“Of course,” Wes said, a sharp sting of defensiveness in his tone. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Just checking,” I said, holding up a hand to show I meant no offense.
My own mother died when I was five, and Dad married Wesson’s mother shortly after that. Then, she’d died a year later, leaving my old man with two little boys to raise on his own. I’d like to say he did his best, but he was never the same after that. He rode both of us hard, forcing us to train and shoot and learn how to fight. Our home was more like boot camp than a safe space for children, and Dad had been our drill sergeant until he died.
I had to be perfect. Always the best. Which was why I probably pushed myself the hardest in these missions. Be better, faster, stronger. Softness was a weakness. Love was a vulnerability. So I never let myself open up to anyone. Sex was one thing. Relationships carried too much baggage, especially in this life. People died all the time, and I didn’t have the patience for it.
Wes and I had a fucked-up relationship. We fought like brothers, probably because we spent far too much time together, but we were more than that. We always had been. We were two sides of the same coin, attached at the soul. If we were to end up on some therapist’s couch, they’d probably say we had something unhealthy and codependent about us, but fuck all that. Wes was the only person in my life I truly cared about.
He didn’t want this life. He wanted to go off to college and get married, maybe end up with two-point-five kids and a golden retriever. He even tried it once or twice. And as much as I loved him, I hated him for that. I saw this life as my duty, my birthright. He saw it as an obligation.
“When we get to the motel, let’s regroup with Marta and let her know what we think,” Wes said. “She might have better ideas on how to handle it from the magical side of things.”
“It’s a good thing Lilith sent three witches,” I said. “If we need to make a liminal, three will do it.”
“It would be better with four,” he muttered. A few minutes of quiet went by before he ran his hands over his face and sighed. “You think Marta knows what she’s doing?”
I snorted. “I think Marta’s in over her head. Yeah, she helped with those shifters out in Montana, but does that mean she’s ready for missions?”
Wes shook his head. “I feel bad for her, ya know.”
“Feel bad for her? Why?” I narrowed my gaze on him and tsked through my teeth. “We didn’t have anything to do with her parents’ death? We lost our dad that day, too.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean she deserves this.” He gestured between us, as if to say she didn’t deserve the burden of being bonded to us.
“Deserves what? Two highly capable warriors with a lifetime of experience?” I scoffed. “Yeah, poor her.”
“C’mon, Atlas,” Wes said. “She hates us. And we haven’t been exactly kind to her, either.”
“Whatever. I just hope there’s cheesecake at the diner.” I reached forward and turned up the radio, blasting classic rock to shut him up.
CHAPTER 4
Wesson
I’d always admired Atlas. Once he’d made up his mind about something, almost nothing could deter him. Marta hated him? Fine, he hated her, too. Both men and women wanted to fuck him? Fine, he’d fuck them both, and screw anyone who dared look down on him for it. I’d always lived in his enormous shadow, and no one wanted to fuck a god’s little brother.
I, on the other hand, never knew what I wanted until it was too late to do anything about it. Decision paralysis plagued me, a result of the anxiety I felt about making the wrong choice. One incorrect decision, one reaction a second too late, and everybody died. My parents, my stepfather. It didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. Everybody left, no matter what. The only one who hadn’t was Atlas.
I did feel for Marta, though I’d never say I pitied her. She was too strong for my pity, but if I were in her shoes, I’d curse the ancestors and damn us all to hell. The night our parents died was a blur, and if I was honest, I’d mostly blocked it out. I didn’t want to remember my stepfather’s screams as Atlas hauled me from the burning wreckage of that cursed house. I didn’t want to return to that night every time I smelled roasting barbecue. I wanted to get out of this life, before and after the incident.
But I wouldn’t leave Atlas. We were bonded by more than a legal relationship. He was…well, the conventions of modern society didn’t have words for what he was to me, what he meant. I never let myself wander down those twisted roads. In my darkest moments, when the weight of my desire for freedom pressed in on me from all sides, he was the reason I stayed. The thought of him out here, doing this alone, kept me firmly rooted to him. Our story was a tragedy that would undoubtedly end with one of us burying the other, and knowing that still did not push me away.
Now, poor Marta had been pulled into our disaster, and she didn’t even know the destruction she’d walked into. She didn’t deserve the weight of this. I wasn’t good enough for her, and I never would be. If it had to be one of us, it should have been Atlas. Just Atlas. He was more capable, more exacting, and I was just a fucking mess.
By the time we got to the motel, Isobel had already doled out the rooms. I’d be with Atlas (shocker) and Marta would stay with Bridge in the one next to us. It wasn’t much more than two full-sized beds and a grungy bathroom, but I’d slept in worse places, so I dropped my bag on the mattress and sat on the edge to check my gun.
“Cozy,” Atlas said, taking the one closest to the door. “Reminds me of that shit-hole in Dayton.” He cracked his lips into an eager grin. “You remember the one.”
I snorted and shook my head. “Sure. When you met that stripper at that sleazy club and she brought her boyfriend back to the room with her?”
He hummed appreciatively and dug his pistol out of his duffel, checking the clip before loading the chamber. “Fuck yeah.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t see too much of the room. I slept in the GTO that night.”
“You were invited,” he said with a teasing wink.
I sighed and shook my head. Between us and sex, things had always toed a line. Which was understandable given how much else we shared in this life. I’d be an idiot not to admit that Atlas was objectively attractive. I wasn’t blind. We’d hooked up with people in the same room, hard not to when we always split a motel. On one disastrous occasion, we’d ended up with a poly throuple where the guy wanted to watch his girlfriends fuck us both. That night had been sweaty and complicated, and I woke up wondering if there was an edge Atlas wouldn’t hesitate to throw himself over.
