Warriors of Poseidon 06 - Atlantis Betrayed

magic here. If he will agree to be bound, we will consider allowing you both to leave unharmed. After your story, and if it pleases, of course.”
    Christophe’s face drained of all color, and Fiona realized that nothing could be worse for him than being bound. Not unless they planned to lock him in a box, and they’d only do that over her dead body.
    “No,” Fiona said. “Let him go. You can bind me or whatever you need to do.”
    “No!” Christophe shouted. “Leave her alone. Let her go. I’ll agree to anything you want.”
    Lucinda smiled. “Most do,” she said. “You two are so touching. Ah, here is help.”
    The oldest woman Fiona had ever seen in her life chose that moment to make an entrance from the back room. Fiona supposed she must be a shifter, too, considering the company, but she looked like Mother Earth or the moon goddess herself. In spite of the dire situation, Fiona’s fingers itched for her paints.
    The old woman’s pale, pale eyes widened, and then she laughed. Her laughter held so much power that even Fiona could feel it. All the wolves but the alpha bowed, and even Lucinda inclined her head.
    “No, child, I am no moon goddess, though you flatter me with the comparison,” the woman said, moving toward Christophe. “Now let’s see about the magic in this man. It tastes of sea and salt and ancient days, but not at all of sorcery.”
    Christophe bowed his most elegant court bow. “As I have told your friends, Wise One.”
    Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
    Page 140 of 188
    The old woman smiled and patted his cheek. “Melisande will do, Atlantean. Simply Melisande.”
    He tilted his head, studying her. “How did you—”
    “I know much beyond the purview of you youngsters,” she chided him. “Do you swear by your sea god to harm none here?”
    Christophe scanned the room, his gaze finally coming to rest on Lucinda. “I will harm none so long as my mate is not harmed, Lady Melisande. I do so swear it by my oath to Poseidon.”
    Fiona tried to mask her shock. His mate?
    “Such pretty manners in this boy,” Melisande said, chuckling. She turned toward Lucinda. “You may let him go now.”
    Lucinda made another gesture, and the shifters surrounding Christophe melted away, as did the ones around Fiona, although one of them took one long, last sniff of her hair before he moved off. Christophe leapt across the space separating them, so fast he was a blur, and pulled her into his arms.
    “Never again,” he whispered into her hair. “If something happened to you—Never again.”
    “We’re not out of the woods yet,” she murmured, as Lucinda approached.
    “I loved that painting,” Lucinda admitted. “The Scottish forest. That was you? You don’t look—”
    Fiona interrupted her with the simple action of pulling the red wig off her head and shaking out her own blond hair. “It’s easier to go out, sometimes, when people don’t know who I am. I’m in no way famous like an actor or TV presenter, but I do get recognized, and people—parents, especially—seem to be disturbed by the idea that the woman who writes their children’s bedtime stories might be seen in a pub.” She smiled ruefully. “I rather think they expect me to live in one of the forests from my paintings.”
     
    Lucinda nodded. “I once did. Perhaps someday I’ll tell you about it.”
    Christophe leaned forward, and Fiona squeezed his hand in warning.
    “I would enjoy hearing it,” she said. “Perhaps in another venue?”
    “I apologize for our lack of hospitality,” Lucinda said, handing Fiona’s credit card back to her. “Drinks on the house, while The Melting Moon’s first guest author tells us her tale,” she shouted, and a rousing cheer shook the walls of the pub.
    Fiona finally, very carefully, allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.
    Christophe, with Melisande ensconced in a chair nearby, watched as a room full of wolf shifters, among the deadliest of all predators, sat entranced and listened to Fiona tell a tale. Although, to be sure, the story was one of the finest he’d ever heard. The wolves’ own moon goddess, known for her incredible beauty and the vanity that was her greatest downfall, had apparently taken a little jaunt to Scotland one day and fallen hard for a Scottish warrior.
    Atlantis Betrayed – Warriors of Poseidon 06
    Page 141 of 188
    The warrior and the goddess. It named his own story, and he wasn’t sure his was fated to have any more of a