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.