Warriors of Poseidon 03 - Atlantis Unleashed

her into the ER, trying not to wonder why something deep in his chest ached at the feel of her in his arms. Then she‟d pulled away from him and collapsed into that chair, and she hadn‟t moved since. Alexios had wasted a good ten minutes convincing various hospital personnel that he didn‟t need to be treated for a head wound, after they‟d caught sight of the apparently alarming amount of blood that remained in his hair and on the side of his face. He‟d finally snarled something along the lines of “it‟s not my blood,” and they‟d backed off, all wary apprehension with a healthy dose of fear mixed in. Ever since then, he‟d waited. And waited.
    He despised waiting.
    Hospital security was there in force, and the police were on their way. Luckily, Grace had excellent contacts within the local Paranormal Ops unit, and Alexios had met some of the officers before. He wasn‟t worried about the police. P Ops needed to be told about the attack, at any rate.
    However, although he didn‟t want to examine the reasons why too closely, he was worried about Grace.
    She‟d somehow attached herself to him the first time he‟d run a mission with the human rebels in St. Louis, adopting him as a mentor without bothering to ask his opinion of the idea.
    He‟d snarled at her to leave him alone. Repeatedly. When she‟d simply fallen back and quietly continued to shadow him, he‟d tried a different tactic and ignored her.
    If he were honest with himself, he‟d admit that he‟d only pretended to ignore her. Grace was a hard woman to ignore. She was fiercely independent, dark eyes burning with quiet intensity and a dagger‟s-edged intellect. Slender, with firm, toned muscles, she was still an athlete, like she‟d been as a child. An Olympic contender in swimming at only fifteen years old, Quinn had told him.
    But a decade ago the world had changed, and Grace‟s world had collapsed beneath her. A band of female vamps, celebrating their newfound freedom when vampires and shifters had declared their presence to the world, had run across Grace‟s big brother in a bar. He hadn‟t survived the party.
    Grace nearly hadn‟t survived his death.
    They‟d been alone in the world, their father gone when they were young and their mother dead from cancer not long before Grace lost her brother. Quinn said Grace had been broken.
    Lost.
    But she‟d found a purpose in fighting back. Spent the past ten years training for command in the rebel army. He‟d seen her in battle, and she was good. Damn good. Her reflexes and strength were incredible for a human, and she was almost preternaturally lethal with her bow.
    But she‟d been running on rage and adrenaline for a decade, and if Michelle died—Michelle, the only friend she had left from the innocence of her childhood—Grace was going to crash, hard.
    Alexios had seen the signs in her. He knew it was coming. The only thing he couldn‟t figure out was if he wanted to be around when it happened. It was bound to be personal, that kind of emotional overload.
    Too personal for an Atlantean warrior, sworn to the service of his prince and the sea god, who‟d vowed to live his life free of even the most casual emotional attachments.
    A doctor wearing bloodstained scrubs pushed through the doors to the waiting room and looked around expectantly. “Nichols? Michelle Nichols?”
    The blood drained out of Grace‟s face, but she jumped up out of the chair. “Yes, that‟s me. I mean, I‟m her friend. What happened? Is she okay?”
    The doctor frowned, and Alexios started across the room. It wasn‟t news he wanted Grace to hear alone.
    “She lost a lot of blood, and she had a collapsed lung,” the doctor said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “I‟m not going to lie to you. We did the best we could, and now we wait and see. If your friend‟s a fighter, she just might have a chance.”
    Grace stood, frozen, seemingly unable to speak. Alexios put an arm around her and shut down the part of his brain that wanted to think about how right she felt there. She was merely a soldier temporarily in his command, and it was his turn to stand for her.
    “Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “We‟ll wait for news.”
    The doctor nodded, barely glancing at Alexios, then the man‟s head snapped up for the customary double take Alexios had grown so bitterly accustomed to over the years. “I hope you don‟t mind my professional curiosity, but how did you get that facial scarring?