Chapter 19

Sebastian

Istared at my cousin—fucking Adryan—and then looked at Kane. Both held the same hard expressions. I was sure it was the same as the one I was sporting.

"Mated," he murmured and grinned. "About fucking time, cousin."

I narrowed my eyes at him and shook my head. I mulled over what they'd just told me. "Abso-fucking-lutely not."

The impatience from being stalled from getting to Ada ran hard in me, but the story he'd just told me, how he got here, and what his plans were to get us out, had momentarily shocked me so that I stood there frozen.

He had ten males with him, five flanking each side, with Kane at his right standing beside him. There was also a willowy-looking male beside Kane.

The scrawny male was a witch, that much I could smell from him even before Adryan had told me who he was.

"This is who is gonna save my ass?" I glanced at the witch, who'd called himself Sherbet. "He's named after damn ice cream."

There was a snicker among the vampires, but with a low growl from Adryan, they shut up.

Sherbet appeared to be more at ease in a dusty old library than out in the middle of fucking nowhere in a parallel dimension.

"That's right," Adryan said. "He's the one who's gonna save all our asses and get us out of this hellhole."

I ran my palm over my face, feeling so damn exhausted.

I dropped my hand to my side and looked at Adryan. He could be a big pain in my ass, was stubborn as fuck, and known as a sociopath, but here he was. He'd left his mate—the most important person in his twisted life—to come here and rescue my ass.

It was touching if I allowed myself to feel anything for anyone else aside from Ada.

I thought about my own mate.

"I'm not leaving without her." I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at my cousin. For a moment he just stared at me, that apathetic expression on his face, something that the majority of people are unable to read.

People didn't go against what Adryan said. He was just too much of a menacing motherfucker, and they pissed themselves just being in his presence. But I wasn't afraid of him, and he knew that.

And when it came to Ada, I'd go up against anyone and anything. She was my priority. Not even loyalty to Kane or Adryan topped that.

But I'd been around him my entire life. I knew him well enough to understand that he was just as stubborn as I was and used to getting his way.

"I told you, you don't have to leave without her." He lifted his chin toward the witch. "Explain how it's gonna go down, Sherbet." He smirked, and I knew the asshole found the witch's name fucking funny, too. "All we have to do is get started and get the fuck out of here."

Adryan glanced around the forest and snarled in disgust. "This place fucking sucks, Sebastian. It's hot, humid, and it smells weird." He glanced back at me, his eyes flashing red. "And I want to get back to Kayla."

I shook my head and clamped my back molars together.

"And I want to get to my fucking mate, Adryan." When I snapped out of my initial shock that my cousin and brother were actually standing here, everything had gone at fucking light speed. It was very clear their impatience to get out of here was running the show.

Apparently time in this dimension rolled by a lot differently than time where we were from. Whereas it felt like only a few days had passed being here, it had actually been weeks.

Fucking weeks.

"We saw the footage of the drones the Lycans had secured above the Assembly facility in Vermont after we'd taken it out," Kane said easily.

I thought back to when we'd attacked the underground horror house the humans of that insane organization had owned. I wanted to kill them all over again.

"Then Rory, the Lycans' resident tech wiz, did more intel and digging on the other facility in Europe that had been blown the fuck up."

My muscles contracted as I thought about the other underground facility I'd been taken to after we'd destroyed the one in Vermont.

"Odhran had escaped, told us all he knew, and that's why we were heavily digging around on what the fuck really happened." Adryan was the one to speak, but my mind was on Ada being trapped there… how she'd been tortured.

"The Lycans said there was hella interference in the drone feeds from that European facility." Kane spoke again. "But we realized that's not what it was at all."

I glanced up and stared at my brother. We looked so similar, and with Kane being only a year older, we often were mistaken for twins.

I already knew what he was going to say, so I said, "It was a portal that was causing the issues."

"Yeah, brother."

I shook my head, glancing into the distance as my blood continued to rush through my veins with the impatience of getting to Ada.

"I need to get to her. I don't have time for this bullshit." I'd already wasted precious minutes talking to Kane and Adryan about all of this.

"We sure as fuck weren't going to leave you here," Adryan growled low and hard. He snapped his finger toward the witch, and Sherbet stepped forward, pushing up the sleeves of his shirt and slowly exhaling as if gearing up for something.

"Oh fuck no," I ground out. "As much as I'm glad to see both of you and really want to get out of this damn place… I won't leave without her," I said again for probably the fifth time since they found me.

