Page 29

Twenty-Nine

Robin checked his phone for the umpteenth time over the past six hours.

No word from the team at Monte Corvo, no word from the pack, no word from Atlas.

He hadn’t seen any of them for two days, only communicating via encrypted texts.

The team had been moving Pati and Pax, Atlas had been investigating Cyrus and working with Mary to prepare for Solstice, and Robin had been hunting Karoline.

Which was how he’d ended up in the Canyon Lands, Yerba Buena’s mystical equivalent of a terror-filled funhouse.

Nature had conceded this area of YB during the Rift, the weather magically and naturally terrible, the land unstable, more of it falling into the Bay each day, and the carcasses of once-gleaming buildings reduced to rubble.

Robin found himself crouched in one of those broken buildings, peering through sheets of rain, ears attuned, for any sign of Karoline at the meet that was supposed to take place in the building across the crumbled street below.

He checked his phone again.

“They’ll call if they need you.”

He whipped around with a growl. Not because he felt threatened—he’d know that voice anywhere—but because the asshole was playing with fire, sneaking around when Robin was already on edge. When he hadn’t smelled him, touched him, kissed him in two fucking days.

“Not nice, is it?” Atlas said, strolling toward him. “Someone sneaking up on you without making a sound.” He flicked his fingers. “Covering their scent.”

Robin didn’t inhale too deeply, certain he’d jump the man with the slightest provocation.

He lightly sniffed the air, just enough Atlas to settle the queasiness that had swished around in his belly since they’d parted.

“You started it.” He rotated back around, peering once more through the rain for any movement in the empty room across the street.

Still dark, still quiet. He sank to his ass and relaxed back against the frame of the long-gone plate glass window.

“And you shouldn’t be here either,” he said to Atlas.

He wisely lowered himself across from Robin and rested back against the opposite side of the window frame, only their feet in touching distance. “I’m here in case you get the call. You can’t be in two places at once.”

And fuck if Robin didn’t want to crawl on his hands and knees across the floor and kiss the fuck out of the man, the enemy turned mate, who somehow seemed to understand him best.

He’d like to understand him better too so he could return the care and concern. “Why didn’t you tell me about the wall at Cyrus’s place?”

His gaze drifted outside, but by the faraway look in his green eyes, Atlas was somewhere—sometime—else completely.

“ We doesn’t end well for folks around me,” he said.

“Cole, Daphne, Canton, Paris. The last thing I wanted was for my shit, another person targeting me and mine, to also target you and yours.”

Except Atlas was his now, and he was Atlas’s. Those lines of separation were getting blurrier every day.

“And Karoline? You’re not just here in case I get the call, are you?”

“I intended to take care of things myself.”

Robin knocked his foot, once, twice, until Atlas gave him his attention. “What if it’s a double blind? I leave, Evan shows up instead of Karoline, and you’ve got no backup.”

He shrugged. “Then he takes me, and you come to the rescue.”

“If he doesn’t kill you first.”

“Last,” he said, barely a whisper, and the guilt he didn’t bother to hide this time made Robin’s chest ache. Fuck, it was like looking in a mirror. He rested his foot against Atlas’s. “I know what it feels like.”

Atlas pressed back with his. “I know you do.”

They stayed that way, in each other’s quiet company, as the rain outside turned to a mist and the building across the street remained dark, the only movement in the vicinity the ground periodically shifting beneath them. “I hate it here,” Atlas grumbled.

“It’s not so bad,” Robin said. He wished he’d had a camera ready to capture Atlas’s aghast expression. “The ruins and fence keep it all contained and when the fog’s in, it’s like a blanket.”

“Yeah,” Atlas scoffed. “A cold, wet one.”

Robin chuckled. “It’s not so overwhelming here, and in a fight, it’s close work, hand to hand combat, no fancy devices, just pure skill.”

“And obstacles, like not being able to see a foot in front of you.”

“You were here all the time for Vincent.”

“I know, and I hated it.”

Since Atlas seemed to be feeling truthful, Robin asked another question that had been weighing on his mind. “Your time with Karoline and Lila... Is that how you convinced Vincent to trust you? That you were on the same side?”

“A man like Vincent hears and sees what he wants to.” He nodded at the dark, empty space across the street. “Same as her.”

It was Robin’s turn to gasp. “I thought she recruited you?”

“Yes, but I went in as a spy first.”

“What changed?”

“I got tired, same as you, of being a pawn. She promised me freedom, independence. But if she, Evan, and Chaos get what they want?—”

“There’ll be no place left worth being free in.”

A light flickered on across the street, Karoline entered the room, and for one terrifying, heart-stopping second, Robin thought he’d lost him, Atlas snapping right out from in front of him.

But a single beat of Robin’s heart later, Atlas appeared behind him, hidden in the shadows, out of the moonlight that had broken through the clouds and shown exactly where he’d been standing.

“Fuck,” Robin cursed.

Atlas clasped the outsides of his shoulders. “I needed to act fast. And so do you. You need to get to the pack.”

Robin spun to face him. “What? I haven’t—” The phone in his pocket buzzed.

“You need to go.”

He glanced over his shoulder. Still just Karoline in the room. “Atlas...”

“Hey,” he said softly, and just as gently grasped his chin and used it to draw his attention back to him. “She won’t hurt me.”

Except for the hit his soul would take when he had to kill again, like it had when he’d killed Daphne. But if Daphne hadn’t known about Mary, Robin was sure now that Atlas would have... “You’re going to give her a chance to change her mind, aren’t you?”

He pressed his lips together.

And Robin jumped to the next logical conclusion. “Same as you’re going to give your brother.”

He slid the hand on his jaw higher, cupping his cheek. “I promise, you will still get what you deserve.” Robin wanted to argue but the phone in his pocket buzzed again. Atlas firmed the grip on his face. “Go.”

Robin returned the hold and drew Atlas closer, nose to nose, growling a “Yours” against his lips.

Atlas’s “Mine” bled into a kiss that was wild and peaceful all at once, that made Robin’s soul settle in that certain way his mother had talked about in her letters.

Like Mac must have found with Paris, like Adam with Icarus, and before that with David and Deborah, like his and Deb’s mother had shared with their father.

Like maybe he’d found freedom.