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Thirty-Three

On first glance, Evan looked almost exactly like Atlas.

His blond hair was maybe a shade darker, there was a mole beside one eye that Atlas didn’t have, and their eye color was different now, but otherwise they shared the same pale skin and elegant features.

The same defiant set of their chins. And Evan was dressed in the sort of tailored suit Robin used to think Atlas preferred.

He sounded just like his twin too, haughty and smug. “So, you’re my brother’s mate?”

This was a mind fuck. Same as it had been earlier that month at the vineyard.

Maybe even more so. That day, things had been moving a mile a minute—Daphne dead, an innocent to rescue, brothers hurling orbs at each other, and Nature hiding in the cottage up the hill.

Today, it was just him and Evan in a dimly lit casino bar.

With time to consider and his coyote banked, Robin understood how, for the past ten years, they’d been chasing the wrong man. And now that he knew the real Atlas, knew him down to his scent, he also better understood how hard the performance must have been, how much of it he’d shouldered alone.

Never again.

“I am,” Robin said, as he claimed the stool on the other side of the bar from Evan, who was pouring high-dollar whiskey into crystal tumblers.

“Has he told you that I was supposed to be your sister’s?”

Robin clenched his jaw to keep it from hitting the bar.

Evan laughed and pushed a tumbler in front of him. “My dear brother, always keeping secrets. She picked not one but two other people over me.”

The head spinning from back at Cyrus’s cabin returned, but Evan’s bitterness over Deborah focused the anger on the twin who well and truly deserved it. “Sore loser much?”

“I was for a while, and then I killed her.”

The Robin of two months ago would have leapt across the bar.

But this Robin recognized the bait for what it was.

And this Robin had a mate—a lying one, albeit—he had to get back to.

For the truth, about more than one thing.

And because they had to work together if they were going to defeat the lookalike on the other side of the bar.

Robin tossed back the high-dollar bourbon like the low-class dog he was sure the slowly sipping warlock assumed he was.

Evan turned up his pretty nose and propped himself against the backbar. “Is he too much for you? Or not enough, like I clearly wasn’t for Deborah? Is that why you’re betraying him now?”

Robin laughed. “He’s just right, actually.

” Atlas was smart, intense, arrogant, elegant, and filthy.

He was wild at times, measured at others, and he was the only person in Robin’s life since Deborah who had made him feel settled.

He reached over the bar for the whiskey, refilled his glass, then took a long drink before mentally asking Atlas for forgiveness as he borrowed his words for a lie he needed to tell. “But I don’t do we.”

Evan stayed leaned against the backbar, arms crossed, cut crystal tumbler against his lips. “Tell me more.”

“I don’t want a mate, I don’t want a team, and I lost my family the day my sister died.”

“You’re a lone wolf.”

“There’s something inside here”—he tapped at his chest with the glass—“that makes me want to run. I want to be free. I don’t want anything or anyone tying me down. I want to follow the jobs wherever they take me.” The words that had come naturally before now tasted awful in his mouth.

But they did the trick, Evan polishing off his whiskey and setting his glass aside. “Your track record is impressive. Chaos could use you.”

“One-time deal,” Robin said with a sharp shake of his head. “You want Pati and her son, I can deliver.”

“And your fee?”

He grabbed a napkin off the nearby stack, a pen from the cup by the register, and jotted down a figure and account number. He slid it across the bar to Evan.

The warlock balled it up and tossed it in the trash. “The money will be in your account when you deliver.”

Robin threw back the rest of his drink, grabbed the bottle of whiskey, and slid off his stool. “No deal. Not how it works.”

“How do I know you’ll deliver?” Evan asked his retreating backside.

Robin spun on his heel mid-room. “You were the one who just commented on my track record.” He tipped the bottle up for a healthy swallow, then wiped his lips off with the back of his hand. “Do you think I took payment afterward from any of them?”

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Whelan.” He drew out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and a moment later, Robin’s phone vibrated in his pocket. Wire received. Evan grabbed another napkin, scribbled something on it, then strolled out from behind the bar.

Robin had another flash of cognitive dissonance, thinking he was seeing his mate approach in another damn suit. But as quick as the confusion came, it vanished with a single inhaled breath. All he could smell was the rotting stench of dark warlock, not a hint of spring.

Evan drew even with him and handed him the napkin. “Bring them there. Tomorrow night at eleven.”

Robin pocketed the coordinates for the altar site in the Canyon Lands. The single weak spot in the veil, other than in La Purisima, that their team didn’t control. “What are you going to do with them?”

“Use them to open the veil for Chaos to rejoin us.”

Use them as sacrifice, more precisely. Robin forced his coyote not to snarl.

Tough doing when Evan stepped closer. “Are you sure I can’t tempt you?

” He laid a hand on his chest and stared up at him with hooded yellow eyes.

“One twin for the other. Maybe it was the two of us who were meant to be together.”

As attracted as Robin was to Atlas, as he’d always been, he felt zero desire for the lookalike in front of him. Only hatred that he was certain would never turn into anything more. Not because he was fated to be with Atlas, but because the man in front of him was pure evil.

“Maybe our mothers got it wrong,” Evan said, as he glided his hand higher.

Robin grabbed his wrist and yanked his hand off him. Not wanting his touch or the distraction. “Our mothers?”

“Ask my brother after you fuck him one last time.” Evan’s sly smile made the urge to strangle him harder and harder to resist. Made stealing the bottle back from his hand too easy, Evan turning on his heel and tipping the bottle up as he’d done. “Good day, Mr. Whelan.”

Robin’s head spun all the way to the parking lot, distracting him such that he missed the fact his car doors were unlocked. But he didn’t miss the smell of intruder. He whipped around in the seat, prepared to strike, but Dyami slowly straightened with his hands raised, his palms outs.

“I’m here to help!” the pretender said.

“Since when?”

“Since I realized I was wrong.” He handed Robin a folded piece of paper. “The real altar is here. Just call, and my people will be there. For peace.”