Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!

By the time the rain kicked up hard, the rest had already retreated. Naomi was the first to bail, muttering something about her "hair and body not being waterproof for this bullshit." Elena followed with a tray of half-eaten fruit and zero patience. The doors closed behind them with a soft click, sealing the chaos back inside the mansion.

Only Tessa and Atalanta stayed.

Tessa didn't move. Couldn't.

She just stood there, hands wrapped around herself, head tilted slightly toward the forest where Parker had vanished like a ghost wrapped in designer heartbreak.

Atalanta glanced at her, then sighed and placed a steady hand on Tessa's shoulder.

"Give it time," she said gently. No sass. No sarcasm. Just that calm strength she usually reserved for warzones.

Tessa didn't respond right away. Didn't need to.

She didn't have to explain a single damn thing.

The archer knew. She always knew.

Everything had started cracking the moment Ashford was brought into the picture. The moment things went off-script. Tessa felt it in her bones. The way Parker looked at her now—less like she was his ride-or-die, more like she was a stranger who'd stolen her own skin. At least that's how Tessa saw it.

She sniffled, bit her lip, then finally spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I screwed up."

Atalanta stayed quiet, giving her space.

"I fucking know I did. I've been trying to fix it. Every damn second. Since yesterday, since Wilder... I've been throwing everything at it. Smiles, jokes, touches, kisses. Trying to be me again. Trying to show him that I'm the Tessa he knew. The one he loved. The one who would jump into the goddamn pits of hell for him."

Atalanta raised an eyebrow. "Pretty sure Hades needs to co-sign that."

Tessa gave the smallest smirk through her tears. "I'd forge it."

But that smile crumbled fast. Her shoulders shook.

"We've been hanging onto straws, Lan... just to keep us from falling apart. But the more we hang on, the more the weight just—pulls. And today, I tried to be funny. I made a joke. About Chione. And I forgot. I forgot what she means to him—I mean I fucking have no idea what she even means to him." Atalanta wanted to say "me neither" but didn't.

Her voice cracked.

"And now he's gone. Again. Walked off to gods know where, probably thinking I don't get him. That I don't care. And I do. Fuck, I do."

Atalanta pulled her in. No questions. Just arms. She wasn't the hug type, but for Tessa, right now? She wrapped her up tight.

"I'm not the go-to girl for love advice," she murmured into her hair. "But if there's one thing I've learned—communication's a bitch, but it saves lives. Or at least relationships." Tessa let out a muffled sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob.

Atalanta pulled back just enough to look her in the eyes. "Have you talked to him about Ashford? Really talked? 'Cause I believe that's where you guys falling apart."

Tessa shook her head, tears falling harder. "I can't. I just—can't."

"There it is," Atalanta whispered. "That's your lock. You wanna fix this? You're gonna have to pick it open, babe. Figure out how to tell him. What you've been hiding. Then maybe—just maybe—everything will fall back into place."

Tessa didn't answer. She just cried.

And Atalanta? She didn't let go.

Not yet.

Because sometimes, you hold on for someone until they remember how.

*

Atalanta wasn't blind. She'd seen Tessa working overtime—no, bleeding herself dry—to stitch together the unraveling fabric between her and Parker. It had started the moment with Ashford's guards and when Damian Wilder muttered that offhand remark, the one that slipped under Tessa's skin like glass. Since then, she'd been performing emotional CPR, desperate to spark life back into a man that had frozen over from the inside out.

Yesterday's race? That wasn't for adrenaline. That wasn't for ego. That was strategy cloaked in speed. Tessa had wanted to win—needed to. She'd pulled every ounce of effort just to manufacture a sliver of warmth, a flicker of something behind those glacial eyes Parker had been wearing like armor.

She wanted to win—needed to win so her plan could work. The wish.

And she hadn't stopped there.

She weaponized her wish.

Most people would've asked for something selfish, something glamorous. Not Tessa. That girl had turned her one chance into a calculated sacrifice. She'd burned it all just to bring Atalanta into Parker's orbit.

Tessa wasn't oblivious to Parker's shifting gravitational field. She'd clocked it—how his gaze lingered a second longer on Atalanta, how his interest flickered when Cassandra's name entered a room. He wanted them. Not in the cheap, hormonal sense—but in that high-stakes, empire-building kind of way.

And Tessa? She understood the assignment.

She couldn't maneuver around Cassandra—at least not yet. That one was wrapped in prophecy, divine politics, and whatever brooding mythos Apollo kept leashed behind her. But Atalanta? That was familiar ground. A friendship, a line of trust she could stretch just far enough to pull the archer into orbit.

So she played the long game.

Tessa didn't just race to win yesterday—she raced to leverage. And when victory was hers thanks to Theseus's sacrifice that delayed Parker, she didn't ask for riches, power, or affection.

She asked for position.

With her one wish, she sealed a contract sealed tighter than any mortal agreement. Atalanta would stay at the Nyxilith estate for a full month—or else forfeit her allegiance to Artemis. And to make it unbreakable? Tessa made her swear the Olympus Oath before she made her wish.

It was brutal.

It was dramatic.

It was brilliant.

And then she made Parker promise—no loopholes, no objections—that Atalanta was to be welcomed into the mansion. Protected. Prioritized.

She sacrificed her wish—an opportunity owed by both of them—not for herself, but for him.

For his dream.

Because Tessa didn't just want to be his girl.

She wanted to be the reason his vision breathed.

Cassandra would come later.

She'd figure that out.

One at a time.

Atalanta hadn't missed that either.

The oath Tessa made her take—the Olympus Oath, binding and unshakable—wasn't just theater. It was insurance. A trap wrapped in loyalty. "Stay at the mansion for a month, or renounce Artemis." It was absurd. It was aggressive. It was genius. And it worked.

Because of that oath, Atalanta had woken up in the Nyxilith estate like she belonged, gone for a run like it was habit, and casually returned to a dining table that practically smelled like family.

All of that?

Tessa's orchestration.

It was all Tessa.

Because in her mind—his mind or not—she was the main woman. The queen in a game of deities and devils. And her job? To make every fucking dream her king had come true, no matter what it cost her.

To love him wasn't just affection. It was devotion incarnate.

She wasn't just a girl in love.

A woman on a mission.

And damn it, Atalanta respected that.

Because if there was one thing Tessa had always been, it was dangerously devoted.

And Parker knew. He absolutely knew. The man might have the emotional elasticity of granite, but he loved her. Hard. Deep. Quiet. Dangerous. The boy loved her so intensely it bordered on destructive—like his heart was some ancient vault and she was the only person with the code... and the detonator.

Atalanta saw it. Saw both of them bleeding in silence.

But she hadn't told Tessa.

Not yet.

Because Tessa needed to confront the Ashford variable. That specter still hung between them like a blade suspended on a fraying thread. And according to Artemis herself, Parker had been intentionally distancing himself—not from Tessa because he didn't love her, but because he did. Because love, for him, wasn't just vulnerable. It was lethal.

He was a pressure-cooker of trauma and control, stitched together by the gods and circumstance and now unspooling like mythic wire.

He wasn't avoiding her out of apathy—he was protecting her. Poorly, maybe. Brutally, definitely. But it was still protection.

And it was crumbling.

Because Parker didn't know how to be loved without fearing its collateral. He was terrified she'd become collateral in the crossfire of his unraveling psyche. That she'd shatter when he finally went nova. The boy was a Molotov cocktail of trauma and divinity. A walking paradox.

And when he broke?

He didn't just hurt.

He unmade.

Case in point: Theseus.