Page 57 of Atlas and the Traitor

Robin stood on the laughing warlock’s chest, Jenn on one arm, Abigail on the other, as blood leaked out of his wounds. But once Adam and Atlas joined them, Evan’s laughter stopped and his words, gargled through blood bubbling on his lips, turned Robin’s insides even to ice. “I never intended to live.” His yellow eyes, swirling with gray, drifted overhead. “You brought Chaos through the veil. Not me.” Nearly all gray, they traveled back to Atlas. “My backup plan, brother.”

After one last gasp, his chest stilled under Robin’s paws.

And then the earth heaved, worse than any jolt he’d felt in YB since the Rift, and he was knocked off balance.

A yawning canyon opened in the ground and swallowed the altar whole. Threatened to swallow more. “Robin!” Atlas shouted. “Help me!”

He rolled back onto his feet, just in time to get a paw around Mary before the canyon took her.

“Higher ground!” Adam shouted, and everyone who could got a hand on a warlock who snapped them to the ridge at the other end of the field. But their position wouldn’t last long, the canyon growing wider with each shake of the earth.

Atlas landed crouched beside him and laid a hand on his chest. “Shift!” he ordered, and Robin’s magic answered, putting him back in human form. “Are you ready?” Atlas asked him.

“Do it now.” The future of his pack, the lives of his family, of his mate depended on it.

Atlas pressed a kiss to his lips. “I love you too.”

It was the last thing Robin remembered before magic seared through him, Atlas’s and the other witches’ and warlocks’, the burning life fire of the phoenixes, the souls that Paris called to him, the magic some of them brought to bear, including Sybil’s and Vanessa’s, Daphne’s, Canton’s, and Cole’s.

Ripping him from one end to the other.

Magnets pushing against each other.

Like he would never be put back together again.

The terrifying distance between one piece of him and the other.

The span of every wide-open space that had ever made him feel claustrophobic.

Like he’d never be able to run far enough to put it all back together.

Blood pounding in his ears and racing through his veins.

His coyote crying out.

His mother’s, his twin’s answering.

His pack answering, coming together around him with the rest of his family, bounding him in and making it so he couldn’t be ripped so far apart.

Making it like he was back on the dock in the forest.

A whisper of spring tickled his nose, and then warm lips brushed his forehead. “I’ll run with you.”

Mate.

His blood calmed, the magic settled, his soul—both sides of it—planted.

He opened his eyes and gasped. Atlas’s green gaze was swirled through with another color. Not yellow, but gold. Like his. And reflected in them were his own, swirling with green.

He lifted a hand, gripping his face. “Mine.”

Atlas gripped his face right back. “Mine.”

Their lips connected, “yours” a promise they both made, forever.

Thirty-Eight

Robin was beginning to think Mac’s family should just leave the festival tent up year-round. It had gone up for Samhain, stayed up for Mac and Paris’s wedding, and now was playing host to Yule.

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