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Arthur wasn’t surprised to see Clarissant galloping up first, Lord Bedwyr hot on her heels.
“Uncle Arthur!” she bellowed. “My Lord Uncle!”
“I’m here,” Arthur called, spurring his steed into a bouncing trot towards his worried companions. Cai curled tighter against his chest.
“Your Majesty!” Bedwyr fretted. He’d be old before his time with all this worry, dazzling looks or no. “You vanished right in front of us! Was it the Lady Morgan’s doing? It was, wasn’t it?”
“My Lord Uncle?” Gareth’s steed came cantering down the twisting forest path, and the young man’s gentle voice made Cai cringe. “Is that… an omega?”
“Yes, to both of you.” Arthur sighed. “It was one of Morgan’s little games, and this omega was the prize at the center of it.”
Clarissant took a deep breath, then gasped. “Uncle! You claimed it, didn’t you? Your scent-”
“A cause for celebration!” Bedwyr’s face lit up.
“Oh, there you are, my Lord Uncle!” Agravain’s cheery bellow filled the glade as he rode up with the rest of the hunting party- Bors, Dinadan, Pellias, Caradog, two dozen others, all staring at the nude omega trembling against Arthur’s chest.
“You are very welcome among us, little one,” Gareth said kindly. “I commend you for managing to turn our king’s stubborn head at last.”
“That’s the biggest omega I’ve ever seen!” Agravain blurted. “Look at the muscles on it!”
“Courtesy, please, young lord.” Palamedes’ richly accented voice was amused even as he chided Arthur’s nephew. “It can hear you. And any omega that managed to earn His Majesty’s claim-”
“That’s the other part of Morgan’s little game, I’m afraid,” Arthur sighed. “Turn. Face them.”
Cai whimpered his reluctance, but obeyed.
Shocked gasps filled the glade. Agravain sputtered.
“It looks just like Sir Cai!” he cried. “Is it his sibling or cousin or something, my Lord Uncle?”
“Idiot,” Clarissant muttered. “Anyone can see it’s Cai himself!”
“But the beard!”
“Beards are known for being impossible to remove,” Dinadan sniped. “Much like the tangle of hair that passes for your brain.”
“But…” Agravain looked so bewildered and helpless Arthur had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing at his nephew. “But Cai’s not an omega!”
“He is now,” Arthur said when he was sure he could control his voice. “Morgan’s doing.”
“Aunt Morgan can make us omegas?” Agravain gasped, one hand flying to shield his groin.
“Your Majesty.” Bedwyr looked troubled. “There is no precedent for this! Will Lady Morgan lift the enchantment?”
“Why should she?” Arthur grinned. “He’s really much more agreeable this way. Anyhow, I’ve already claimed and knotted him- bred him, for all we know.”
“Congratulations, Cai,” Gareth said kindly.
“Fuck off, kitchen knight!” Cai snarled, kicking out wildly at Gareth’s horse so that it reared with a snort of fright.
Voices rose in alarm, but Gareth was a skilled rider. He kept his seat and quickly calmed the animal. Arthur’s tense body (tense as when he’d been a boy awaiting a blow from Cai) relaxed as his nephew’s horse settled, but the terrified rage still thrummed inside him.
Cai. The bullying fuck. The stupid, reckless omega. He could have killed Gareth, and for what? Trying to be kind to him? What kind of monster have I saddled myself with?
Cai was still ranting. “-condescending fuck, I’m the royal seneschal, a prince, a-”
“You,” Arthur growled, “are a whore in disgrace.”
Cai fell silent with a whimper. The acrid anger in his scent was immediately replaced with fear. “Master?”
“Get off my horse this instant!” Arthur thundered. “How dare you attack your master’s beloved nephew? A member of the royal family?”
Cai slipped down, trembling. All his anger seemed to be gone. He knelt in the crackling fall leaves, gazing up at Arthur in supplication.
“Master,” he whined, “please-”
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t ride away from you right now,” snarled Arthur.
Cai fell to the ground with a wail. Some of the horses shied, but Arthur’s mare, a sturdy warhorse, stayed steady.
“I’m sorry, Master!” cried Cai. “Please don’t leave me, please! I can’t live without you! I’m sorry!”
