were lots of little things like that that seemed to connect my pack—even before they knew they were my pack.
I had worn the jewelry Bedivere had made on my wrist and neck when we went to go and meet him. At first, Bedivere had been incredulous about the whole thing, not allowing me to touch him at all as we tried to explain who he had once been.
Finally, I had been forced to reach out and touch his face in order to reseal our bond and he had quickly melted after that, his silver eyes filling with the same sort of recognition that Arthur and Lancelot’s had that day when I reappeared in the museum.
He had then proceeded to spend the next month scolding me for riding into battle when I had no business being involved in such things and I enjoyed every minute of his nagging.
“She’s just eager to find Merlin, as we all are,” Gawain said, his voice light and happy as he brought up the rear of our pack’s impromptu hike up the mountains surrounding where Camelot once stood.
Gawain had taken some time to find—mostly thanks to the fact that he was sporting bleached hair and a surprisingly attractive nose piercing now.
Funnily enough, he was now a part of a rock band that was incredibly popular across the world—a rock band that had gone through my Spotify rotation more than once before I fell into the past.
The Emerald Nights were one of Trini’s favorite bands and she had just about passed out once she learned that their lead singer was a member of my new pack.
We had gotten tickets to their concert and Gawain had actually spotted me in the crowd, making it easier to reignite our bond after the show when he invited me backstage. None of his bandmates understood his sudden desire to settle down with a pack he barely knew… but how were we supposed to explain our entire backstory without sounding absolutely crazy?
Everything was as it should be—well, almost as it should be.
There was one member of our pack that was still missing and he had been the hardest to find. I wasn’t sure how the gods had expected me to locate him when any magic he possessed seemed to have faded from the land completely.
The one conclusion we had come to was that the gods must have returned Merlin to his cave after he split himself in two in order to bring the rest of the pack back. If we could find the cave, then surely Merlin must also be there.
It felt sound to me, but after three months of combing the countryside around where Camelot used to be, we were no closer than we had been before.
As I scrambled up yet another rock face, my boots slipped and I began to fall.
Firm hands pressed into my back as the pale faces of my packmates came into view.
“What did I just say, Guinevere?” Arthur asked, still in the habit of calling me by my full name.
“Sorry,” I told him sheepishly as I let him pull me down from the rocks. “I just feel like today is the day we find him.”
I had said the same thing yesterday, and the day before, but it was that hope that kept me going to find the final piece of our pack and of my soul.
“I understand,” he told me gruffly as he placed me firmly on my feet again, “but you cannot do it alone—especially not in your condition.”
His hand slipped down to press into the swell of my belly.
That had been another happy surprise that I had learned of weeks after returning to the future.
After vomiting everywhere for three days straight after Arthur found me in the museum he insisted I go to see a doctor and it was there they told me I was almost eight weeks pregnant.
Apparently, my memories of the past weren’t the only thing I had brought along with me back to the future.
It was hard to wrap my head around it all, but the pregnancy was a happy surprise for all of us and we were excited about it.
Even though, technically , the baby was made from the alphas I knew in the past—the only way I could think of their current selves was that somehow, someway, Merlin had reincarnated them years in the future. Their way of carrying themselves, the way they spoke, and the ease with which they showed their emotions was very different than it had been, but even with all of that, they were still them: my alphas, my fated mates. The people who had breathed life into my lonely world again.
They now may have had lives that they had lived totally separate from our time in Camelot—but this baby was still ours—even if he or she had come about in such an unconventional manner.
“I won’t climb on anything more without you,” I promised, but even as I spoke I felt something shift in the air and my head was whipping around. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?” Lancelot asked as he finally made it up onto the ledge before holding out a hand to help Bedivere up.
Pushing away from Arthur’s arms I stood and stared out at the blue lake that was nearly triple the size it had been when I was in the past. All traces of the castle were nearly gone now except for the bare skeleton of the main structure that sat embedded into the far hill, barely visible from our vantage point.
I closed my eyes and felt for the tiny kernel of magic that still existed inside of me. My days of creating storms and vortexes were long gone now, but even I was still capable of searching for him. For my Merlin.
The water of the valley seemed to call for me as I reached out to it, eager to do my bidding in a way that it hadn’t the day before when I tried.
But today was different. Merlin had pulled me through to the past during the spring equinox three months ago when, as he had told me during our lessons, magic was the strongest.
I had insisted we come out to the mountains surrounding what used to be Camelot for this specific reason: today was the day of the summer solstice, and somehow, I just knew that it meant that something important was going to happen.
