Warriors of Poseidon 02 - Atlantis Awakening

to a shout, then continued, more quietly. Bleak. "Do it for me."
     
    Alaric clenched his hands into fists, pulled power from the air around them, and hurled a ball of blue-green electricity across the room. It smashed into the wall, leaving a smoking, charred hole in the marble that was exactly the shape of the hole that anguish and frustration had burned into his gut. "Don't you think I would if I could, Conlan? For you—my friend? For your woman and unborn child? For the future king, queen, and heir to the throne? I don't give a good gods-damn about the rules. I just don't have the power."
     
    Conlan's entire body slumped, and his despair buffeted Alaric in almost palpable cyclone-force waves. "Then we have no options. There is nothing we can do."
     
    Alaric pushed the words past lips gone suddenly numb. "Have you—did you contact…"
    He couldn't say her name. Berated himself for the coward he was.
     
    Settled for the pronoun. "Her?"
     
    Conlan nodded. "Yeah, we got a message out to Quinn, we think. At least we got word to that weretiger colleague of hers, Jack, that Riley needed her sister. Who knows when she'll get it, though? Last I heard, the rebel alliance was looking into a new vampire threat on the West Coast, and Quinn always has to be in the thick of any—"
     
    Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    The prince stopped midsentence, closed his eyes and groaned. "I'm sorry, Alaric. I wasn't thinking. I'm sure she's fine. You know Quinn, she's a fighter."
     
    Alaric cut him off, proud beyond reason that he'd controlled the trembling in his hands almost as soon as it had started. "No, my prince, I do not know Quinn. And I never will.
    Which is as it must be, decreed by Poseidon's laws and by reality." The harshness in his voice couldn't be helped. "We both know she deserves far better than me."
     
    With that, he took two running steps and leapt into the air, dissolving into mist as he did, and escaped out of the high window of the Temple. Escaped from Conlan's pain and fear for his woman and child. Escaped from his own dark, soul-destroying hunger for a woman he could never have.
     
    But even in the form of shimmering mist, he couldn't escape Conlan's final words, murmured though they were. "There is no such person, old friend."
     
    Seattle
     
    Erin pulled into the driveway of the old Victorian home that served as headquarters of the Seattle Circle of Light coven and glanced into her rearview mirror. The sleek black Jaguar Ven drove purred its way into the drive behind her, blocking off any chance of escape. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel for an instant. Trapped.
     
    "Not that I want to escape," she whispered to the empty car. "This is my chance to build an alliance with someone with the power to help me. Help us."
     
    Her car door opened as she unbuckled her seat belt, and she blinked up at him, startled. "How did you—oh, right. Atlantean super powers, I presume."
     
    "That's me. Super Ven, at your service." He stepped back almost far enough to give her room to climb out of the car. She took it as a challenge to her courage and stepped out, Atlantis Awakening – Warriors of Poseidon 02
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    standing so close her face nearly touched his chest. She caught his scent, a compelling combination of salt water and spice and man. Forced herself to resist a sudden urge to bury her nose in his shirt and inhale deeply. To wrap herself in his warmth and defy the icy damp of a Seattle winter's night.
     
    The opals on her fingers trilled a sudden, startling call that expanded through her senses. Lonely, haunting. Singing of want, hunger, and the darker sides of need. Erin's knees nearly buckled at the power of it, and the warrior's hands shot out to grasp her arms.
     
    "Don't touch me," she gasped, but it was too late, too late, far too late. The song of the opals soared and crescendoed inside her mind, through her soul, and into the desiccated spaces inside her heart. And where the music smashed through boundaries in her control, the Wilding rushed to follow. It seared her nerve endings and sparked along her skin, electric bright.
     
    Ven's eyes darkened, and he bit off a curse as he jerked away from her, releasing her arms. She fell to her knees before him, clutching her hands to her head, clamping down on the forbidden magic. Mumbling words of power under her breath. "Restrictos, terminos, immediamentos!"
     
    Gasping for breath, she forced the magic