Atlantis Redeemed Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  Teaser chapter

  “Alyssa Day’s Warriors of Poseidon series is fascinating, thrilling, and deeply romantic. The perfect blend of fabulous world-building and sexy romantic adventure.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Jayne Castle

  “A PHENOMENAL NEW SERIES.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Alyssa Day works her own brand of sexy sorcery in this fabulous new paranormal series. Warriors and witches have never been so hot!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros

  ATLANTIS UNMASKED

  “Day utilizes a nice blend of action, character building, and sexy sensuality in all her books. A terrific escape from reality.”

  —Romantic Times

  “I have been patiently awaiting Alexios’s story and let me tell you, it was well worth the wait. Ms. Day just has a way with these sexy warriors that leaves me breathless.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “There were tears, there was laughter, there were moments my heart soared, and there were moments my heart feared for what was to come . . . I know what I will be doing on the next release day of a Warriors of Poseidon novel!”

  —Leontine’s Book Realm

  ATLANTIS UNLEASHED

  “Day is back and better than ever . . . She doesn’t skimp on the action, but this story also delves into the psychological, giving the characters real depth. Power and passion unleashed make for outstanding reading!”

  —Romantic Times (top pick)

  “Action-packed adventure filled with magic and romance . . . Superb job of world-building that will leave you stunned with the richness of detail. The characters of Atlantis are sexy, intelligent, and fascinating. I absolutely loved it and cannot wait for more!”

  —Romance Junkies continued . . .

  “This character-driven tale will grab the reader’s imagination from page one and hold it in thrall until the end. Imperfect, valiant heroes and the complicated women who love them are the highlights of the series, and this story lifts everything up to the next level . . . An epic thrill ride that should not be missed.”

  —Romance Reviews Today (perfect 10 review)

  “Impossible to put down—I found myself riveted from beginning to end.”

  —Joyfully Reviewed

  ATLANTIS AWAKENING

  “Alyssa Day’s Atlantis is flat-out amazing—her sexy and heroic characters make me want to beg for more! I love the complex world she’s created!”

  —National bestselling author Alexis Morgan

  “The legend comes to life. Alyssa Day’s superb writing, fascinating characters, and edge-of-your-seat story bring the legend of Atlantis to life. I cannot wait until the next installment.”

  —Award-winning author Colby Hodge

  ATLANTIS RISING

  “Alyssa Day creates an amazing and astonishing world in Atlantis Rising you’ll want to visit again and again. Atlantis Rising is romantic, sexy, and utterly compelling. I loved it!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan

  “The Poseidon Warriors are HOT!! Can I have one?”

  —New York Times bestselling author Kerrelyn Sparks

  “Alyssa Day’s characters grab you and take you on a whirlwind adventure. I haven’t been so captivated by characters or story in a long time. Enjoy the ride!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Susan Squires

  “Alyssa Day has penned a white-hot winner!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Gena Showalter

  “Wow! Alyssa Day writes a marvelous paranormal romance set on Earth.”

  —USA Today bestselling author Susan Kearney

  “Inventive and electrifying. An exhilarating new series!”

  —Romantic Times

  “Alyssa Day roars onto the paranormal scene with this tense and magnetic read.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “Fascinating and intriguing . . . Fantastic reinvention of Atlantis.”

  —Huntress Book Reviews

  “Breathtaking paranormal romance.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Wow! What a spectacular series opener . . . The love scenes are sizzling hot.”

  —OnceUponARomance.net

  “The world-building is superb . . . The Warriors of Poseidon are a sexy, chivalrous, and dangerous team [who] create an atmosphere of testosterone so thick you can cut it with a knife; the interaction between this brawny bunch is priceless.”

  —ParaNormal Romance Reviews

  “A cast of sexy but tormented alpha heroes.”