“You’re not sorry. You’re never fucking sorry. You’re only sorry there might be consequences for the way you treat others. Explain why you thought that was acceptable, slave.”
“I wasn’t thinking!” Cai wept, his great shoulders shaking with sobs. “I was just… everyone was talking about me like I couldn’t even hear them, like I didn’t count anymore, and I’m still me! A prince! The royal senesch-”
“You’re the royal fuckhole, and I’m seriously questioning whether you deserve even that much,” Arthur interrupted. “Your titles are gone. No omega can hold them. You’re nothing, Cai.”
“But just yesterday I was one of them! A knight of the round table!”
“You were a swaggering oaf whose bad behavior I allowed because of my promise to your father,” Arthur corrected. “And now you’re a feral omega who dared to attack the king’s nephew.”
“My Lord Uncle?”
Gareth had dismounted at some point. Now he knelt next to the groveling Cai, hands clasped beseechingly in front of him.
“I beg you to have mercy on him, my Lord Uncle.” Gareth’s clear brown eyes were full of sorrow. “He’s undergone such a change! He must be so frightened and confused. I shouldn’t have addressed him. I know he’s always hated me. I should have known it would provoke him in his fragile state. Anyhow, what if he’s carrying your heir? Please, Uncle, won’t you spare him for my sake?”
Arthur sighed, the red haze of fury clearing a little. His nephew’s kindness shamed him.
When Gareth had first come to Camelot, using a magical disguise (courtesy of good old Aunt Morgan, of course) to ensure that his uncle and siblings wouldn’t recognize him, Cai had put him to work in the scullery and tormented him ruthlessly. Even when Gareth had earned the chance for his first quest, Cai had mocked him before the whole court. He still took every opportunity to sneer at the ‘kitchen knight,’ as though Gareth’s determination to earn his own way instead of being handed a knighthood because he was the king’s blood were something to scorn rather than a cause to respect the young man. Gareth should have been reveling in his tormentor’s downfall, not pleading on his behalf.
Still, Arthur couldn’t let this kind of behavior go unpunished. No responsible owner would.
“Stand up, nephew,” Arthur said, dismounting himself so he could offer Gareth his hand. “You need never kneel to me.”
He pulled the young man into a tight hug and added, “If it will bother you to see his punishment, you can ride ahead to Camelot and let them know what’s happened.”
“It won’t upset me,” Gareth replied. “I know he deserves to be punished. But please don’t be too hard on him? It’s his first day as an omega, after all.”
Cai, wisely, hadn’t moved throughout any of this. Arthur glared down at him, but addressed his party.
“It seems I have some behavioral issues to deal with. Let’s all dismount and have something to eat. Rest a little while I discipline my omega.”
Cai moaned. “Master, please, not in front of-”
“Cai, do you remember what you said in your father’s hall when I presented as an alpha?” Arthur asked. His omega’s flinch and the spike of misery in his scent told him that Cai remembered very well. “Why would you expect me to grant you privacy? When I train my bitch, it will be a public affair.”
The knights whispered and laughed as they tied the horses to nearby trees. Arthur wasn’t fooled, and he was sure Cai wasn’t, either. They were watching everything.
Arthur settled on a fallen log and tugged his omega over his knee. Cai’s pale buttocks looked rather comical, thrust upwards like that and already bruising a little from the spanking Arthur had given him in the tower. Judging by Dinadan and Agravain’s sharp barks of laughter, Arthur wasn’t the only one who thought he looked funny.
“You will count and thank me, whore,” Arthur said coldly, and Cai moaned, covering his burning face with his hands.
Arthur brought his own hand down hard. His leather riding glove spared his palm the worst of the sting, but it did not seem to offer any relief for Cai, who gave a distinctly omegan wail of pain.
“Your Majesty, are you sure he knows how to count?” Dinadan snickered. “That wasn’t any number I’ve heard of.”
“Back home, there is a number called zero that means absence,” Palamedes said, voice heavy with amusement. “Perhaps that is what Your Majesty’s new plaything was trying to count?”
“One,” Cai gritted out, his scent such a heady mix of fear and pain and humiliation and rage that Arthur hardly knew which emotion was preeminent. Likely, Cai didn’t know either. “Thank you, Master.”
