Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

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    A low rumbling started behind her, sort of like a freight train picking up speed, and it took her a couple of seconds to realize it was Brennan, swearing a blue streak from the sound of it, in ancient Atlantean.
    “You are an idiot,” he yelled at her. Well, he’d been yelling at her for a while by then, but those were the first words in English.
    “I was just trying to protect you, you lunkhead,” she shouted back. “He wanted to kill you and no wonder. You can’t just go around punching people like that.”
    She was so furious that her mind didn’t know what to do with her anger, so her body took over and did the stupidest thing possible.
    She punched Brennan.
    Right in the stomach, which only hurt her hand on the steel bars he evidently called muscles. He didn’t even flinch, just looked down at her, every line and angle of his face hardening in utter fury.
    “You could have been killed,” he said, still shouting, even though she was standing right in front of him.
    “Better that than have you forget me and our baby, over and over, for the rest of my life,” she shouted right back in his face, without thinking, without considering, without any care for how it would sound. All she knew was that the words came boiling up from deep inside and wouldn’t be stopped.
    Everything else, however, stopped. All sound, all talking, even all breathing seemed to go silent around the two of them. The silence made Tiernan painfully aware of their audience.
    Suddenly, shockingly, Alaric started laughing. He punched Brennan in the arm, but it was a friendly, guy sort of punch, and there was no sign of the violence he’d intended only minutes before. “Oh, this is priceless. The baby? She’s pregnant, too? And Alexios and Grace haven’t had a chance to make their big announcement?”
    The priest started laughing again. “Atlantis is turning into a giant nursery. This is how the humans will finally defeat us. They’re turning our most prized warriors, one by one, into diaper-changing weaklings.”
    Brennan’s eyes widened and he got a panicked look on his face, but before he or Tiernan could say anything, Alaric shook his head and vanished. Just poof and gone. No mist, no special effects—he was just gone.
    Tiernan whirled around, searching for him, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Did he just—”
    “He does that,” Riley said. “It’s one of his many annoying habits. Deep down he’s a good guy.”
    Atlantis Redeemed – Warriors of Poseidon 05
    Page 124 of 232
    “Really, really deep, I’m guessing,” Tiernan muttered.
    “So, you’re pregnant? Um, not to be analytical, but didn’t you and Brennan just meet each other again yesterday?” Riley tried to be subtle about the way she was checking out Tiernan’s flat stomach.
    “No, I’m not pregnant. It was a vision, that’s all. Of the future. A future that’s not going to happen now, okay?”
    “I think maybe you have a few things to tell us,” Conlan said, his voice still mild, but it wasn’t a request, and they all knew it. It was definitely a royal command.
    Brennan ignored his prince, though. He had eyes only for Tiernan, and the ice that had chilled them was gone. Melted. Now his green gaze was burning right through her and he was looking at her like he wanted nothing more than to strip her bare right there and then and take her up against the wall.
    She swallowed and then took a deep, shaky breath and looked at Conlan. At Riley. Anywhere but at Brennan. “Once upon a time, a god cursed a warrior,” she began, not quite knowing how to go on past that.
    Everyone was silent for so long she started to panic, but then help came from an unexpected source.
    “The curse was also a blessing, had the warrior but known it,” Brennan said.
    Her shoulders slumped with relief, but before she could think of the next line, Brennan grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her up off her feet, and kissed her in a hard, passionate, take-no-prisoners kind of kiss. The kind of kiss that told her and everyone else in the room that he was damn well going to get her naked later and she was going to love every minute of it.
    After he released her, and her knees stopped wobbling, she just stood there, stunned, for a bit.
    “Well,” she finally managed. “Maybe we’ll be able to figure something out.”
    Brennan’s smile was more wolflike than Lucas’s had ever been, and he clasped her hand firmly before he turned to face Conlan again.
    “Let me tell