Page 34

Thirty-Four

Robin didn’t think twice about walking into Atlas’s glitzy Sunset Hill high-rise. Evan had all but told him to go confront Atlas, to fuck him one last time. Robin intended to do both, and he hoped like hell it wasn’t the last time for either.

He opened the door to Atlas’s unit, wondering which would come first—fight or fuck. Finding Atlas in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in nothing but a towel, water still dripping from the ends of his hair seemed to indicate a fuck was up first.

Until Atlas spoke and his voice was ice cold. “You lied to me.”

Fight, then. “So did you.”

Robin tossed his phone, wallet, and keys on the kitchen island where his mother’s letters lay open and scattered.

He’d left them at the condo when they’d swung by the other day.

For safekeeping and for Atlas to read, hoping he might connect more dots for Robin.

Seeing them strewn from one end of the island to the other made him regret the ask, brought his own anger back to simmering.

He withdrew the photo of Willow and the Shaw women from his pocket and crossed the living room to Atlas.

“Explain this to me,” he barked, shoving the picture in Atlas’s line of sight.

Atlas glanced at the photo, then back to the ocean outside his tinted windows. “You first.”

The asshole still wouldn’t give him anything.

Fine, he’d put his cards on the table first if it meant getting to the truths he wanted sooner. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know Canton was your brother until that day in the vineyard. I don’t think Mary or Icarus had made the connection until then either.”

“Nature doesn’t always tell her everything.”

“Well, as soon as I found out, I tried telling you what happened, that day and on that rooftop in La Purisima.”

Atlas whipped his gaze to him, and Robin was relieved to see his irises were green, the deep mossy shade he loved, no hint of yellow. “You couldn’t just tell me?”

“Would it have made a difference?” he bit back, then regretted the tone when Atlas retreated, turning his gaze back to the waves. Robin tempered his tone and added, “I didn’t mean to betray you.”

“They were best friends,” Atlas replied.

“Who?” Robin asked, the non sequitur catching him off guard.

He nodded at the photo in Robin’s hand. “My mother, your mother, and Daphne’s.”

Except he’d never seen the other two women in that picture. Not in the flesh and not in any photo albums at the homestead. “If they were best friends, why weren’t they around after Mom died?”

“Jasper forbade it.” More dots connected: his uncle’s distrust of outsiders, his skepticism of witches, his reluctance to travel any farther south than YB. “They kept their distance, and then they died.”

“Casting Chaos out of Lila and behind the veil?”

Atlas nodded. “It’s why Canton had to be the one to channel Nature into Mary. Mom and Vanessa, Daphne’s mom, couldn’t know who the new vessel was, in case they lost control of the spell and Lila got the information out of them.”

“And where were you?”

“Keeping Evan distracted. He was keen to use the disturbance as cover for killing the woman who’d spurned him.”

“Deborah.”

“I stopped him that night. I couldn’t that day. I’m sorry.”

Robin turned from the view of the endless horizon, too much when his world was already starting to spin, and sank onto the living room couch.

It was boringly modern and not particularly comfortable but it was squarely within the walls of the condo.

“He said you were meant for me, and Deborah was meant for him. That our mothers had made it that way.”

Atlas leaned back his head and groaned, not the good kind.

“Make it make sense, Atlas. Neither Deb nor I could understand what Mom was trying to tell us in those letters, other than vague notions of mates and Nature, and Jasper wouldn’t say a damn thing either.

He took whatever he knew to the grave with him.

Same as Daphne. I need you to explain it to me. Please.”

Atlas turned from the windows but rather than sit on the cushion beside him, he sat on the couch arm facing the bar. “Look at the colors of the ribbons. With everything you know now, look .”

Green and yellow.

Green and yellow.

Robin gasped, dots connecting.

“They weren’t just best friends,” Atlas continued. “My mom, Sybil, and Vanessa worshiped yours. They were her disciples. Willow was the last time Nature and Chaos were joined in one vessel.”

Robin had never been in a tornado, but he figured this mental and emotional whirlwind was what it felt like. “How?”

“Sheer force of will. They’re not supposed to exist in one person, not until the eagle brings peace, but your mother held them as long as she could, until she ultimately succumbed to the most natural and chaotic thing on this earth, childbirth.”

“She knew she wouldn’t make it.” That was why she’d written those letters—the uncertainty of what would happen to her and the magic inside her when she brought Deb and him into this world.

And if his father had been anything like him, the guilt would have eaten him alive.

Driven him to make it stop so he could be reunited with the love of his life.

Which left Deb and him.

“What happened to the magic? When Deb and I were born?” He swallowed hard and inhaled deep, the memory of wild mustard tickling his senses. “When Mom died?”

Atlas laid a hand on his shoulder. “When she died, my mom and Vanessa channeled the deities into new vessels. But some of the magic was passed on to you and Deborah.”

More and more dots connected.

His mother’s written words about wild being only one of their instincts.

Her coaching on how to use the magic inside them to silence that wild.

Her lessons in tracking, in tending the homestead gardens, in using everything nature had to offer, that he and Deb would be uniquely able to detect and manipulate.

“She says in one of those letters that our mates would find us when Nature needed us most. Deb thought that was David and Adam. I thought I’d run from mine, forever.”

“And I thought you two were intended to ground us, a twin for a twin, if Evan and I ever had to hold the deities. There were two of us, so it would be easier to share the load, to balance the forces and keep the peace until the eagle arrived. Until we had lasting peace.”

“But that doesn’t work anymore,” Robin said, shaking his head. “Deborah is gone and Evan’s evil. I looked the devil in the face today, and we can’t let him have Chaos or Nature. Nothing good will come of it, and Pax is still too young.”

“I know, and until tonight, I thought it was me who would have to hold them both instead. After all, it’s what my mother named me.”

“Balance.”

“I was wrong.”

Robin jerked his gaze to his; he hadn’t seen the swerve coming. He parsed back through Atlas’s words, through his mother’s.

Until tonight.

Wild.

Magic.

Peace.

Balance.

More connections, the pieces coming together in a different way to form a new picture that caused Robin’s chest to tighten and panic to swirl in his gut.

“No, no, no,” he muttered. “Deborah was the good one. She was Nature. You don’t want to give me Chaos either.”

Atlas stretched out a hand, cupping Robin’s cheek. “Don’t think so little of yourself.”

“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. I couldn’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’s who 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.”

Robin brought their lips back together, bruising and soft. Balanced. “And mine to yours.”

The only fight after that was over where to fuck: against the windows—too distracting; on the couch—too soft; in the bedroom—way too far away.

They settled on the living room floor, with Atlas astride his lap, riding his cock, while Robin stroked Atlas’s length with his spit-slick fist. Getting them off together just as the fog rolled back from the shore, giving way to the bright midday sun that streamed in through the windows and painted a sweaty head-thrown-back Atlas in shades of orange and gold.

On fire, with no shield between them to stop the smell of spring from filling the air around them, from filling their souls.

Robin would fight anyone to protect this connection, this mate he’d never wanted and now couldn’t imagine his life without. And when it was all over, he couldn’t wait to run with Atlas out there in the sun.