Arthur spanked him again, the loud whack startling a few birds, which took flight from the trees above them.
“Two, thank you, Master.”
“I’ve always thought that brat could do with a good hard spanking,” Caradog said sagely. “He’s been asking for it for years, really. Probably he was always a little omega bitch deep down. Maybe he always wanted His Majesty to lose patience and put him over his knee.”
“Three, thank you, Master.”
“Does that mean there’s something different about Cai? And Aunt Morgan couldn’t just turn any of us into omegas if we offended her?” Agravain asked.
Clarissant snorted. “If, for example, we accidentally trod on all the angelica in her herb garden?”
“Ahh! Four, thank you, Master!”
“Your Majesty?” Bors came to stand over them. “He’s tensing up, see?”
“You’re right, my friend.” Arthur glared down at his omega. “Relax. Now. Don’t try to make it hurt less. You deserve this.”
“I can’t relax with everyone watching!” Cai protested.
“How dare you speak so disrespectfully to His Majesty? Your own alpha?” Bedwyr scolded. “Just because you weren’t always an omega, that’s no excuse! As the king’s own pleasure slave, you should be more respectful than all the other omegas, not less!”
“My good friend is right, whore.” Arthur searched inside himself to see if there was any pity for the omega in his lap. There was not. Not after the way Gareth’s horse had reared and plunged. Not when he imagined his nephew thrown off, his head split on a rock. “I’ve been far too lenient about your speech.”
“But Master, I don’t-”
Arthur spanked him, a quick rain of hard strikes that had Cai screaming and the watching knights murmuring approval.
“There is no more ‘I’ for you,” he said when he was done. “Not anymore. You will refer to yourself properly.”
Cai sniffled miserably, still hiding his face in his arms. “It… it’s sorry, Master.”
“Better.”
“I don’t know, Your Majesty, I think he could do better than that,” Pellias said. “Just last month, I heard him demanding that a free beta servant call herself ‘this bitch’ when she apologized for folding his bedsheets in a way he didn’t like.”
Arthur glowered at the omega in his lap. “You bullying fuck. I was serious about your apologies. You’re going to lick the boots of every servant in Camelot and beg their forgiveness for your appalling behavior.
“Master, I-”
Arthur delivered another flurry of harsh spanks while Cai howled and the knights chuckled.
“Not a fast learner, is he?” Dinadan said.
Agravain shook his head sadly. “He never was very bright.”
“It’s sorry!” Cai squealed. “Master, please, it’s sorry!”
“Speak how you made that poor woman speak,” Arthur commanded pitilessly.
“This bitch is sorry!”
“Why did you think it was acceptable to treat her that way?”
“Please, Master, she was just a servant!”
“The way Gareth is just a kitchen knight and I was just a nameless foundling,” Arthur spat, giving him the hardest whacks yet. “You’re revolting.”
“Master!” The word was a wail. Cai was sobbing. “Please don’t be angry with your bitch! Your bitch can’t bear it! Your bitch was wrong about you, Master, so wrong! Your bitch understands now! Now your bitch sees that Master is so powerful and good, handsome and wise! Your bitch needs Master’s protection and approval more than it needs to breathe! Your bitch will do anything if Master will just forgive it, anything!”
“He’s beginning to beg like a proper omega,” Palamedes said approvingly. “You’re a natural, Your Majesty. Look how wet he is!”
Cai clamped his legs together with a sob. “N-no, I’m not… this bitch isn’t…”
“Slipping up with your words again.” Arthur spanked him soundly while Cai wept and squirmed. “As well as contradicting my honored knight and friend. Maybe it would be best if you just spread your legs and didn’t speak at all, Cai. Your words just seem to get you in trouble.”
When he’d finished with the spanking (for the moment) he delivered a slap to the omega’s tightly pressed thighs.
“Open,” Arthur commanded. “Now.”
Cai obeyed with a helpless sob.
Palamedes had been right. The omega’s new pussy was soaked. It was so wet that it shone in the golden autumn light.
“Now that’s a proper omega pussy,” Clarissant said admiringly. “Aunt Morgan did good work! It even gets wet at punishment like it’s supposed to!”
