Page 48 of Atlas and the Traitor

“Then how’d you find it?” Cyrus asked.

“Your mother told us,” Atlas replied.

Cyrus was on his feet the next second, grizzled mug snarling at Atlas, the baby in his arms waking at the tension and letting out a wail.

Mac stepped between them. “Lila is good,” he said, somehow keeping that calm tone even as the situation deteriorated around them. “My husband is a medium. He spoke to her. After she told us about this place, my brother, our reaper, delivered her.”

“To?”

“Peace.”

The tension left Cyrus’s body, and he leaned into Pati beside them, their hands together on Pax’s back. There was a connection there already. “Did you two know each other, before today?” Robin asked.

“No,” Pati said, shaking her head. “But I knew right away that we could trust him.”

Shared experience, years apart, but both part of this world not by their choice but by fate, who had seen fit to put them together.

Adam had come to the same conclusion. “We have a guard on the roof. We’ll leave him here until we can get more of the pack in the area around you.”

Cyrus opened his mouth to no doubt protest, and Robin beat him to it. “Not enough to give away your location and they won’t bother you. Just backup, if you need it.”

Cyrus looked to Pati, and at her nod, acquiesced.

“Good,” Atlas said as he pushed off the hearth. “Since we’re done here...”

Robin was too far away this time to stop him from snapping away. “Shit.” He whipped his head to Adam. “Warn them.”

He lifted his phone, text thread with Icarus open onscreen. “Already done.”

“We need to get back—” He lost his words as his gaze caught on the other picture still on the floor. Golden eyes he’d only ever seen in pictures stared up at him, his mother’s smiling face between two other blond women who were also smiling, their green eyes dancing. One was a mirror image of Daphne, only older, and the other... Now he knew where Atlas got his ethereal looks from—his mother. Who, along with Daphne’s mother, clearly knew his. And Atlas knew this too? Had a picture of the three of them together in his wallet?

Betrayal found a new home, burning in Robin’s gut as his head spun with the implications.

“Robin.”

“What?” he barked at Mac and that even fucking tone, unhappy to be on the receiving end of it. Calm was the antithesis of everything swirling inside him.

“He bit,” Mac said, holding the feline shifter’s phone out to him.

“Who? Dyami?”

“No, Evan.”

Robin glanced down at the screen, at the text thread open on it. The message Atlas had shot off to Dyami yesterday and a new reply.Sunrise, Matsun casino. E will be there.

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.

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