Atlantis Redeemed (42 page)

He took her hand and smiled at her, but his eyebrows drew together. “Tiernan, your silence is worrying me more than I care to admit right now.”

She laughed and threw herself at him, knocking him over into the grass. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”

She kissed every inch of his face, lingering on his lips, and then she sat up, straddling him, and pulled her shirt over her head. “Just how private is this garden?”

Brennan’s dangerously sexy smile spread across his face. “Private enough.”

 

 

 

 

Yellowstone National Park, Wolf Pack Ceremonial Grounds, five days later

 

Brennan looked at the circle of people ringing the fire. Shifters, humans, and Atlanteans. Even a vampire. He nodded to Daniel, who kept back and a little apart from the rest.

Conlan and Riley held little Prince Aidan. Near them, Alexios and Grace stood in a place of honor, each of them holding one of Lucas and Honey’s twins. Ven and Erin huddled together on Tiernan’s far side. Erin was in deep mourning for the loss of her sister, but had insisted on attending the naming ceremony, saying they all needed to see hope and life, instead of just death and battle. Apparently whatever mission Conlan had sent them on in Europe had not gone well.

They had all attended Deirdre’s memorial service the day before, and Erin’s grief was still very fresh. It was part of the great circle of life, death, and love. Brennan had experienced so much of the first two but never had dared hope for the third over the course of his millennia-long life. He pulled Tiernan closer, yet again silently giving thanks for the gift of her presence in his life.

Lucas stepped forward, holding his mate’s hand, and everyone quieted. “We thank you for sharing our joy during this sacred ceremony of naming, a tradition in our Pack since the beginning of recorded history.”

Honey raised their joined hands. “As we pledged our lives to each other, we pledge our lives and our sons’ lives to this alliance between our peoples and to the quest to bring all of us together in harmony, for now and forever.”

Lucas nodded at Tiernan. “Your newspaper series about Litton and his schemes with the vampires has placed enormous pressure on Washington to take action. Already, many members of the Primus have been forced to resign.”

Next, he nodded at Daniel. “Your accession to Primator gives us great hope.”

Daniel bowed elegantly. “I will do my best not to let you down.”

Grace and Alexios handed the babies to Lucas and Honey, who held them up in the air.

“I name you Lucas Alexios and Nathan Brennan,” Lucas proclaimed, his voice ringing clear and loud. “May you be spokes in the wheel of peace that rules our planet for centuries to come.”

Brennan met Alexios’s stunned gaze across the fire.

Did you know?
he sent on the mental pathway.

Alexios shook his head. He hadn’t known, either.

Brennan bowed, his heart full. “I am honored beyond the telling of it. May the waters of your ancestors bless and nourish your boys for every day of their lives and every step of their paths, both as human and as wolf.”

Alexios bowed and uttered a similar sentiment, but Brennan didn’t hear it, because Tiernan whispered in his ear, “Nice job, Uncle Brennan.”

He grinned. “Uncle now, father soon. Should we start thinking of names? Lots and lots of names?”

“Let me at least finish my series of articles before we think about babies,” she said, looking a little pale.

“
Mi amara
, you’ll probably get a Pulitzer for this,” he said, knowing she had always dreamed of the prestigious prize.

“Maybe,” she said, shrugging. “It doesn’t matter as much to me anymore. Dying gives a girl a different perspective on life.” As everyone around the fire cheered for the babies, Tiernan pulled Brennan’s face down to hers and kissed him thoroughly. “I have all I need right here.”

Brennan thought his heart might burst from his chest, it was filled with so much joy. He pulled her into his arms, rejoicing in the wonder of standing shoulder to shoulder with a circle of allies and friends.

The babies chose that moment to wake up and start crying for milk, and everyone laughed, but then a large rustling shook the underbrush back away from the clearing and all the shifters tensed. Seconds later, an enormous tiger leapt from between the trees and strolled up to the fire, transforming as he walked.

“Man, I love this place,” Jack said, now fully human and fully dressed. “Startled the hell out of some buffalo, though.”

“Bison,” Tiernan and Brennan said in unison.

Everybody laughed again.

Suddenly, a shimmering spiral of green and golden light appeared in the center of the fire, and it resolved itself into a man. A Fae prince to be precise. Rhys na Garanwyn, high prince of the High Court Seelie Fae. “I am here, you can proceed,” he drawled, impossibly arrogant as always.

He bowed to Lucas and Honey, and then again, deeper, to Conlan and Riley.

Lucas smiled. “Be welcome, Prince of the Fae. The future of our world will depend upon cooperation between all men and women of like mind, regardless of race or species. We will do all within our power to ensure that our children will grow up in that world.”

“As will we for our son,” Conlan declared.

“We, too, for our child,” Alexios said, one hand on Grace’s belly.

Everyone spontaneously cheered, and there, by the fire, for that little time, they all had hope that battle and war would soon be done and peace would, finally, reign.

“Our triplets, as well,” Brennan murmured to Tiernan, under cover of the cheering. She smiled, content to keep that prediction safely between the two of them for a while longer.