“I never thought I’d approve of anything about Cai, but it’s hard to argue with a pussy that wet and needy.” Dinadan grinned at Arthur. “I can see why you’re willing to put up with him now, Your Majesty.”
Cai wept harder. “Master, does your bitch have to let them all inspect it and comment on it?”
“Yes,” Arthur said pitilessly. “I’ve never heard you being anything but crude and cruel when discussing omegas’ pussies. My honored knights, by contrast, are being very kind about yours. Complimentary, even. Thank them for complimenting your worthless pussy.”
Cai’s moan of despair almost moved him to relent, but Arthur held firm. This was another important lesson. His new omega had to learn that he was not entitled to privacy or dignity, especially not when he’d never respected the privacy or dignity of others.
“Thank you, Lord Clarissant and Sir Dinadan, for complimenting this bitch’s worthless pussy,” Cai sobbed.
Arthur decided to reward his obedience.
Cai’s squirming and tears, his red, bruising ass, and now the sight of his soaked pussy… it was enough to make a far less virile alpha than Arthur hard.
“Stand,” he commanded, and Cai rose shakily. Arthur quickly undid his trousers, freeing his erection, then pulled his omega back down into his lap.
Cai whined needily when he felt Arthur’s cock pressing at his entrance.
“Master,” he whimpered, “oh…”
Then he looked at the watching, grinning knights and shut his mouth.
Arthur had no patience for these silly games. He pulled back.
“Master, please!” Panic made Cai’s voice high and tight, and he thrust his hips back, seemingly planning to impale himself. Arthur’s tight hold on his waist prevented this, and Cai squirmed needily, mewling like the sweetest, most submissive omega at court. “Please, Master, please!”
“What do you want, whore?” Arthur asked.
Cai didn’t hesitate this time, though Arthur saw him looking miserably at their audience again. The omega lifted his hands to his face, hiding it, but he still spoke.
“Your cock, Master, your powerful, dominant alpha cock! Please fuck your bitch, please, your bitch needs it so badly! Use it, stretch it, breed it, knot it, please! Please have mercy and use your worthless omega pussy as it’s meant to be used! Fuck your bitch, your omega, your worshipful fuckslave! Please, Master!”
Arthur pulled him down onto his erection in a single, brutal thrust, and Cai’s wail of pleasure sent the birds flapping out of the trees in a rush.
“Thank you, Master,” the omega gasped when he’d caught his breath. His body melted into Arthur’s, a needy arch of pleasure. “Thank you, oh, Master, yes, thank you!”
As wonderful as it had been to fuck his new possession at the tower, Arthur was especially enjoying this. It felt so right to make his claim public, to have his knights watch as his omega squirmed needily on his cock. There would be plenty of public fucking in Cai’s future. Next time he held court he would be sure to take him on the throne, the throne Cai had tried to steal by claiming the miracle all those years ago. Arthur would remind him of that pitiful attempt as he pounded Cai’s desperate pussy for all to see.
The omega came almost at once, his pussy clenching deliciously and fluttering around Arthur in quick, muscular ripples as his heavy, bouncing cock squirted. Several of the knights laughed derisively.
“Can’t even hold his orgasm until he’s given permission,” Bedwyr said disapprovingly.
“Well, it’s his first day.” Gareth, of course. “I’m sure he did his best. You know how hard it is for them to restrain themselves when they’re granted an alpha’s cock.”
Cai whimpered, and Arthur sighed.
“Really? This humiliates you, too?”
“Yes, Master, your bitch is sorry!” sobbed the omega, his pussy still clenching with aftershocks.
“Being the king’s own omega slave is an honor!” Bedwyr scolded. “And being fucked and allowed to orgasm is an honor as well! You should be grateful and proud to come on His Majesty’s cock, no matter who is watching!”
“This bitch is grateful!” Cai wept. “It is, truly!”
