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ATLAS

I killed three guards who ran by as I stepped out of the stairs leading down to the cells. I slung an AR over my shoulder, shoved two pistols into my pants and loaded up on ammo. A calmness had settled over me the minute North let me out of my cell. I was going to kill Demetrius and then I was going to find Vetticus and kill him too.

Fuck North and his plan.

I was done.

Vetticus had stolen too many people from me. I would end him and then I would probably end myself. I didn’t think—no I knew, I couldn’t live without Nyx.

As I made my way down the hallway, it was as though all my emotions had been switched off. I didn’t feel fear, anger or even grief—just a solid resolve to remove anyone who stood in my way.

I fought through a few groups of guards who were obviously in disarray, running through the house. I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t thinking. I was just executing—killing my way to my goal.

Nyx had been everything to me. We’d gone through so much together.

Too much for him to just be…gone.

Two guards rounded a corner and I took a few hard hits this time before I killed them. I pushed myself to my feet and there rounding the same corner was Demetrius with Viktor and Kon behind him. I snarled and raised my gun at him.

“You mother fucker,” I yelled.

“Atlas—”

“No, fuck you! Why’d you kill him?”

I could feel my calm exterior cracking. Emotions were bleeding through, forcing it wider. I felt raw, broken.

“Atlas, wait—”

“He’s gone,”

I said, my voice breaking.

“I can explain,”

Demetrius said calmly.

“I don’t want to hear it,”

I hissed. My eyes blurred with tears and I shoved the gun at him. “You were supposed to be on our side.”

“Atlas,”

Viktor barked. “Put the gun down.”

“Fuck you, Viktor,”

I cried. “Fuck both of you for turning on us…after everything we’ve been through—”

My finger tightened on the trigger.

“Atlas!”

I froze. That voice.

The Volkov brothers were looking over my shoulder at who had spoken.

“Put the gun down.”

I’d know that voice anywhere—but how—

I slowly turned around, the gun dropped loudly onto the ground and then I was rushing towards Nyx—who was standing at the other end of the hallway—very much alive. My hands found his face as though I didn’t truly believe he was real.

“Fuck,”

I breathed and pulled him to me.

We clung to each other. It could have been hours or only a few seconds before I was able to pull back enough to look at him.

“How?”

I asked. “Demetrius shot you!”

“Well, obviously he didn’t,”

Nyx grinned.

“You looked dead,”

I insisted.

Nyx chuckled. “Nice little improv there actually. It was obvious Vetticus was going to shoot me so Demetrius just pretended to. Luckily, Viktor and Kon were next to me because they pulled me backwards and one of them whispered ‘play dead’ in my ear—”

I didn’t let him finish. My lips crushed his and I shoved him up against the nearest wall. He dug his fingers into my skull, matching my intensity. Tongue and teeth clashed as we tried to consume each other. Finally I rested my forehead against his to try and catch my breath. My hand grabbed under his jaw and my thumb caressed his lips.

“I thought I’d lost you,”

I murmured.

“That part killed me,”

Nyx said quietly. “I knew you’d think I’d really died. I was hoping you wouldn’t do anything stupid but here you are, about to kill the Volkovs—”

“Yeah,”

I scoffed. “You got here just in time. I was going to do it too.”

“I love you,”

Nyx chuckled and shook his head.

“What?”

“Everytime I say those words, they just fall so short of what I really mean.”

“What do you mean?”

I whispered, pulling back enough to meet his darkening gaze.

“You are more than just my partner, Atlas. You are part of my heart, part of my soul. I never thought I’d find a love like this—much less a love like this with a man,”

he smirked. “Even after all these years, I still don’t know what this is—all I know is ‘I love you’ fails miserably to describe how I feel when I’m with you.”

He smirked at me and bit his lip playfully. “But since I obviously can’t proclaim my love through an essay of words each time, I think ‘I love you’ will just have to suffice.”

“I don’t know…I kind of like the declaration,”

I grinned and pulled his lip out from his teeth with my thumb. “You know what that does to me, my dark one.”

“And once again, we don’t have time,”

Nyx chuckled.

“Then I’ll save my declaration of love for later,”

I grinned. “But I hope you know I feel the same way—I love you—and there is no life worth living without you.”