Letting what little magic I still possessed spread out around me, I searched for him just as I had the day when I was stuck in the dungeon before my near-execution.
The rivers, which were about as ancient as they had been centuries ago, threaded along the countryside, searching for Merlin’s very unique kind of magic.
Then I felt it, not far from where we were standing. It was like a whisper, barely even there, but I had felt Merlin’s magic many times and I knew deep inside of me that it was him.
My feet began to carry me in his direction, ignoring my alphas calling after me as I put my foot on a ledge and began to climb.
“Damn it, Gwen,” I heard Lancelot grumble. “I hate heights.”
“You can remain down here if you like, Lance,” Gawain said brightly as he followed behind me.
“You know I won’t ever do such a thing, you dolt, “ the other alpha grumbled before putting a foot up on the ledge.
I hardly heard them as I pulled myself over and found myself on a plateau that led into what looked like a cave.
My breath caught in my throat.
“How has no one ever found this?” I asked Arthur as he finally made it up onto the ledge after me.
“If the gods did not wish something to be found, then it will not be found,” he said sagely as he moved in front of me. “I will go in first to make sure there aren’t any… surprises awaiting us.”
I wanted to go first—to find Merlin first—but Arthur’s tone left no room for me to argue.
Arthur and Gawain went first as Lancelot and Bedivere waited back with me and they ducked into the cave, disappearing into its depths.
Then a string of curse words flew from the cave as Gawain backed out of it in a rush.
“What is it?” Bedivere asked, already moving to shove me behind him as if he could protect me from any danger that may be inside of the cave.
“It’s nothing, just a fuck ton of cobwebs,” he said with a grimace as he pulled the stringy white webs from his clothes. “I hate spiders.”
“Grow up and get in here, Gawain,” Arthur’s voice echoed from inside.
Gawain winced. “Fine, but if I get bit you’re carrying me back down the mountain.”
“You will not get bit, it looks like there haven’t been spiders here in years…” Arthur shot back, his voice fading as he and Gawain continued to chatter with a comfort and ease that went far beyond the technically three months they had known each other in the future.
After what felt like forever, Arthur finally ducked his head out of the cave, his expression blank. “Guinevere, come.”
My stomach did a little flip-flop as I hurried to him and took his outstretched hand.
“The ground is uneven, so hang onto me,” he told me gently as Bedivere and Lancelot brought up the rear of our little cave expedition party.
The cave was dark—even with the flashlights on our phones—and curved almost as soon as we entered, insulating us from the outside world.
“It goes down quite far,” Arthur told me as he led the way with the little camping lamp that we had, thankfully, thought to bring. “He’s at the bottom.”
My heart stuttered at Arthur’s words. “He’s here?”
I wanted to hurry on, but Arthur kept his steps maddeningly even and said nothing as he continued to lead us farther and farther down.
Eventually the tight passage began to open up and we stepped into a familiar setting.
I had only been in this place for maybe a few minutes before, but it was definitely the cave that I had woken up in when Merlin pulled me into the past.
It had changed after centuries of being untouched, the straw mats that had been on the floor having long been wasted away by time.
“Gawain,” Arthur called softly to the alpha who was standing in the middle of the room in front of something.
Gawain jumped, turning to face us with an odd expression. “Did you tell her?”
“Tell me what?” I asked, yanking my hand away from Arthur’s and stomping over to where Gawain was standing so that I could see for myself what had gotten them acting so oddly.
Instead of the large basin that used to sit glowing in the middle of the cave before, illuminating it, there was what looked like a large, stone coffin. There were runes carved into the surface that I didn’t understand, but somehow I just knew Merlin was inside.
“We haven’t opened it yet,” Gawain said, his voice soft.
I didn’t say anything, my hands sliding over the lid as I felt the familiar zing of magic from within.
“He’s in here,” I told them, my fingers searching for the seam of the coffin. “Help me get this off.”
“Sweetling,” Bedivere’s hand stopped mine, his gaze soft. “We don’t know what is going to be inside—this has been here for a very long time. Will you let us look first?”
But I shook my head. “I don’t care . I want to see him.”
The last time I had seen Merlin he had looked so sad, like he was saying goodbye to me because he knew what he was about to do. He had fixed everything—and then he had sat alone in this damned coffin for centuries.
Running my fingers along the underside of the lid of the coffin I tried to find where the seam was, quickly growing frustrated. “It’s like it’s all in one piece.”
Arthur’s gaze turned thoughtful as he watched me from the head of the coffin, his blue eyes shifting from me to the stone slab with seemingly no way to open it.
