Page 12 of Atlas and the Traitor

Balance. “Then, does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” Robin sank back in his chair, joint to his lips.

“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” Atlas wondered aloud after several annoyingly comfortable minutes of silence. He expected a smirking, joking response, not Robin’s well-reasoned explanation.

“Because it’s apparent you hold a good many of the cards on the table. You have power and information we need in this war with Chaos.”

“And when you get what you need from me?”

He mimicked a slash across his throat, added asnickfor effect, then handed back the joint.

“You’re awfully serene about it all,” Atlas said.

This version of Robin was not the rabid dog he’d spent the better part of ten years running from, who just two months ago had had his muzzle around Atlas’s throat, ready to end him.

“I figure, I can spend the next two weeks driving myself crazy or driving you crazy...” His golden eyes danced. “Is it working yet?”

“You’re an asshole.”

“I know.” He grinned, then stretched out further in the chair, all that muscled body burnished in the firelight.

Atlas tore his gaze away, staring at the rows of swaying vines instead. The grapes were long picked, only wilting leaves in shades of autumn left rustling in the breeze. A quiet song as one day slipped to the next. He didn’t mind that Mary had commandeered the loft. Didn’t mind spending time out here, sleeping out here even, after being cooped up inside with Cole for weeks, after being trapped in Vincent’s compound for years. He idly wondered how Vincent’s other captive was adjusting to life among the vineyards. “How is Paris, truly?”

“Alive, somehow, like Adam too, when they both weren’t for a time.”

Atlas shivered around the memory of Adam bleeding out on that bridge in YB. Then shivered again at what Paris must have gone through, being sacrificed by giants, twice. He was stronger than any of them had ever given him credit for.

“He’s pretty remarkable,” Robin said, words mirroring Atlas’s thoughts. “Whether you had a hand in that or not, I wouldn’t be here if not for him.”

“He rescued you?”

“He gave me a purpose,” he said, tone lightening, words lengthening, like maybe he wouldn’t mind sleeping out here among the vines either. “Pushed the guilt aside, at least for a while.”

It never truly went away. Atlas had decades on Robin in that regard. But at least the freshest guilt was somewhat assuaged. “I’m glad he’s doing well. He deserved better than Vincent, better than me.”

“You were him, weren’t you? The way you grew up?”

Perceptive fucker. “In a lot of ways,” he admitted. “My brothers and I had a mother, where Paris didn’t, but our father... He was a different sort of man than Vincent but no less malicious.”

“And yet Evan became the evil one?”

“Who says I wasn’t too at one point?”

Robin lolled his head on his neck, face angled toward him, even as his eyelids drooped. “Is that how you faked it so well? It couldn’t have just been the suit. Or the belief it was all for a higher good.”

Atlas took a final drag of the joint, then snuffed it out in the dirt under his heel. “No, it was the guilt.”

“Or your soul.”

“Same difference.”

Two sides of the same coin.

Like him and the coyote across the table whose body sank deeper into the chair, whose chest rose and fell with the steady, even breaths of sleep. Atlas added jealousy to his mental box labeled Robin Whelan.

He stood slowly, careful not to wake the slumbering shifter, careful not to hover too close as he paused at Robin’s side, hand over his chest, basking in the heat that lapped against his palm. He was so warm, and Atlas would bet those whorls of red-gold hair on his chest were soft too, same as the copper and blond strands on his head.

He ached to find out.

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