CHAPTER ELEVEN
-ARTHUR-
I couldn’t breathe.
The sword slid from the stone like a blade through butter—gleaming in the serving girl’s hands as if it had been forged for her.
A slip of a girl, doing what I'd failed to do for years.
Fucking inconceivable.
My hand went to my dagger.
One stroke, and the problem vanished. No witnesses but the trees. Nimue had already sunk beneath the water; the girl stood alone now, trembling like a doe at the lake’s edge.
Slay her. Take the sword.
It was the dragon's voice within my head. But I couldn't argue with it.
My kingdom. My crown. My destiny.
Kill her before anyone learns the truth.
But she didn’t look like a usurper—she looked terrified. No triumph in those eyes, only panic. I lowered my arm. The boy who drew Excalibur would never have slit a woman’s throat in the dark.
When had I become a man who could? The answer was obvious: the dragonmark.
She backed away from the lake, skirts catching on roots, and I followed silently. My fingers traced the dagger’s hilt, the metal cool and familiar—a king’s tool for dirty necessities.
I took a step forward.
The girl turned and collided with me, her hood slipping from her head to reveal hair as white as first snow. When she looked up at me, my breath caught.
Beauty. The dragon was as shocked as I was.
She gave off a little yelp, and I instinctively brought my hands up to her arms, holding her in place.
Her body was small, warm, pressed flush to mine. She smelled of lavender and water. Of earth. Her heartbeat slammed against my chest, wild and frantic.
You could so easily snap her in two...
When she looked up, the blood drained from her face.
“Your Majesty,” she gasped, attempting to curtsy awkwardly.
Her trembling form stirred something within me.
Even the dragon, known for its hunger for conquest, fell silent.
It watched through me, enthralled by the sheer magnetism of this stranger.
Her skin was not the refined porcelain of court ladies, but sun-kissed and genuine, flushed.
She carried a beauty untouched by artifice and false allure. And that hair… Fuck.
She bit her lip, gaze locked on mine. "I didn't mean—I didn't know I could..." Words tumbled, desperate to explain, yet inadequate.
She is ours. The dragon growled quietly, suddenly strangely protective and intrigued.
I didn't allow her to move.
Instead, I put a finger to her lips. “I saw everything.”
She glanced toward the lake, as if imploring Nimue to return.
“She can’t help you. No one can.”
She turned to face me once more, and her eyes were wide with fear. That fear pleased me. Fear was something I understood, something I could use. A fearful girl wouldn't rally armies against me. A fearful girl could be managed, manipulated, cowed.
"I didn't intend to—" The words stilled on her tongue—as if she didn't want to admit out loud what she'd just done. "Please believe me. I never intended to pull the sword.”
Her fear scents the air.
I gripped her shoulders, my fingernails digging into soft flesh.
Moonlight carved her face into something almost unearthly—violet eyes, delicate jaw, pert nose, full lips parted in fear.
Her full breasts rose and fell against my chest, her heat seeping through the thin fabric between us.
The scent of water and lavender filled my head.
Her beauty was almost inhuman, painful to look at directly, like staring at the sun.
She stirs the ancient hunger.
The dragon wanted her. What was more? I wanted her.
Wanted to claim what the sword had chosen.
Take her, the dragon said. Fuck her. Hoard her.
Make her understand who rules this kingdom.
"Who are you?" I gave her a hard shake that made her head snap back. Her teeth clicked together audibly.
"No one, Your Majesty. Just a scullery maid."
Just a scullery maid—but one who had managed the unthinkable.
My attention returned to the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the thin fabric of her dress, drawing my attention to their fullness. They would fit so easily in my palms.
My skin burned with familiar hunger.
Her heartbeat—wild and erratic—matched the sudden thundering of my own. My fingers twitched as I imagined how easily I could tear the fabric from her and push her down to the ground.
Take what I wanted from her.
She looked away, her gaze resting on the lake.
"Look at me," I demanded.
Those violet eyes, which had been wide with fear only seconds before, came to rest on mine…
and then narrowed. Anger suddenly seemed to burst within them, defiance.
She refused to fully submit even as she trembled in my grasp.
No mere scullery maid had ever looked at me with such complicated emotion—terror mixed with hatred, fear combined with rebellion.