Adryan kept his impassive expression as he stared at me, but then inclined. "Yeah, I know it. I wouldn't leave Kayla here either. I'd rather fucking rip out my own heart." He shrugged like the apathetic bastard he was. Kayla was the only one who could get this sociopath to show any emotion. "But I had to try, even if I knew you'd never go for it."

Fucking asshole.

"You're connected." At my silence he went on. "You took her blood by the scent of her clinging to you."

I made a sound of warning and he grinned.

"And I assume she took yours." He cocked an eyebrow.

The last thing I wanted to do was talk to fucking anyone about what I did with my mate, but I gave a sharp nod, knowing this information was important.

"Yeah, we've exchanged blood," I gritted out and looked at the other vamps, daring them to snicker or make a little face at that information.

They were smart enough to avert their eyes.

"Then you're connected and when you're pulled out, so will she," Adryan said smoothly. "She'll be transported too."

"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."

"Just when I thought the Otherworld couldn't get even more fucked up," I murmured and scrubbed my hand over my face again, scratching at my beard. "And all of you?"

Sherbet was the one to answer. "We'll go back to our past. Same world, different time periods."

"Only good thing about this shit show is the fact our memories will be intact."

I thought back to the moment right before I'd been rushed into this other world. I had still been in the underground facility of the Assembly, fighting my way free and taking out as many piece-of-shit humans as I could.

My heart gave a hard lurch when I realized Ada would be in the same situation.

What if she couldn't get free?

What if they captured her again?

What if they took her away from me, and I never found her again, only to have the painful memories of knowing what my mate felt like in my arms and never knowing if I'd experience that again?

For a moment I thought back to Odhran and how he must've felt in that exact same situation. His mate being taken from him, only to have him searching decades to finally be reunited.

Resolve settled in me like a deep, dark poison.

I would never allow that to happen. I'd rather gouge out my own heart with a rusty spoon than ever have them take my female again.

The witch looked a little hesitant as he took a step back from my glower.

"Then I guess we better move so I can find my female and all of us can get the hell out of here."

Adryan took a step forward, and I knew he was going to try to convince me once again that Ada would come through with me whether she was standing beside me or not.

But I gave him a hard shake of my head and growled low, my eyes flashing red. I wouldn't even entertain that risk.

For a second he just stared at me. He threw up his hands and cursed out, "For fuck's sake. All of you get on my fucking nerves."

I knew he wouldn't press this.

"Let's move out," Kane said and lifted his hand in the air, motioning it in a circle for the rest of the vampires to take position so we could find her.

The vampires took their positions close to their leader, and just as I was about to lead them away…I heard her scream.

I went absolutely fucking feral as I roared and pushed the vampires who were close enough to me out of the way. I was so forceful they stumbled back hard, some landing on their asses.

I was running toward where the sound came from, my heart racing and a cold sweat covering my entire body. I wasn't aware of anything else but getting to her.

When I heard her scream again, I picked up my speed, my muscles contracting and relaxing with each move I made.

I ducked under branches, darted around trees, and leapt over boulders in my haste to get to her.

It was then I heard Adryan and Kane following, the hard thud of their feet eating up the ground behind me sounding loud and echoing off the entire forest.

I reached the edge of the mountain and momentarily stopped as I turned around in a circle, breathing harshly so I could only hear the air moving in and out of my lungs.

I tried to calm myself enough to sense where she was.

Forcing myself to relax and close my eyes, to push back the panic welling in my body and focus, I sifted through myself until I felt the hum of her blood in me.

Up. Look up.

Oh. Fuck.

She was falling, her back to the ground, her long red hair whipping around the sides of her face, and her arms outstretched upward as if she were desperate to grab something.

Adryan and the others came tearing through the forest and stopped behind me. I could hear their shocked murmurs as they realized what the fuck was happening.

And then the Diablos was diving for her, extending his massive wings and curling them backward to pick up more speed as he went toward her.

"Now, Sherbet. Fucking now!" Adryan roared, but I was already scaling the mountain in hopes I could catch her and cushion her fall.

A stupid fucking thing for me to think, because I couldn't save her from a fall like this.

I could hear chanting behind me but was too panicked to care what was happening with anyone else but Ada.

Just as the Diablos grabbed her wrist, there was a massive shock wave that blasted all around me, pressing my body hard to the mountain before I was wrenched backward and falling through the air.

And then the nothingness took over.