Heart Of Atlantis

Conlan, and she told him of the terrors she’d faced as a rebel. She cried when he told her about the long days in the oubliette, and he tensed and gritted his teeth when she described the time the wolf shifter had caged her for three days, saving her for a snack, before she’d finally escaped.
    “It was actually the best I ate that whole year,” she said, laughing in retrospect at the experience, which had been terrifying at the time. “He kept feeding me roasted chicken to fatten me up, and I love roasted chicken. He would have been better off to eat the chicken himself and let me go. I was a lot of trouble, and I stole his wallet on the way out.”
    “How old were you?”
    “Maybe seventeen,” she said casually, and he winced inside at the thought of her teenage self going through such a horrible ordeal, but he tried not to let her see it.
    The soul-meld didn’t let them hide from each other, though, and she smiled. “You can’t save me from my past, remember? You can only protect me in the future.”
    “We can protect each other. We are a good team,” he said, and she rewarded him with a kiss, and then they didn’t say much other than
yes
, and
please
, and
more
, for a little while.
    On the third day, he brought up the scariest topics of all. Marriage and children.
    “You do realize I want a little girl who looks just like you,” he said, and she choked on her glass of wine.
    “Do you really see me as mother material?”
    He considered her question seriously. “You’ve been taking care of an entire rebel army for several years. Do you think a child would be more difficult than that?”
    “Yes. I can’t shoot my daughter if she annoys me.”
    He laughed, but she wasn’t entirely sure she’d been kidding.
    “Why don’t we just spend more time with Aidan and see what we think?”
    “Fine. For now,” he said. “Also, do you want a church or an Elvis?”
    This time she fell off the bed. When he leaned over, she stared up at him, not moving. “Do you even know what that means?”
    “Yes, it means we will marry in the human way, and you will buy a horrible dress that looks like a cake, and also there will be real cake to eat, and Ven will take me to a bar in which a half-dressed woman will jump out of a very large cake.”
    He reached down and pulled her back on the bed. “What is this human obsession with cake?”
    By the end of the third day, both of them were willing, if not exactly ready, to join the rest of the world again.
    “Thank you for this,” she told him. “This wonderful respite from anything dark or unpleasant in the world. I have never enjoyed any time more in my adult life.”
    “I, too, have not wanted this time to end. Perhaps we could make this a regular occurrence,” he suggested. “Not only here, but in places around the world, as we travel for pleasure, as you said, and not for fighting or missions.”
    “I would love that,” she admitted. “And I love you. I only hope that real life doesn’t intrude and pull us apart.”
    “Never. In any event, we have a tiger shifter to cure.”

    Quinn and Alaric had dressed slowly, neither of them in a hurry to leave their refuge, but when they finally rejoined the rest of Atlantis, it was to find that only good things had been happening for the formerly lost continent, almost a reflection of their own path over the previous three days, so they could add guilt-free to the list of superlatives about their time together. Quinn headed off in search of her sister and nephew, feeling lighter than she had in many years.
    A baby? Her? No.
    Well, maybe.
    She put her hands in her pockets and whistled as she walked, and she almost didn’t notice and certainly didn’t mind when many of those she passed smiled indulgently. A life of leisure. She could get used to it.
    Maybe.
    “About time he unchained you from the bed,” said a voice she’d been afraid she’d never hear again. She whirled around to find Jack, in human form, grinning at her like a big loon.
    She ran at him and threw herself into his arms, and he hugged her a little too tightly, for a little too long, before he put her down, but they both pretended not to notice.
    “So, are you happy?” His voice was rough and almost hoarse, as if spending so much time in tiger shape had damaged it, or maybe the hoarseness was from the emotion she could feel circling around in him.
    Regret and resignation were there, true, but also the glimmerings of something that felt a