The Play-Toy Of Three Lycan Kings-Chapter 383: Ego Or What...

ADAM

Can two people’s lips taste the same?

The question stalked me all the way back to my quarters, pacing my thoughts with the same relentless rhythm as my boots against stone.

The night air should have cooled me, cleared my head. Instead, it sharpened everything—memory, sensation, doubt.

Maya’s lips had tasted like rain and iron. Like something wild caught between fear and defiance. I remembered the way she used to smile before she kissed me, like she already knew the outcome and was daring fate to interfere.

Dora’s had been different. Softer. Warmer. A quiet promise layered beneath the fire. Kissing Dora had felt like coming home to a place I hadn’t known I’d been searching for. There had been grief there too, always grief, as if she carried endings in her bones.

And Sage.

Sage’s lips tasted like both.

The realization made me slow my steps, my chest tightening as the royal gates loomed ahead. Stone and iron parted for me, familiar and unyielding, but my thoughts refused to fall into order.

I told you so. My wolf’s voice was calm, maddeningly certain. They are the same.

"No," I muttered aloud, dragging a hand through my hair. The sound echoed strangely in the empty corridor beyond the gates. "That’s not possible."

You felt it.

I had. By the goddess, I had.

The way my body had responded to her without permission. The way something ancient inside me had recognized her before my mind could catch up. The way the kiss hadn’t felt like discovery—but return.

How could they be the same person still?

Maya was dead. Dora was dead. I had buried them both—with my belief and my reluctant acceptance of a queen’s report that had never sat right with me.

What would it mean if Sage was them?

Reincarnation? Resurrection? Some cruel joke crafted by a goddess who delighted in twisting devotion into suffering?

My stomach churned.

Dora had spoken of Maya once. I remembered it now with startling clarity—her voice low, guarded, eyes distant as she spoke of betrayal. Of pain. Of being hunted by those she trusted.

She had said you and your brothers killed her.

At the time, I’d dismissed it. Assumed grief had tangled truth into something unrecognizable. I’d thought Maya might have escaped, might have crossed paths with Dora, confided in her.

Now, standing beneath the torchlight of my own palace, that explanation felt thin.

I had searched for Maya. For years. Turned over lands, questioned rogues, questioned humans.

After Dora’s death—after the queen’s convenient declaration, her thinly veiled hunger for war—I had searched for Dora too. Quietly. Obsessively. Refusing to believe she was truly gone.

I had found nothing.

And now Sage stood in my path like an answer I wasn’t ready to hear.

I reached my quarters and paused before the door, suddenly reluctant to enter. As if stepping inside would solidify something I wasn’t prepared to face.

I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

Except this: whatever restraint I’d been clinging to had shattered the moment I kissed her. She had flooded my thoughts since then, invaded every corner of my mind with her voice, her expressions, the way she looked at me like she already knew my secrets.

I exhaled slowly. What if she disappeared too?

The fear hit harder than I expected, sharp and immediate. What if she vanished like the others—leaving nothing but questions and ghosts behind?

The door opened before I could knock.

The common room lights were low, fire crackling softly. And there they were.

Daniel sprawled across one sofa, arms crossed. Noah leaned forward on another, elbows on his knees, eyes already locked on me. Waiting.

Of course they were.

I closed the door behind me without a word. The silence stretched, thick with unspoken accusation. I didn’t need them to say it—I could feel Sage on me still, her magic, her scent. They could too.

Daniel broke first, rising to his feet. "You did it, didn’t you?"

I arched a brow. "Did what?"

"You had her." His voice was sharp, edged with something ugly. "I can smell her on you."

I shrugged and crossed the room, dropping into a chair opposite them. The leather creaked beneath my weight. "I told you I would court her. We need answers."

The words tasted bitter. Half a truth, and I hated how easily it came. I didn’t say what I couldn’t afford to say—that I wanted her, that something in me had already chosen her.

Noah scoffed. "Really? She’s that cheap then?"

My jaw tightened.

"So she won’t be hard to fall for us too," he continued coolly. "We want a taste."

For a heartbeat, I saw red.

My hands curled into fists before I could stop them, nails biting into my palms as I forced myself to stay seated. Violence would only confirm what they already suspected.

"I told you it won’t be possible," I said evenly. "She’s not stupid. Three kings chasing one woman? She’d see through that immediately." 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Daniel tilted his head, unimpressed. "Or she’d think it’s a game. A bet. Who gets her into bed first. Maybe she will take us three... she is daring enough."

My chest burned. "I told you," I said through clenched teeth, "that didn’t happen."

Noah’s brows lifted. "So?"

"We talked," I snapped. "We walked. We kissed."

The admission landed heavier than I intended.

Both of them stiffened.

Noah’s jaw tightened, the muscle ticking visibly. Daniel’s eyes darkened, something calculating flickering there.

And in that moment, an unsettling thought surfaced—one I didn’t want to examine too closely.

What if she was their mate too.

Or was this just ego. Possession. The same old hunger we’d always shared without consequence.

Noah leaned back, exhaling. "All the same," he said casually, "we’ll go for her. She agreed to do the dome. That puts her in our orbit."

I stood. The chair scraped loudly against the floor. My patience finally snapping. "I’m done with this conversation."

They watched me as I crossed the room, neither stopping me. I could feel their eyes on my back, their confusion, their irritation.

If I stayed, I would hit someone. If I stayed, I would say something that would change everything.

I reached my door and paused, my hand hovering over the handle.

Should I tell them? That she was mine.

That my wolf had already chosen, had already marked her in ways they wouldn’t understand...

If I did, would they back away?

Or would it only sharpen the rivalry, turn desire into war?

I didn’t know. And for the first time in a long while, that uncertainty frightened me.