“Guinevere,” he said, stopping my mad search for the opening. “Perhaps if the gods knew it would be you opening this coffin—then there must be a way for only you to open it.”
I pulled my hand away for a moment in order to digest his words.
Maybe he was right. I called a bit of my magic to me and pressed my palm flat over the empty spot where all of the runes seemed to circle around.
Then, with a rumbling click, the top of the coffin detached from the bottom and the guys started to lift it away, each one taking a corner.
“Oh my,” someone said, though I wasn’t sure who because I was too busy staring at what lay within.
Merlin looked almost as he had the day of the final battle. Just as young. Just as alive.
But there was one huge difference in the man after centuries of sleeping in this coffin.
All color from his body seemed to have seeped from him. His skin was pale with none of its usual flush and his hair and eyelashes had turned an ashen gray color, hell even his freckles had gone silver in the time since I had last seen him.
“What happened?” Gawain asked, his voice filled with shock as we stared down at the wizard.
“He used up all of his magic to bring you all to the future,” I told them, my voice soft as I reached out and touched his face, finding it ice cold. “Merlin isn’t like you or me—not really—the gods described him more like a vessel for their magic. So by using up everything and not having anyone like me around to refill his stores…”
My voice trailed off as an idea formed in my mind. The day that I had been pulled to Camelot Merlin had fainted from the loss of magic after using it to allow me to time travel.
I had touched him, trying to help him up, but it had sparked my magic—or as he described it—jump started it.
Before that I had never been able to use magic, but after that day it felt like magic had oozed out of my pores. Merlin had explained that oftentimes young magic users needed to come in contact with it to be able to use their abilities.
Arianrhod’s words from the day of the battle rang in my head again: “Have you never wondered why it is that your magic connects so well with Merlin’s? It is not a coincidence, Guinevere Ramos.”
It couldn’t be that simple, could it?
“This is some fairy tale ass shit,” I muttered to myself, wondering if the ancient Celtic gods knew about Disney movies, before I gently leaned over the coffin and stared down into Merlin’s colorless face. “God, I hope this works or else I’m going to look insane.”
Willing the little bit of magic I still possessed to behave itself, I pressed my lips to Merlin’s stiff, unmoving lips and let my magic pour into him.
Before when we had shared magic, it was like a gentle wave trickling out of me and into him, but now it felt as if Merlin’s soul drank and drank without stopping.
“Should we stop her?” I heard someone ask vaguely, but I was too focused on filling Merlin up as much as I dared.
Then there was a bright flash of light and one of the alphas around me made a disgruntled noise as I felt Merlin gasp underneath me, drawing in a sharp breath as his heart began to beat underneath my palm again.
“Impossible,” Arthur murmured as I pulled away just in time to see Merlin’s now-pale lashes flutter and his eyes open.
Before, his eyes had always glowed with an unnaturally green light, showing that he had been fashioned by pure, natural magic. Now, his eyes were a pale gray, only slightly darker than Bedivere’s silver and they hardly had any light to them anymore.
“Guinevere?” he asked, his voice rough from centuries of not being used. “What has happened?”
He began to try to sit up and hands popped into my peripheral to help him as he rubbed at his eyes and looked around at our surroundings.
“So, so much,” I told him, my eyes burning with tears as I threw my arms around his too-skinny frame. “But you’re here now.”
“Where is here exactly?” He asked, his hand cupping the back of my head as he seemed to hold on to me for dear life.
“The future, Merlin,” Arthur told him, his own eyes looking suspiciously misty as he shot me the brightest smile I had seen in days now that his childhood friend and advisor had been returned to him. “Thanks to you we are now all able to be together forever.”
There was a long, drawn out silence as Merlin seemed to be coming to terms with the new information that had just been presented to him.
“Does that mean I may finally be able to try a cheeseburger?” he asked hopefully. “I have always wanted to try one of those.”
A wobbly laugh left me as I nodded and wiped at my wet eyes. Stupid pregnancy hormones got the best of me most days now, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to stop crying for the foreseeable future now that my pack was whole again.
“You can have as many as you like. You’re free from the fate that the gods set for you—we all are.”
Merlin nodded, his lips pursed as he realized that he truly was free—but with it had come a price that I had been able to feel when he had awoken: his magic was all but gone now. He was no longer a puppet created by the gods to do their bidding, but that also meant that he was all but human with just a hint of magic left that I had shared with him.
“Are you okay with that?” I asked, worried that Merlin would miss being able to use magic as he had before.
But Merlin just nodded, his lips spreading into a wide smile. “More than okay with it. After all, it’s just as you say, is it not? Fate is completely overrated and I am excited to, instead, have a future.”