“Oh, no. I won’t do shit. You shifters are always fighting your attraction to your mates, and it only gets you in trouble.”
“She might have a point,” Nero added.
“Lilliane has been through a lot. The last thing she needs is for a wolf to drool all over her. She is a vibrant young woman who deserves to follow her own path.”
Val leaped out of her chair and clapped her hands together. “Oh! You like her! She’s your mate, and you already like her! That was some mate talk right there. You aren’t telling her because you’re…”
“Val,” Nero cut in. “Let the man get there himself.”
Atlas shook his head and blew out a breath. “Can I count on you not to say anything to your sister?”
“I won’t say a thing until I need to.”
He huffed. “Valentine.”
“She might need to know one day. Don’t you think?”
“No matter what happens, it should come from me.”
“Yeah. It should. So? Why don’t you do it?”
“I have my reasons. Respect that, please.”
Val frowned. “Fine. But I don’t like this.”
“Why are you here, anyway?” Nero tugged his mate onto his lap and rocked them.
Atlas was jealous that Nero could just hold his mate. Simple. Easy. No vampire fucking it all up.
“We need to talk.”
As if on cue, a phone rang. Val pulled out her cell phone, and she looked up at them, confused. “Lilliane is calling me.”
“You might wanna get that,” Atlas said. “Nero, let’s go for a run.”
Nero kissed Val’s cheek before they walked into the woods.
EIGHT
LILLIANE
It took Lilliane a long time to actually call her sisters.
Atlas had been gone quite a while before she used their chat app to video call both at once.
“Why is Atlas over here like a kicked puppy?” Val said as soon as the call was connected. “What did you do?”
“Oh? Did I miss something? What’s happening?” Celestine cried.
“First of all, fuck you both for letting Atlas carry me off like that.”
“What?” Val said. “We thought he could be your mate.” She went on to explain her two-out-of-three theory.
“You’re nuts. You both thought that?” she asked.
Her sisters both nodded in their tiny little boxes on her phone. It was hard to tell if they were lying. She would have to take their word for it. “As we speak, your mates are with Atlas. He’s going to tell them some stuff. Stuff that I probably should have told you a long time ago. But … I didn’t. So. Here it goes.”
Lilliane unloaded. She told them everything and her sisters were livid. Legitimately livid.
