Page 30 of Atlas and the Traitor

“Spring, in the dead of winter.”

Atlas shivered for a different reason; Robin had him dead to rights.

“We have to stop running,” Robin said as he withdrew his face from the crook of his neck. “We stop chasing you, you stop chasing Evan, and we work together to catch him and stop Chaos.”

“Robin—”

The coyote lifted a hand to his face, palm cupping his cheek, the touch so gentle, so earnest, so unlike the rough touches of earlier, that Atlas nearly whimpered. He didn’t know what to do with this Robin nor what to do with his own twisted insides. “Stop fucking running, Atlas. For the sake of all of us and for the sake of your soul.”

“You can’t run from yours either.”

Robin shifted them so Atlas’s back was against the bar, to argue more or bend him backward over it, Atlas guessed, but the shifter surprised him, making him gasp when he hoisted him onto the bar top and stood between his spread legs, hands splayed on his inner thighs. “What do you think I’m doing here?” he said, golden eyes smirking up at him. “Now, about that bet you’ve lost six times over. Make it seven.” He didn’t wait for a reply before he lowered his head and took Atlas’s cock to the back of his throat, stealing Atlas’s next breath and silencing any further arguments overwe.

PartTwo

Robin

Twenty-Two

Matewas Robin’s first thought when he woke.

Gonefollowed fast on its heels, Atlas absent from the bed they’d made on the tasting room floor.

Robin shot to his feet, pulse racing, senses on high alert. The early morning light was weak around the boarded windows, but he didn’t need it, his eyesight more than capable in the dark. His sense of smell too, only a faint trace of Atlas on the air.

He grabbed his phone off the chaise, checking for texts.

Nothing.

He nearly hurled it across the room. That fucker had left.

Again.

After everything they’d said last night. After everything they’d done.

Robin wasn’t one for sentiment, but he’d thought they’d reached an agreement—a truce, at the very least—where their common purpose was concerned. And an acknowledgment, acted on if not plainly spoken, as to what magic had made them to each other. What the two of them had finally given in to after months—years—of fighting it.

He sank onto the chaise, elbows propped on his knees and head held in his hands. Atlas Fucking Shaw, of all people. He’d sensed a connection the first time he’d been in the supposedly evil warlock’s presence. Had written it off as instinct, his coyote recognizing a threat. And Atlas was. Just not in the way Robin had initially thought.

He’d never even considered that Atlas could be the mate his mother had told him about in her letters, the match he’d spent a lifetime running from, being tied to one person as antsy making as the hills and valleys where he’d grown up.

Hell, after Deb’s death, he’d used Atlas as the boogeyman, the excuse for his long absences, his erratic behavior, his swings from angry to angrier. But pieces of the puzzle had shifted over the past two months, painting a different picture.

Atlas helping to save Adam and Icarus.

Atlas protecting Mary from Vincent.

Atlas slaying giants allied with Chaos.

Atlas practically raising Paris.

Evan—not Atlas—killing Deborah.

And when Robin had gotten a whiff of the real Atlas beneath the stench he wore like a mask, same as those fucking suits, the connection he’d always sensed, the instinct his coyote had misunderstood, came into focus. Sharpened to a vicious point yesterday when Atlas had cast a tendril of his scent into the wind for him to track.

Mate.

Gone.

---