Page 47 of Atlas and the Traitor

“Do you know what you’re holding?” Mac said, his voice calm and even. He had the skills of a trained investigator, combined with the empathy of a reaper. Made him a hell of a negotiator.

Usually.

Cyrus wasn’t so easy a sell. “I know he’s important. He has something to do with my mother’s death.” His gaze drifted back to Atlas. “At your mother’s hands. I kill this baby, and my mother will be avenged.”

“Or,” Atlas said, “I can give you our father instead. A win for both of us.”

Cyrus smirked, and for the first time, Robin saw the resemblance between brothers. There wasn’t much else they shared in common—Atlas was a pretty pale package in a compact body; Cyrus was on the grizzled side of handsome, with dark hair and eyes and a scar that bisected his tan face, and a body that was almost too big for the rocker, Pax a small bean on his massive chest—but that twist of their lips, that shared arrogance was strikingly familiar.

Until Pax muttered a soft mewl, his little fingers curling in Cyrus’s T-shirt, and the big man’s smirk morphed into a soft, affectionate smile that Robin couldn’t ever remember seeing on Atlas’s face.

Mac saw it too. “You have no intention of harming that child, do you?”

“Of course not,” Cyrus said. “He’s innocent, just like his mother, like mine was too.”

“Why have you been hunting Atlas?” Robin asked.

“Not just Atlas, all of them, so they couldn’t do to another person what was done to my mother.” His brown eyes glanced at Adam. “Your redhead saved me the trouble with the first one.”

“The first one?” Atlas said, taking a step forward.

He would’ve taken another if Robin hadn’t grabbed the back of his shirt, Cyrus’s finger curling around the trigger, the truth he threatened to spill, sending twin bolts of fear through him. Now was not the time for another fucking swerve, and this one would send Atlas veering off the road. “He’s baiting you,” Robin said.

Atlas kept his foot on the gas. “You mean Canton? Brown hair, blue eyes, preppy clothes.”

“That’s the one. A few nights after he turned Icarus into a vampire and the girl with him into whatever she is.”

Atlas moved again, but not forward. He dug his wallet out of his pocket and withdrew a folded photo. Two actually, another fluttering to the floor with the wallet Atlas tossed aside, too busy shoving the photo in his hand toward Cyrus. “This night?”

Robin ignored the photo on the floor, ignored his own safety, and moved between Atlas and his half brother. “He’s got it wrong.”

“Look at this picture.” He practically shoved it in Robin’s face. Canton was squared off with a snarling Icarus, Mary standing off to the side, the photo clearly taken from someplace close, a surveillance angle. Like Cyrus said, the job being done for him, but the picture failed to capture what happened next.

“Atlas, it wasn’t him.”

His eyes widened, a spark of yellow—betrayal—exploding in them. “You knew?” He lifted his other hand to snap, but Robin, well familiar with the action by now, stopped him short, shoving his fingers through Atlas’s and threading them together. He held his mate to this awful reality, racing around the bend and off the road with him because he could no longer afford to lose him. None of them could. “She did it,” he told Atlas. “So Icarus wouldn’t have to.”

Yellow spiraled through the green, and it fucking terrified Robin, made him fear he was about to lose Atlas to the other side, but his mate’s hand gripping his back, holding on to him like a lifeline, meant Atlas was fighting to stay with him too. Robin kept hold of his hand while he lifted his other, gripping Atlas’s face, keeping his focus solely on him, fighting together, just the two of them. “Think, Atlas. You would have done the same for Cole. And if that had been me, if you’d turned me into a vampire and Deborah into Nature, or vice versa, either of us would have killed to spare the other from doing so in that state. I love you, but I would have killed you for her.”

Atlas’s gaze held his while the green pushed back against the yellow, his better self responding to the logic. Robin fed it more. “Put it in the same box as your father. We’ll deal with it later.”

Another endless moment passed as the yellow faded. Atlas jerked his face free and cut a glare Adam’s direction before he stepped over to the fire and threw the picture into the roaring flames.

“That’s what she is, Nature?” Cyrus said, as Atlas leaned against the hearth. “And what was my mother?”

“Chaos.”

He lifted his hand off Pax’s back and gestured around the room. “Does this look like Chaos?”

“No, it looks and feels like peace.” Everyone’s attention swung the direction of the couch to where Pati was now sitting up, awake. She didn’t seem fearful, just cautious as she took in the brewing conflict around her. Getting to her feet, she wrapped her blanket around her shoulders and stepped next to Cyrus’s chair, her fingers softly combing over her baby’s dark hair. “Which is what my son is.”

“He’s too young,” Cyrus said, glancing up at her. “For any of this.”

“Which is why we have to protect them,” Mac said in his even negotiator tone from earlier.

Cyrus chuffed. “Fat lot of good you all have done with that.”

“So you give it a try,” Robin said, calling an audible. “If Pati is good with that?” At her nod, he explained his reasoning to the rest of the group. “His identity is scrubbed, he’s a ghost, and no one knows about this place.”

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