“Not every owner would be so kind as to let your naughty cocklet stay free like that.” Bedwyr was in a high dudgeon now. He’d been complaining to Arthur about his churlish ‘foster brother’ for years, and now he had a whole new list of reasons to disapprove of Cai. Arthur supposed he should let his friend get it out of his system. “And after the way you behaved to His Majesty in the past? If our king weren’t so kind and forgiving, he’d have left you to earn your bread by begging and whoring yourself! He’d have given you as a toy to the castle guards! He’d have sent you back to your father to make whatever collaring arrangement he could manage to find for such an unappreciative, uncouth, badly behaved omega! You should be flat on the ground kissing the dust before His Majesty’s feet, begging for permission even to lick his boots! I can’t believe that he’s deigned to claim and train you, to fuck you when you’ve done nothing to earn it. And all you can do is whine? Don’t you have any sense of how privileged you are?”
Interestingly, as Bedwyr’s tirade went on, Cai’s pussy began twitching and contracting around Arthur’s cock.
As much as his new omega clearly hated being humiliated and degraded, he also appeared to get off on it.
Was that a little perk Morgan had added? Or was it inherent to Cai himself? Had there been a grain of truth to Caradog’s speculation that deep down, Cai had been waiting for years for Arthur to snap and put him in his place?
He would never know. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was the present, and the needy clenching of Cai’s pussy as Bedwyr berated him.
“This bitch doesn’t mean to be ungrateful!” Cai wailed, still covering his face. “This bitch just doesn’t want… this bitch was one of you, it had your respect, and now-”
“Stupid whore,” Arthur interrupted, silencing Cai with a hard thrust that made his pussy clench wildly. “No one respected you. You have never done anything to earn respect. You were a bullying thug who hid behind your father’s position and my promise to him. Those who were weaker than you feared you, but that’s not the same. You never did understand that. And as for my honored knights? They have never felt anything for you but contempt. Just because you’re experiencing that contempt a little more directly now, that doesn't mean it’s new. You’ve lost no respect. You never had any.”
Cai came again. This time, even more of the knights laughed and hollered.
“Oh, he likes it!” Dinadan cackled. “He likes when his master tells him what he is! If Your Majesty puts him any further in his place, he might burst!”
Cai sobbed, but Arthur did not relent. This was an important lesson, and the sooner his omega learned it, the better off he would be.
“You’ve been hollow all your life,” he said, pounding into his slave mercilessly. “No thought for others, no interest in anything outside yourself. So angry all the time even though you’ve always had everything anyone could want. Well, that’s over now. There’s a whole world beyond the end of your nose, and it’s long past time you entered it. And you’re not going to be hollow anymore. Feel how full you are?”
“So full, Master!” Cai wailed, shoving himself down to meet Arthur’s thrusts, to take him deeper. “Thank you for filling your bitch!”
He shrieked with desperation when he felt Arthur’s knot pressing at the entrance of his pussy.
“I’m going to knot you,” Arthur told his omega, “and you are going to take your hands off your face and look at my knights as it happens. Let them see what a needy omega bitch you are as you come on your alpha’s knot. No more hiding.”
Cai’s whole body shook with sobs, but he obeyed. Arthur had expected no less. Whether due to magic or his own new body, he suspected that Cai would do just about anything if it meant getting Arthur’s knot in his pussy.
Sure enough, the omega came explosively when Arthur’s knot breached him, squealing and writhing in ecstasy. Arthur himself moaned. It felt so good, so right, the desperate, supplicatory milking of the pussy he owned, pleading wordlessly for his seed.
Arthur’s orgasm was long and satisfying, and he relished every one of Cai’s needy spasms as his knot went down. When it seemed that Cai might finally stop coming, Arthur reached around and rubbed his cocklet with firm, authoritative strokes. That ensured helpless orgasm after helpless orgasm for his new slut.
By the time Cai was coming completely dry, he seemed to have gotten over his shyness for the moment. He stared out at the knights, glassy-eyed, not even reacting to Dinadan’s sly taunts.
Against his will, Arthur’s feelings of pity began to return.
Morgan’s enchantment and Cai’s own new omega body must have been playing absolute havoc with his mind. She’d put Arthur at the center of Cai’s world, and his body was insisting that Arthur stay there, even though Cai’s habits and outlook were otherwise unchanged. He was the same selfish, odious asshole he’d always been, but now his world had been tilted so that he worshipped Arthur, needed him, clung to him, craved his approval… and because he was still the same person, he had no way to get it.
Arthur didn’t think he’d been too hard on his omega. Cai would require constant harsh discipline to become something approximating a decent, well-behaved royal slave.
