AN: I don't own Merlin

xxxx

Growing up, Gwen always felt excluded from most of her friends. While many of them loved to speculate about who their potential soulmates could be, she had to pretend that she had no one destined to love. Of course, although she desperately tried not to, she became jealous of everyone that had a soulmark. Although she was kind to everyone, it was hard to remain happy while knowing that she had to keep her mark a secret. She tried to keep an open mind, but she found it easy to develop a hatred toward her soulmate because of the secrets she had to keep her whole life. She wished every day that she could've had a normal soulmate, or even no soulmate at all!

When she got a job working as Morgana's servant, Gwen originally despised Arthur Pendragon. He was cocky, arrogant, and everything that she imagined her hated soulmate to be (because, of course, she imagined her soulmate be someone handsome yet ignorant to the struggles she went through hiding her tattoo). He didn't care about the troubles of others, just as long as he was okay. As she saw him outside training every day, torturing some poor servant, she vowed that she would sooner die than be married to royalty if that person was going to be like Arthur.

However, when Merlin arrived and became Arthur's new manservant, Gwen began to notice a change in Arthur. He was kinder to everyone, and began to speak with her more often, not just because he had to. Slowly, without even really realizing it, Gwen's feelings for Arthur had changed from disgust to kindness to something that one might just call love. Of course, Gwen knew that the chances of Arthur being her soulmate were almost zero, but she allowed herself the hope that, if she really did have a royal soulmate, he might be hers. Each day her love for him grew, until she decided to show him her mark so she could finally find out if they were meant to be together. She rushed up to his room before her confidence could fade and, not looking where she was going. She ran right into someone and got knocked onto the ground, feeling her dress rip on the floor. As she got up to apologize to the person, she looked up and saw Arthur staring with a huge grin, and exposed his tattoo, identical to the one he just saw through the rip in her dress.