Page 52 of Atlas and the Traitor

“But she was good.”

“You are too. You both were, and the both of you were a little wild too, a little fearless, a little chaotic.”

Robin huffed. “A little?”

“I was trying to be kind,” Atlas said with a roll of his eyes that was both obnoxious and comforting. But then his face turned serious again as he pushed off the arm of the couch and came around to sit on the coffee table in front of him. “You both were primed, with a little bit of Nature and a little bit of Chaos.”

“But Deborah’s gone.”

Atlas averted his gaze, guilt so obvious and familiar that Robin cursed himself for not recognizing it, for not making another horrifying connection sooner.

For not realizing that Atlas’s high-end vodka was the same brand that was anonymously sent to him at the bar halfway around the world where he was drinking the night before Deborah’s last pack call came in. When Robin had gotten so shit-faced he’d missed it. He’d blocked out everything from that night except the guilt from the consequences of his actions. But someone had helped him along. “Are you the reason I didn’t answer Deborah’s call that day?”

Atlas righted his gaze and lifted his chin. “Yes.”

Robin shot off the couch, nearly knocking Atlas off the arm in the process, all that simmering anger coming to a boil. “And to think, I came in here tonight thinking I’d told the bigger lie. First my mother”—he flung his arms wide, letting all the chaos hang out—“and now this!”

Atlas wasn’t afraid of it, of him, in the least. He stepped directly in front of him and grasped his face. “This battle couldn’t afford to lose you both.Icouldn’t afford to lose you, and I wasn’t even in love with you then.”

Robin’s eyes grew wide, hearing those words out of Atlas’s mouth.

And in the next breath, realizing he’d already said them to Atlas, earlier at Cyrus’s cabin when it had been the warlock dangerously on edge.

Balance.

A fucking mirror, in more ways that Robin discovered every day.

The two of them, in this together.

“My brother was on the warpath that day,” Atlas said. “He was twice jilted, and Vincent gave him the perfect cover. He wanted revenge and Chaos’s attention, and he got both. By killing the woman who’d scorned him and who was also one of Nature’s vessels. I wasn’t going to let him have the other one. I made sure you were safe, and then I got to the scene as fast as I could, but I couldn’t stop him. I tried, Robin. I promise you I tried with everything I had, but I wasn’t strong enough, then.”

His anger deflated as the overwhelming despair rushed back in. “What am I supposed to do with this, Atlas? Any of it, all of it?”

Atlas eased the grip on his face, gently holding his cheek as he closed the distance between them. “It was supposed to be the two of you, a shared burden, but now you have to be the strong one.”

Too much, too wide, more than the peaks and valleys of the range that stretched around their homestead. He shook his head, eyes slipping closed, breaths coming short as he faltered. “That’s not me, Atlas. I’m a traitor.”

Atlas cupped the other side of his face and pressed their foreheads together, making Robin’s world smaller, making it so he could breathe. “You made a mistake that I helped you make. That doesn’t make you a traitor.”

“But Paris?—”

“Was not a mistake, and the team has forgiven you. They’ll rally behind you.”

“Atlas, I run,that’swho I am.” He’d thought he’d changed when he’d stood in that casino bar with Evan, but that was before the rug had been yanked out from under him. Before his old world had been turned upside down by back-to-back revelations that put the weight of said world on his shoulders. He was not the man for that job. Deborah could have done it, but not?—

Atlas’s lips brushed over his, silencing the whirlwind. Settling him. “If you run, I will run with you. I will run with you forever.” He drew back far enough for Robin to see the truth in his dark green gaze. “But you can’t run from your soul, Robin. And neither can I.”

He held his stare another long moment, his whole world right in front of him, his mate. The world didn’t seem so scary, so big in the forest. In the eyes of the man magic had put in his path but who had found his own way into Robin’s heart. “You settle me,” he told him.

“And you balance me,” Atlas replied, thumb skating over his cheek.

Robin would do anything to keep that, to keep him, including the thing that scared him the most. He inhaled deep and nodded. “All right,” he said. “We face it. We fight.”

A smirk turned up one corner of Atlas’s lips. He lowered a hand and loosened the knot in the towel at his hip, the damp terrycloth hitting the floor. “After we fuck.”

And because Atlas hadn’t given him anything earlier, Robin resisted giving him the easy win now. One last fight, since they did it so well. “I don’t answer to you.”

Atlas’s eyes sparkled, spring in all the shades of green. “But my soul answers to yours.”

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