Several of Lucas’s Pack members poured champagne for everyone and they all raised their glasses. Brennan offered the first toast. “To the shining hope of the next generation, as the wheel of time turns and peace again rules the world. May we live to see it.”

They all drank to that, and to many other toasts, and then the gathering broke up into small groups of conversation. Brennan steered Tiernan away from the fire and found a quiet corner among the trees in the moonlight.

“A future together in a better world that we will help create,” she said. “No matter what it takes.”

“We have each other,” Brennan replied. “There is nothing more that I need to face eternity.”

“We have each other,” she agreed.

He grinned and put a hand on her belly. “And the triplets,” he reminded her.

She put her arms around his neck and smiled that sexy smile, full of feminine intrigue and mystery. “Shut up and kiss me.”

So he did.

Turn the page for a special preview of the next book in the Warriors of Poseidon series

By Alyssa Day

 

Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

Jack the Ripper must have been a vampire.

Christophe sat on the tiny ledge underneath the minute hand on Big Ben’s western face—twenty-five past midnight—thinking random thoughts and surveying the city that had always been like a second home to him. The clock tower was arguably London’s most recognizable landmark, and something about perching on it, nearly three hundred feet off the ground, made Christophe feel like the master of all he surveyed. He sat with his back against the familiar gilt lettering, DOMINE SALVAM FAC REGINAM NOSTRAM VIC-TORIAM PRIMAM, and wondered if Queen Victoria the First had been honored to have each of the four clock faces proclaim that her people called out to their god to keep her safe.

A bitter laugh escaped him at the idea that Poseidon would ever worry about keeping
him
safe. Centuries of fighting had taught Christophe the bloody and painful lesson that the sea god didn’t care much about keeping his Atlantean warriors anything but honed for battle. Throwing them to the wolves and the other shifters, sure. Using them as cannon fodder against the vampires, no problem. Eleven thousand years after the original pact, the current members of the elite Atlantean fighting force were still fulfilling their sacred duty to protect humanity.

Humanity should protect its own damn self.

Not that it could, or had ever been able to, against the dark and ugly that crawled out of the night. Since the monsters revealed themselves to humans more than a decade ago, the stupid humans had done more and more to offer themselves up on the proverbial silver platter, like the sheep the vamps called them. Christophe had suggested a few times that the warriors change their mission from protecting humans to rounding them up, stuffing apples in their mouths, and then jamming sticks up their asses.

Human-kabobs. Simple, easy, and everybody goes home happy.

The high prince wasn’t exactly down with the idea. Christophe “wasn’t a team player.” “Had a chip on his shoulder.” Insert social worker psychobabble here. Conlan’s new human wife had the prince by the balls and Princess Riley was all about kindness and understanding.

Which sucked.

Christophe would have preferred that Conlan just haul off and punch him in the face, like the prince used to do in the old days when somebody pissed him off. It would have been far less painful.

“Less painful than smelling your stench, for example,” he said to the vampire who was floating up the side of the tower, probably trying to surprise him.

“Interesting place to hang out, mate.” The vamp levitated up until he was eye level with Christophe. “Got a death wish?”

Christophe scanned the vamp, his gaze raking it from spiky blue hair to steel-toed boots. He blamed London’s punk rock scene.

“You threatening me?”

The vamp shrugged. “Just pointing out that you’re pretty far up for a breakable human.”

Christophe bared his teeth in what passed for a smile with him these days, and the vamp flinched a little. “Not human. Not breakable.”

Holding his hands up in a placating gesture, Punker Boy floated back and away from him. “Got no beef with you. Just surprised to see somebody in my spot.”

“You’re Queen Victoria, then?”

The vampire laughed and, surprisingly, seemed to be genuinely amused. “Know your Latin, do you?”

It was Christophe’s turn to shrug. “I get by.” But then an inconvenient twinge of duty nagged at him, and he sighed. “You planning to kill any humanity tonight?”

“Any humanity?” The vamp floated closer, his eyebrows drawing together as he studied Christophe. “What are you talking about?”

Christophe dropped his daggers from their arm sheaths into his hands and balanced them, not taking his gaze from the vamp. “Duty, sacred oath, blah blah blah. If you’re planning to kill any humans, I need to end you.”

“I’d be stupid to say yes, then, wouldn’t I?” The vamp’s voice held genuine curiosity, and not a little wariness.

“Stupid. Vampire.” Christophe shrugged again. “Yeah, those words have gone together a time or two.”

“No.”

“No?”

The vamp eyed the daggers. “No, I’m not planning to kill anybody tonight. Or ever, for that matter. Who needs all the trauma, with synth blood and donors?”

Christophe judged the vamp to be sincere enough. He considered killing him anyway, just for something to do, but didn’t really feel like chasing his daggers all the way down after they’d sliced the vamp’s head off. Especially since his night wasn’t over—he still had to go steal one of the crown jewels from the Tower of London.

He slid the blades into their sheaths and shot a considering stare at the bloodsucker. “So. Here’s a question. Was Jack the Ripper a vampire?”