CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
-ARTHUR-
I couldn’t stop pacing.
My boots carved a familiar path across my chamber floor—window to bed, table to hearth and back again—each turn sharper than the last. Yet my pacing did nothing to calm the storm inside me. If anything, it churned hotter, faster, until I felt ready to crawl out of my own skin.
She was down there and had been for hours. In my dungeon. Alone. Contained. Controlled.
Finally mine.
Not close enough.
I braced my palms against the cool stone of the window frame and stared out across the moonlit training grounds—those same grounds where I'd sparred with her, corrected her form, praised her strength. Where I'd admired her discipline. Her courage. Her grace.
Grace I'd foolishly attributed to talent rather than heritage. To discipline rather than deception. To loyalty rather than lineage.
How could I have been so catastrophically blind?
The question struck hard, and with it came the ghost of a voice I'd spent years trying to outrun. My father’s voice. Uther’s voice. Before the madness of the dragon had destroyed his mind. When he was still sharp as iron, cold as judgment.
“Trust your instincts, not your eyes,” he'd snarled as he sealed another execution order. “The most dangerous enemies are always those who appear harmless.”
The memory made something sick twist inside me. I hated that he was right. I hated that I'd forgotten his advice. I hated that she—of all people—had been the one to slip past every defense.
Let us take her apart. Put her back together again.
I pushed off the window with enough force to make the panes rattle and resumed my pacing, breath tight, shoulders aching from hours spent in a relentless coil of tension.
And yet, no matter how I tried to shove the truth into the darkest corner of my mind, it came clawing back with brutal clarity: I had never felt more alive than when I had her pinned beneath me. And I'd never wanted anything—anyone—the way I wanted her still.
We must have her.
I grimaced, my reflection scowling at me from the darkened glass like a ghost of my own making.
The face staring back wasn't just exhausted—it was fractured, hollowed out by the weight of bitter revelation.
Dark circles carved shadows beneath my eyes, and my jaw was tight with the kind of tension that had become my constant companion since that night at the lake.
Throughout my reign, I'd deliberately rejected my father's methods, dismantling his brutal legacy piece by piece with the fervor of a man trying to cleanse his bloodline of its sins.
Where Uther had ruled through fear, I'd sought loyalty through justice.
Where he'd seen enemies lurking in every shadow, conspirators behind every smile, I'd chosen to believe in the fundamental goodness of those who served me.
Fool, I whispered. Trust is weakness. She proved it.
The irony cut deeper than any physical wound could have. I'd prided myself on being everything Uther was not—approachable where he was distant, compassionate where he was ruthless, trusting where he was paranoid.
And now here I am.
“Betrayed,” I muttered to the empty room. And by someone who had infiltrated my inner circle—just as Father always warned.
The irony was exquisite and cruel. For years, I'd dismissed Uther’s paranoia as the delusion of a man rotted by power and the dragonmark.
I'd pitied him—the king who had ruled from a fortress of suspicion, unable to exist without fear. And yet now, staring down my own ruin, I couldn’t ignore the bitter possibility: perhaps Uther hadn’t been wrong. Perhaps I'd been the fool all along.
I turned from the window.
Make her yield to us.
My fingers clenched around the edge of the writing table.
Then the memory struck—sudden, visceral.
Her beneath me, that hair spread against the dark earth, eyes half-lidded and glazed, mouth parted—not in practiced deception, but in raw, unguarded desire.
In that moment, she hadn't been a would-be queen plotting my downfall, not a weapon forged by Merlin's hand, not even a spy weaving lies.
She'd simply been her—the woman who had somehow slipped past every defense I'd spent years constructing.
The memory burned through me—blazing hot.
She'd arched beneath me like she belonged there, like the earth itself had been carved specifically to cradle our joining.
Her fingers had dug into my shoulders not with calculated seduction but with desperate need.
The soft sounds that had escaped her lips—breathless gasps, quiet moans…
they were undoing me now, memory by memory.
She sparks the oldest hunger. Feed it.