  —The Romance Reader

  THE WARRIORS OF POSEIDON SERIES BY ALYSSA DAY

  Atlantis Rising

  High Prince Conlan’s Story

  Atlantis Awakening

  Lord Vengeance’s Story

  “Shifter’s Lady” from Shifter

  Ethan’s Story

  “Wild Hearts in Atlantis” from Wild Thing

  Bastien’s Story

  Atlantis Unleashed

  Lord Justice’s Story

  Atlantis Unmasked

  Alexios’s Story

  Atlantis Redeemed

  Brennan’s Story

  Don’t miss Atlantis Betrayed, Christophe’s story,

  coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

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nnesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ATLANTIS REDEEMED

  A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / March 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Alesia Holliday.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18589-6

  BERKLEY® SENSATION

  Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This one is for the fantastic Berkley gang:

  To Cindy Hwang, Leslie Gelbman, Susan Allison,

  Leis Pederson, George Long, Don Rieck,

  Sharon Gamboa, and everyone at Berkley—

  for working so hard to make my books better

  and put them in the hands of readers.

  And, always, to Judd.

  Acknowledgments

  To Steve Axelrod, who sometimes just shakes his head and sighs, but sometimes sends me cases of champagne (New York Times! Yay, us!), and Lori Antonson and Elsie Turoci, for running the business end of my career so beautifully.

  To Suzi Thompson, for her wonderful help with the forums, and to everyone who hangs out there, for the fun conversations.

  To the werearmadillos (seriously, don’t ask): Cindy Holby, Michelle Cunnah, Barbara Ferrer, Eileen Rendahl, Serena Robar, and Marianne Mancusi, for moral support, celebrations, and a safe place to vent the steam that comes with working in such a crazy business.

  To Computer Boy and Princess, who make every single day of my life a whole lot more fun. I was just kidding about wishing I’d had pet rocks instead of kids.

  Dear Readers,

  Scientific discoveries are often far more fantastical than any fiction we authors can dream up—but sometimes we “discover” a breakthrough first! When I was finishing this book, imagine my surprise when an article in the March 25, 2009, issue of The Journal of Neuroscience reported on how brain activity can predict people’s choices. Since my whole premise behind the vampire enthrallment of shape-shifters and humans was based on altered brain activity, as Tiernan briefly explained in Atlantis Unleashed, it was rather eerie to see my fictional science echoed in reality!

  The Society of Neuroscience is an organization devoted to advancing the understanding of the brain and nervous system. However, I am sure that, unlike my fictional IAPN, it is not filled with evil scientists who wish to experiment on live shape-shifters. And apologies to the lovely Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel—I doubt they’ve ever had vampires crash the party! Thanks to Janet Chapple’s excellent book, Yellowstone Treasures, for details on the park geography. Any mistakes in my version are fictional license.

  I hope you’ll love Brennan and Tiernan’s story as much as I loved writing it, and as always, thank you from the bottom of my heart for spending some time with me and the Warriors of Poseidon.

  Hugs, Alyssa

  The Warrior’s Creed

  We will wait. And watch. And protect.

  And serve as first warning on the eve of humanity’s destruction.

  Then, and only then, Atlantis will rise.

  For we are the Warriors of Poseidon, and the mark of the Trident we bear serves as witness to our sacred duty to safeguard mankind.

  Prologue

  Rome, 202 B.C.

  Brennan fell against the stone wall of the tavern, his wild laughter tinged with madness. “Another round for the house!” He fumbled in his pouch for a fistful of silver denarii and tossed them on the woman’s tray. Her dark eyes widened until he could see white all the way around her irises.

  “But this is far too much,” she protested, her gaze darting furtively toward her father, the fat innkeeper in his stained toga that proclaimed him a free citizen of Rome, albeit a dirty one. “He will cheat you, you know,” she whispered.

