The Play-Toy Of Three Lycan Kings-Chapter 420: Trap II

ADAM

I had been mid-sentence when the pain struck.

Not the ordinary echo of the mate bond—no, this was different. This was raw. Immediate. Sharp with betrayal and blood. Sharp with death.

It felt like someone had driven a blade through my chest.

My voice cut off without warning. The words I had been saying to Feliq dissolved into air.

He looked at me, brows knitting slightly, waiting for me to continue listing the warriors available for deployment—but I could no longer focus on him, on the council hall, on the cluster of elders and ancients watching the room with wary patience.

The world narrowed. Heat flooded my ribs. And beneath it—Sage.

Not her voice. Not her presence. Her pain. Shock. Something wet and burning, like life slipping through fingers.

My jaw clenched. I tasted copper. What has happened to my mate?!

"Adam?" one of my brothers muttered.

I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out.

My gaze snapped to Darius. He had to confirm... I wanted to be sure that my... I couldn’t even complete the thought, couldn’t bear to imagine what had happened to Sage.

Darius caught the shift immediately, fortunately. His posture changed—shoulders tightening, jaw hardening—as he reached outward through the invisible tether that connected him to Sage.

I felt the second it happened.

His body stilled. His teeth ground together. And the confirmation slammed into me. I wasn’t imagining it.

Sage was in trouble. Real trouble.

Not a bruise. Not a scrape. Not exhaustion. This was the kind of danger that scraped close to death.

Goddess please... My chest constricted painfully.

"My mate is in danger," I finally said, when Feliq’s confusion refused to go unquenched, the words tearing out of me.

I turned to move, urgency driving every step—but my father’s voice cut through the room.

"Adam."

I halted, hands curling into fists.

"You cannot go," he said carefully. "Not there. Not now."

I turned sharply toward him, disbelief flashing hot and fast. "What?"

"The citizens of the witches’ community do not see us as allies," he continued. "They do not trust you. They barely tolerate our existence. If you appear there now, with tensions this high, they may attack you on sight."

My chest heaved. "And Sage?" I snapped. "What about her?"

"They don’t even know who she truly is," he added quietly. "You cannot explain this. Not to them. Not right now."

"So what do you want me to do?" I shouted, the sound ripping through the chamber. "Sit here while my mate bleeds?"

Silence fell. Every gaze in the room turned toward me.

The ancients watched without judgment. The elders looked uneasy. My brothers looked torn.

And Darius stepped forward. "We go together." A pause. "I can get us in, without being seen."

Thank goodness! Because with or without my father’s advice, I would have gone still.

"Thank you, Darius..." I stated. "We stop at her family’s home first... the teleportation channel... You told me about it. About how you followed her there once. There may be answers there. I think I still remember which hut is which..."

Darius nodded, albeit remaining sitting.

"We go now." I added, should he not be aware. I was too restless to wait another second.

—

We moved fast from thenceforth.

Messages were dispatched. Orders barked. Assurances thrown over shoulders. But I barely heard any of it. My mind stayed fixed on one thing—

Sage.

The barren forest swallowed us in dry silence. Darius took the lead, knowing his way to the teleportation segment. The rune circle waited where it always had, old magic etched into stone like a wound that never healed.

Darius slowed, eyes scanning the markings, studying the structure like a man trying to decipher a language older than memory.

"What are you doing?" I demanded. "Time is running."

"This is a shortcut, I know..." he said without looking at me. "But I don’t know how to activate it."

My jaw tightened. Didn’t he learn when he followed Sage?

And why didn’t I even learn it?!

I knew my mother had used it during her intermittent travels to the witches community... but I had never thought to follow her, to learn... now I might pay the price of that.

"Are you sure?" I asked Darius. I couldn’t come here for naught.

Darius closed his eyes.

"I’ll reach for Sage," he murmured. "She will show me."

Fear twisted sharp in my gut. What if she couldn’t answer? What if she was already—

I crushed the thought. I could not afford to lose her again. Not after everything. Not after I had already buried the idea of her once.

Darius exhaled and opened his eyes. Gold flared brighter than usual, light flickering beneath his irises as he stepped between the runes.

He extended his hand. I hesitated only a fraction of a second before taking it and stepping in the space he stood in.

His grip tightened. And then the world collapsed.

The sensation was violent.

Not movement, not flight—more like being folded inward, compressed into something smaller than breath.

Sound vanished. Light bent. And then—

We were standing in Peter’s compound. Or rather outside of it.

I recognized it instantly. The structure looked larger than before, sturdier somehow, as though it had grown with time and magic. The familiar scent of herbs, earth lingered in the air.

For a moment, relief stirred. She had been here recently.

I stepped forward, but the second my foot crossed the circle’s boundary, energy snapped against me. A sharp, crackling jolt bit into my skin.

I hissed, drawing back instinctively. "What the hell?"

Darius watched the glow pulse outward, then settle again like a living perimeter. "She protected this place," he said quietly. "An ancient shield."

My stomach dropped. "Protected it—from what?"

He waved a hand, and the energy loosened, allowing us to step beyond the circle. But the barrier surged back into place behind us, humming faintly, sealing the house off from intrusion.

"I don’t know... maybe she had expected danger," he said.

My chest tightened anew. Danger? What kind of Danger? What was going on?

I scanned the compound, searching for signs of disturbance, of haste, of fear.

"Something happened," I muttered under my breath. "You felt the pain, didn’t you?"

Darius nodded once, expression grave. "Yes," he said. "And we are already behind."