But discipline could be mixed with mercy, as long as Cai understood his place.
“That’s better, Cai,” Arthur said, pulling the omega back to lean against his chest.
Cai melted against him, alertness returning as he began to sob anew.
“Is Master pleased with his bitch?” he asked pathetically, the fresh sting of hope filling his scent.
“Yes,” Arthur said, and Cai twisted around to cling to him, peppering Arthur’s chest with ecstatic kisses, his cries of joy and gratitude mostly muffled by Arthur’s shirt.
“All you really have to do to please me is try, Cai,” Arthur sighed, putting his arms around his ecstatic slave. “Try to be a good boy and remember your place. I don’t need you to be perfect. I need you to try.”
He realized what a difficult thing he was asking. Cai had never had to try before, to work for anything. He’d been a pampered prince all his life. The concept of real effort, especially effort to improve himself, was as foreign to him as Palamedes’ mother tongue.
But Cai clung to him and wept, “Your bitch will try, Master! Your bitch will try so hard to please you, always, always! Your bitch loves you so much, Master!”
Agravain snorted. “My best pair of riding boots says we won’t even make it back to the castle before our Lord Uncle has to stop and spank him again.”
“No one wants your smelly old boots,” Clarissant shot back. “But you’re on. I think he’ll misbehave twice before we get back, and he’ll make us all late for supper.”
“The important thing is that His Majesty has claimed his first omega,” Bedwyr said. “I’m sure we can find more appropriate slaves to attend the king in public, while this one stays out of sight and gets bred.”
“You’re all being too quick to judge,” Gareth said. “Cai has an exciting opportunity. This is a whole new life! I think as long as you keep being firm and kind with him, my Lord Uncle, he will flourish in his new role. Just look at him! Have any of us ever seen him so happy before?”
Arthur realized that his nephew was right. He’d seen Cai swaggering, triumphant, arrogant, self-satisfied… but he’d never seen him happy. At peace. And now, snuggled against Arthur’s chest, well-fucked and flying high on the joy of having pleased his master, Cai looked truly at rest, his face softened by a blissful smile.
Arthur liked how it looked on him.
Clarissant and Agravain were no doubt right. Once Cai wasn’t so knot-drunk, he would probably be acting up again in no time. But that was all right. Arthur would keep his omega’s leash short and his ass bruised, and he would be sure to offer this kind of forgiveness and tenderness after each correction. Maybe, in that way, he could keep finding new sides of his old tormentor. Soft sides like this.
Cai whimpered sadly when Arthur pulled out of him. When Arthur set his omega at his feet, Cai slumped forward, flattening himself in total submission.
“Master?” he said timidly, his voice still a little slurred. “Please may your bitch be allowed to apologize to Lord Gareth?”
Surprised and pleased, Arthur raised his eyebrows. “Go ahead.”
Cai crawled naked to Gareth’s feet. When Dinadan sniped that the look suited him, he replied only with a meek “Thank you for complimenting this bitch, Sir Dinadan.” And when he reached Gareth’s boots, he flattened himself again and began to kiss and lick them meekly.
“Lord Gareth,” he said, “this bitch behaved inexcusably towards you. You are the beloved nephew of this bitch’s lord and master, its alpha, its god. You have showed this bitch nothing but kindness and compassion, even though… even though its treatment of you has always been terrible. This worthless omega bitch supplicates itself before you and humbly begs that you forgive it, honored lord, though it does not deserve your mercy.”
“Of course I forgive you, Cai,” Gareth said gently, smiling down at the omega. “You’re having a difficult time. We all understand that. I think things will get much better for you with a little time, and you will be a credit to my Lord Uncle and his entire court.”
Cai whimpered as though he had been struck. “The honored lord’s mercy overwhelms and shames this bitch. Thank you, Lord Gareth.”
Arthur let Cai kiss Gareth’s boots a moment longer, then scooped his omega up.
“Time to go,” he said, brushing the dirt and bits of dead leaf from Cai’s belly and thighs and leading him to where the horses waited. “But Cai? I’m proud of you.”
It had to hurt when Arthur handed Cai up into the saddle and his punished ass settled on the horse’s back. But even pain couldn’t diminish the joy in the omega’s scent.