  He took the tray out of her hands and dropped it on a table, uncaring that the cups and coins flew in all directions, and pulled her close in a drunken embrace. The generosity of ample breasts, overflowing the low-cut bodice of her stolla, distracted him for a moment from his pursuit of ale. Her right nipple was barely covered by the dingy fabric of her palla, and he experimented with tightening his embrace to see if it would pop all the way out of the blue cloth.

  Sadly, his brilliant ploy didn’t work. He inhaled a deep breath of the roasted meat and wine scent of the tavern and immediately wished he hadn’t, as his head started spinning.

  “So, my beauty, is there someplace more private we might go and I will give you a chance to earn even more of that silver?” He grabbed a fistful of her lovely round ass and squeezed, grinning. She was no slave girl, who would have no choice in the matter, but a free woman, his wine-soaked conscience reassured him.

  But her face wore an expression of utter confusion. “I’m sorry, I don’t know any foreign language,” she said, almost cringing, as if he would beat her for her failure. She sidled away from him and scrambled for the scattered coins, slapping the hands of greedy bar patrons trying to help themselves to either coins or free cups of wine.

  Brennan blinked, momentarily bewildered, but then he realized he must have been speaking in Atlantean, which had nothing in common with Latin, unfortunately. He had a tendency to fall back on his native tongue in the heat of battle or the lax-brained befuddlement of extreme drunkenness.

  He spoke Atlantean a lot these days.

  He felt the rumble coming up from his belly and managed to considerately turn his head to avoid belching in her face. “An-another place? Private?” he managed, this time in her language instead of his.

  “Oh!” Her face cleared as she understood instantly. He probably was not the first, or even the tenth, of her father’s customers to seek out a dark and private place with the buxom wench during the past several days. The thought momentarily sent a shudder of distaste through him, but as he released her and downed the bottom half of his cup, any misgivings vanished in a sea of effervescent intoxication.

  Catching his hand, she dragged him through the cheering crowd of revelers, all raising a toast to their benefactor. He bowed sloppily, nearly tripping over the unfamiliar sandals, but the determined woman, almost certainly more enchanted with the contents of his pouch than with him, righted him with a steadying arm and herded him toward a doorway in the back of the tavern.

  “Give her a good one, Brennan,” one of his most regular drinking buddies, a centurion called Sergius, called. “She likes it if you squeeze her tits while you tup her.”

  Brennan stumbled again, a disquieting sense of wrongness pervading his sodden mind. Why was he here? He was one of Poseidon’s finest, finally called to service in the sea god’s chosen elite, and he was rotting out his brains and his gut with second-rate women and third-rate wine.

  The wench shoved the wooden door shut behind him and grabbed his cock through the heavy folds of his tog
a, and his doubts disappeared in a spike of lust.

  “Now let’s be seeing what coin you have for a poor innocent girl,” she cooed, leering at him with pursed lips and narrowed eyes that had not been innocent in years. Then she squeezed his cock again, harder.

  He roared out a great whooping noise and grasped her melon-sized tits with both hands. “That’s the idea,” he said. “Why don’t you lift that skirt and let me see what you’ve got under there?”

  As he bent his head to hers, the woman’s eyes widened again and then went blank, almost fish-eyed, as they glazed over and then closed. Her head fell back and her plump body went limp, oversetting his already precarious balance so they both went crashing to the filthy floor. Long-ingrained courtesy stirred Brennan to flip them as they went down, so he landed on the bottom of the heap, cushioning her unconscious body from the fall.

  “Well. I never had exactly that effect on a woman before,” he muttered to the amphorae of olive oil grouped around his aching head, as he stared at her in befuddlement.

  AND SO YOU STILL HAVE NOT, a voice thundered through the room. Brennan’s free hand automatically went to his dagger, but he found only an empty sheath.

  YOU THINK TO DRAW YOUR WEAPON AGAINST ME? the voice continued, and now it sounded somewhat annoyed. Brennan’s head tried to clear, but the sheer quantity of wine he’d consumed during the day thwarted any attempt at mental acuity.