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Savagely possessive.
As if he could fuck his way into Arthur’s soul, meld it with his own.
“Well, I, for one, have seen everything I wanted to see in these isles,” Annie said during brunch one day, three weeks into their tour of Britain.
“Does anyone else have a place or thing you’re dying to see? Now would be the time to tell me. Else, I’ll book our return to the States this afternoon.”
Surprisingly, it was Merlin who answered.
“Aye. I would like to visit my old home. Or what is left of it. The home I built with my own hands and shared with…my family.”
Annie’s eyes literally shone with love as she looked upon her Mate. As she was wont to do, she wrapped both arms around one of Merlin’s and hugged him close.
Lancelot did not understand the concept of “love” himself, and he was likely incapable of feeling it, but he knew it when he saw it.
“Of course,” she murmured. “Just let me know its whereabouts and I’ll plan out the logistics.”
Lancelot thought that would be the end of the subject when Arthur spoke.
“Did you perchance bury something in the yard? It must have been a long time ago. Perhaps you don’t remem—”
“I was the one who buried it,” Wolfe said gruffly, making everyone swivel to look at him, especially Merlin.
“I buried it with my mother. It is a necklace he—”
He glanced at Merlin and changed his sentence after a pause.
“It is a necklace father gave her.”
A collective sharp intake of breath could be heard around their table. Lancelot understood that this might be the first time Wolfe acknowledged Merlin in such terms.
Wolfe either didn’t notice or chose to ignore everyone’s consternation and continued, “She wore it on her person always. Ever since he gave it to her. I remember him putting it around her neck. I must have been a wee lad, but I remember. She never took it off since.”
Lancelot noticed that Wolfe spoke as if he was talking about someone else, not the man sitting a few feet away. But the fact that he mentioned the past at all seemed like progress.
Merlin’s face rapidly drained of blood the more Wolfe spoke. His eyes were rivetted on Wolfe, and Annie’s eyes were rivetted on her Mate.
“Even the night she…fought him,” Wolfe went on, “even after she exiled him from our lives, she never took it off. And when she…died, I buried her with it. They could both be gone by now. I am uncertain how deeply I dug. How the earth might have been disturbed and reused since then. But, aye, there is an amulet there if we can find it.”
Arthur looked to Merlin, whose face was as pale as a sheet by now underneath his sun-bronzed skin.
“The necklace…it is special, is it not? It is a part of you?”
At least Arthur acknowledged that Merlin was the same man as Wolfe described. But how would Arthur know about the necklace, Lancelot wondered. He had not been there. He’d not known about Merlin and Wolfe until they were liberated from the Celestial Realm.
But everyone seemed to take his comment in stride.
Merlin swallowed visibly before answering, “It was a piece of my dragon heart. I was gone more often than I could be there. The illusion I wore to be with her…”
He glanced at Wolfe to gage his reaction.
The warrior remained stoic as he listened, though a muscle ticked in his jaw.
“…it only lasted a short time,” Merlin continued. “Days, at most a fortnight. And it required…compensation.”
He swallowed again, and when he spoke, his voice was husky deep, vibrating with a visceral pain that Lancelot didn’t understand.
“Despite the lies, I wanted her to have something real of me. A dragon’s heart has great power. It would protect her while I’m away. Protect the home and keep both of you safe.”
