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Twenty-Two

Mate was Robin’s first thought when he woke.

Gone followed 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.

Fuck.

He shot out a hand for his phone again, but before he fired off the Where the fuck are you? text, the lock on the back door disengaged.

He told the magic inside him to quiet, to disguise his presence from any foe who might enter.

Only friendlies should know the code, but he knew enough hackers to accept that an electronic lock wasn’t one hundred percent secure.

He slid off the chaise into a crouch, prepared to shift if a foe walked through the door, but then coffee and spring tickled his nose and the who was no longer a question.

Whether to shift, however... Robin was tempted to let the coyote out just so he could roar in Atlas’s face for fucking leaving.

He was tempted to do something else entirely, though, when the infuriating fucker appeared at the opening to the tasting room, two coffees in hand, with Robin’s favorite flannel tied around his waist.

Robin growled as he straightened, no part of it anger, all of it hunger for the sexy blond—his mate—wearing his clothes.

Atlas strolled casually across the room, seemingly oblivious to the fact he’d caused Robin a coronary one second and a boner the next, to the fact his high and tight ass wrapped in plaid was Robin’s new favorite target.

He set one cup down on the table and sipped from the other, the heat from the drink giving his pale cheeks a lovely blush.

“Did you run back here the past two mornings to get us coffee?”

Busted. “How’d you find the place?”

“Followed my nose.”

Robin’s nose was leading him straight to Atlas’s side. He tugged at the knotted sleeves holding the flannel around Atlas’s hips. “This works. I like my idea.”

“I can tell,” Atlas said with a flick of his gaze to where Robin’s erection was poking his hip. “But we don’t have time for that.”

Robin begged to differ. He slipped a hand beneath the flannel to fondle Atlas’s gloriously bare balls. Turned out the warlock obeyed some orders. “Do you remember?—”

“Yes, I fucking remember,” he snapped in that haughty tone that pissed Robin the hell off ninety-nine percent of the time.

But that other one percent, when Robin had his hands on him, it turned him the fuck on.

“I would love nothing more than to bend over this table and let you shove that fat cock inside me again, but we have to go.”

Robin huffed and withdrew his hand.

“Don’t pout,” Atlas said. “It’s unattractive.” The smile turning up the corners of his lips said otherwise.

“Liar.”

Atlas didn’t argue, dodging instead as he strolled with his cup to the chaise and toed the duffel on the floor there. “Get dressed.”

He’d rather drink is coffee first. “Where are we going?” he asked between sips of his favorite brew from the only shop left in the Lost Valley.

“Talahalusi. I already called her. She’s bringing everyone in.”

Whatever Atlas wanted to discuss with the team had to be serious, if he was the one who’d reached out.

Maybe what had happened between them last night, what Robin had said about running, had sunk in—for both of them.

Robin drained his coffee and tossed the empty cup behind the bar. “What’s going on?”

“I know how to find my brother.”

“How’s that?”

“After that stunt of yours at The Corners yesterday, he knows I’m yours.” Tossing his own empty the same direction as Robin’s, Atlas closed the distance between them, their breaths mingling as they stood chest to chest, nose to nose. “Now we have to remind him you’re also a traitor.”