Our fire rises for her. Let her feel it.
"You have the audacity to—"
"—I want nothing to do with your sword." Her chest rose in quick, shallow breaths. Those eyes continued to burn into me.
"And yet you pulled it from the stone." I paused. "You have put me in an impossible situation."
She is yours, the dragon whispered. And we take what is ours.
"Please, sire." Though her words were submissive, there was still that fire in her eyes.
My fingers flexed involuntarily against her shoulders, the softness of her flesh yielding beneath my calloused hands.
"How did you pull Excalibur?" My voice dropped lower, rougher.
When she didn't respond, I shook her once more. "Answer me."
"I don't know! I swear it!" She trembled, those magnificent breasts bouncing with each desperate denial. "Please, I never meant—"
The wind stirred through the trees, echoing the raw pull between us. She fit against me too well.
Fuck her. Or kill her. Both would solve something.
Blood thundered in my ears as I fought against the idea of taking the life from such a stunning creature. Truly, I had never seen a woman who could rival her beauty. And that fire within her… it seemed to call to the fire within me.
Wrap her in our shadows.
The urge to bend her over right here, to thrust myself inside her and claim what the sword had chosen, was almost stifling. To make her understand that I was her king and she was nothing. To hear my name torn from those perfect lips as I rutted her into submission.
The violence of my own desire shocked me.
I was Arthur Pendragon, not some common beast. Yet something about this girl made me want to be exactly that—to own her, to show her she was powerless against me.
Take her, fuck her. Own her.
No, I tried to argue. That isn't the way…
You are king. She is nothing. No one. She's yours. Thrust your cock into that sweet tightness.
I couldn't even blame the dragon for the thought because it was all mine and mine alone.
My fingers twitched with the need to explore every inch of her trembling form, to discover if her skin tasted as sweet as it smelled.
I could feel the phantom weight of my crown—a pressure reminding me of duties, of appearances, of the control I'd spent decades perfecting. But here, with only the whispering trees and the rippling lake as witnesses, that control was quickly slipping through my fingers.
What kind of man had I become, contemplating murder one moment and violation the next?
The thought of her blood on my hands made bile rise in my throat. Not because she was innocent; she was a threat, perhaps the greatest I'd ever faced—but because such an act would transform me into something I'd spent years fighting against: a tyrant. A beast.
The dragon.
I stepped back, forcing air into my lungs.
The girl watched me warily, ready to bolt like a startled deer. Her white hair gleamed in the moonlight, making her seem almost ghostly, not of this world—something between mortal and fae.
“What is your name?” I demanded again, my voice barely a whisper. I was still panting with restraint.
Take her. Fuck her. Own her. Hoard her.
"My name?"
She is our treasure.
"Your fucking name, girl," I growled, reaching out and gripping her arm once more.
She gasped. "I am... no one."
-GUIN-
“No one,” Arthur repeated, his voice low and dangerous. “You are not no one if you pulled Excalibur from the stone.”
“I am no one,” I insisted. “This was a mistake—the sword, the Lady, all of it.” I caught myself. “Your Highness.”
His grip on me tightened, fingers biting. His scent wrapped around me—leather, pine, steel. Man.
I should've been terrified—and part of me was, the rational part that understood exactly how much danger I was in.
But something else was also coursing through me, something darker and more potent than fear.
Anger and hatred, twin flames now roaring to life at his proximity.
Here he was—the man whose orders had torn my family apart, whose soldiers had left my parents' blood cooling in the dirt.
This was the monster who wore a crown and called it justice.
He was close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his blue eyes.
And suddenly I wished I hadn't dropped Excalibur back into the lake.
I wished I still held it so I could bury it in the king's belly and end his tyranny right here and right now.
There would be no witnesses. Just the lake itself.
“Do not lie to me, girl,” he growled, yanking me closer until his breath brushed my cheek. “No one touches that sword without consequence.”
That was when I noticed it—the raw, predatory hunger in his gaze as he looked me up and down.
His eyes moved over my body like a physical caress, lingering on the curve of my hips, the swell of my breasts, the vulnerable line of my throat.
There was nothing kingly or restrained about that look—it was pure masculine want, dark and consuming.