Page 141 of The Lycans: Vol Four

“And if I hadn’t shared blood with her, what then?”

He gave a nonchalant shrug. “I guess we’d be searching for her, too, cousin.” He flashed a sadistic grin. “And truthfully when you told us a fucking Diablos had her, the same one from the facility, I was all for a little hunting.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together but a second later exhaled as if disappointed. “But it’s a moot point because you did.”

I shook my head again and took a step toward Adryan. I knew my stance was predatory and dangerous. But this was my mate we were discussing, and I was in a volatile state because of it.

Although my cousin’s men moved cautiously from side to side, wanting to be there to protect their leader, they also didn’t want to get involved between the two of us. They knew they couldn’t take me down. The only ones strong enough to fight were Adryan and Kane.

“I’d rather stay here for the rest of my life if it meant being with her. I won’t risk the chance that I’ll get transported back and she won’t.” I glared at Adryan. “Let me ask you this, cousin. If you were in my position and Kayla was the one you were searching for, shared blood or not, would you leave her?”

When Adryan ground his teeth and took a menacing step toward me, as if the very thought of Kayla here was about to send him into a manic episode, I nodded, my point made.

He didn’t have to say the words for me to know his truth. “That’s what I fucking thought.”

“Um, excuse me,” the witch said, and we all slowly turned our attention to him.

He was half our size and looked like a stiff wind would break him in half, but at this moment he was stronger than all of us. Because he was the only one who could get us out of the shithole.

“Just a reminder… but we only have a very small window of time to do this.” He glanced warily at all of us, vampires who were a foot taller than him.

I looked between him and Adryan. “Now there’s a fucking time frame involved?” I snarled.

“Can we start this?”

I narrowed my eyes on the witch.

“The portal will close before we can do this.”

“The fuck?” I glanced at my cousin, then at Kane. “One of you assholes better finish the damn story on what the hell is going on.”

Adryan exhaled as if I were wasting his time.

“Leandreans are the portal openers. Without them keeping it open permanently, over time it slowly closes. The energy is still in the air, which is how we found you, like I said.” He looked over at Sherbet. “But a witch… a witch has the ability to tear a closed portal open as long as it still has energy.”

Sherbet nodded a little too eagerly.

“But like everything in life, Sebastian, there’s a fucking time limit. By the time we realized there was a portal, it had been weeks. We have a couple of hours tops for the witch to re-open the portal and push us back.”

“Of fucking course.” I exhaled roughly.

“But…”

I looked at Adryan and cocked my eyebrow.

“There’s more.”

I’m sure there was.

“The thing with portals that have been closed, is although a witch can tear it open, you get thrust back to the time when you first went through.”

I furrowed my brow. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means, brother”—Kane took a step forward, his dark gaze penetrating—“that when you and your female get pushed back through the portal, it’s going to take you to the day right before the portal is opened. We don’t know the time, just that it’ll be before it’s torn open.”

For a moment I didn’t know what to think, but as those words worked their way into my consciousness, made a home there, I realized what Kane was saying.

“The past? We’re just put back in the fucking past?”

Adryan shrugged at my question. “I don’t make the rules, man.”

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