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He didn’t want to find the means to sever their Bond. He wouldn’t mind being Bonded to Arthur forever. That way, when Arthur died, so would Lancelot. They’d spend all of their lives together, age together, in sickness and health.
He couldn’t imagine anything he wished for more.
The only thing that kept him from dragging his feet was the notion thatArthurwanted this. He’d said as much, hadn’t he? He wanted to be free of Lancelot.
Would Arthur still “love” him if they were no longer Bonded? How would their dynamic change?
Lancelot didn’t want anything to change. The past weeks had been the best of his existence, despite those pesky feelings that kept building inside of him, clamoring to be…well…felt.
“It’s close,” Merlin said quietly as he suddenly stopped.
He turned in a circle, scanning the surrounding area. Forest on all sides, packed with dense trees, shrubs and foliage.
Except for the leaf-covered clearing the six of them stood upon now. Large enough for a mud-brick hut and a small vegetable garden in the back. Lancelot could almost see it in his mind’s eye.
Apparently, Wolfe and Merlin really could, for Wolfe said:
“This is where my chamber used to be, where mother did her sewing.”
He walked the perimeter of a sixty or seventy square-foot box.
“And this is mother’s room,” he walked a similar box right beside the first chamber.
“And the main room,” Merlin said, picking up the thread.
He walked the length of the two rooms and the depth of another few feet.
Altogether, their old home must have been no larger than two hundred square feet, a luxury compared to other mud huts that Lancelot had seen farmers and peasants lived in. He never worried about small spaces for himself, for he always preferred to be out of doors, unless he needed to be close to Arthur, who lived in a castle when he wasn’t on the road.
“Then this must be the vegetable garden,” Annie said, standing at the back of the imaginary house.
“Is this where we start digging?”
“Aye,” Wolfe concurred, lowering to his haunches.
“Allow me,” Rui said, before transforming into a small greenish-blue dragon, though still large enough that her sharp front claws were the size of Arthur’s head.
Wolfe stepped aside as Rui sniffed the ground like a truffle-hunting pig.
Lancelot winced. If the she-dragon knew what he was thinking, she might swat him into the ground with her tail at the unflattering comparison.
She arched a bumpy dragon brow at him as if she had indeed heard his thoughts.
But that was impossible. Only Beasts, their bloodlines and their Mates could communicate telepathically amongst themselves. Lancelot didn’t fit into any of those categories.
Did he?
Except, he heard Rui’s excited bark as she began to dig—
Treasure!
Before long, one of her claws tapped against a hard object. Instantly, she transformed back to humanoid form, somehow retaining her clothes.
Lancelot would never tire of seeing the Beasts transform. Not a single one had the same ability. Each of their Gifts were unique to them, including something as simple as keeping the clothes on their back when they shifted from one form to another. Some could do it, some couldn’t.
She handed the worn metal box to Wolfe, who smoothed the dirt and debris away, before handing it to Merlin.
The dragon sorcerer carefully opened the box and looked inside, while Annie looked at her Mate, her gaze rivetted on his face.