Gods help me, I wanted her still. Even knowing what she was, what she'd done, what she represented—the betrayal, the lies, the very real threat to everything I'd built—my body still burned for her in a way that should have frightened me.
Instead, it only fed the rage and desire warring in my chest, creating a volatile mixture that threatened to consume what remained of my rational mind.
I clenched my fists against the unwelcome intrusion, disgusted by my own weakness.
Even now, knowing her true purpose, all my treacherous body could remember was the feel of wetness, her tightness, the surprising strength in her slender frame, the way she'd matched me passion for passion without the usual deference I received from others.
My desire for her hadn't decreased at all. If anything, it had increased.
Was this an example of her witchcraft at play? I had to assume that was undeniably the reason. Because she was a witch, a magic user, the spawn of Merlin sent to destroy me.
I brought my fingers to my nose, breathing in the scent of her once again.
The cream of her arousal lingered there—sweet and musky, something uniquely hers—coating my skin like the most intoxicating perfume.
It seemed every other second I kept returning to it, drawn by some savage compulsion I couldn't fight, inhaling the scent of her wetness as my cock grew hard once again.
We burn for her.
I found myself fighting the urge to actually do it—to draw my fingers into my mouth and savor what remained of her.
The thought sent blood rushing to my cock, making it strain against my braies.
Even now, even knowing what she was, my body responded to her like a man dying of thirst responds to water.
It was maddening. Humiliating. I was feared across the realm, yet here I stood like some lovesick boy, drunk on the scent of a woman who had betrayed him.
The rational part of my mind screamed that this obsession was dangerous, that she had likely used magic to ensnare me so completely.
But the rest of me—the part ruled by desire and the dragon's ancient hunger—didn't care about reason or caution.
She is the treasure. Guard her. Claim her. Hoard her. Always.
What a magnificent fool I was. Every gasp, every touch, every whispered word between us had likely been calculated to lower my guard, to bind me to her through desire while she gathered intelligence for Merlin.
Was she laughing about it now, amused by how easily the fearsome King Arthur could be manipulated by a beautiful face and body?
The thought sent a surge of rage through me so powerful I nearly struck the wall beside me.
She is your greatest threat, I thought.
The strategic implications crystallized in my mind with cold clarity. If word spread that she had drawn the sword—the ultimate symbol of my legitimate rule—rebellions would ignite across Logres like wildfire. Lords who already chafed under my restrictions on magic would rally to her banner.
What was more—she'd seen the dragon within me.
More damning than any political ramification was the intimate knowledge she now possessed of my most guarded secret.
She'd witnessed firsthand the ancient beast's attempt to break free from the chains of my will.
It had been the boldest the creature had ever been, surfacing with such violent hunger that I'd barely managed to wrestle it back into submission.
Even then, my victory had been incomplete, leaving traces of its presence written across my transformed flesh.
She'd watched my skin take on the draconic scales, seen the way my eyes shifted from human blue to the red of the beast, felt the scorching heat of my breath as it changed from mortal air to smoke.
The memory of her wide-eyed stare burned in my mind—not with fear as I might have expected, but with something that looked disturbingly like fascination. Perhaps even hunger of her own.
She hungered for us just as we hunger for her. Light to dark. Water to fire.
It was undeniably true. I'd witnessed the irrefutable proof written across her features—the way her pupils dilated with unmistakable want.
There had been no mistaking the hunger that darkened her gaze as she'd taken in my transformed state, the way her lips had parted slightly as though she couldn't quite catch her breath.
And her body had responded—her cunt soaking wet.
She had told me to fuck her. She'd wanted me to.
The desire in her gaze had been raw, unguarded—a mirror to the ravenous need that clawed at me from within.
She hadn't recoiled from the dragon's emergence as any sensible woman would have.
Instead, she'd stared with something that bordered on fascination, as though she recognized something in that ancient fire that called to her own hidden depths.
She is ours. We are hers.
No, I thought back. She is Merlin's.
"Merlin's daughter." The words tasted like bitter betrayal on my tongue. Worst still was that this realization—this truth—didn't change the way I felt toward her.