Page 13 of The Breeding Cave

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LUCIANO

All the fury dissipated from me, and I snapped my gaze toward the front room. Only a few people knew about my packhouse, and those people knew not to disturb me here unless something happened.

Yeosin flashed through my mind. I tightened my hands into fists, my claws slicing into my palms, and I walked to the front door. If it was Joseph, returning to tell me that Yeosin was refusing to come, I swore?—

The bang became louder, and a low growl rumbled from underneath the door.

“Luciano!” a familiar voice shouted. “I know you’re in there. Open the door!”

After unclenching my hands, I yanked the door open to see Alpha Theo standing outside in his beast form, blood dripping off his extended canines, eyes a blazing gold, and claws torn right into the doorframe, making it crumble.

At one point, he had been my sworn enemy. We fought against each other in bloody war after bloody war. But decades ago, the Dragon Clan took advantage of the war between the packs. They had ripped us apart one by one by one until there was nobody left except the alphas and a few packmates.

“Theo,” I said. “What are you doing?—”

He stormed into the house, his beast form slowly disappearing back into his human body. “Elizabeth is gone.”

While we had never seen eye to eye, we had set aside our differences after we defeated the Dragon Clan in order to rebuild. We had carved out The Breeding Caves in Pine Grove to repopulate so our species wouldn’t die. And from what I remember …

“Elizabeth?” I asked. “Isn’t that the woman you invited to The Breeding Cave years ago?”

“She’s gone,” he said, voice shaking in rage. “She’s gone!”

“What happened to her?”

“My home was ransacked … and I found this”—he pulled out a dragon scale—“in the mess they’d left. After we had tried for years, she’d finally become pregnant. She was carrying my pup.”

“We’ll help find her,” I said, my mind drifting to Yeosin for a moment, hoping she was safe. If something happened to her, I didn’t know what I would do. “And when we do, you should think about bringing her to live with the others.”

He gritted his teeth and snapped his gaze away. “I shouldn’t have to.”

There was nothing wrong with living with the remainder of our pack so deep in Pine Grove that the Dragon Clan wouldn’t be able to find them. I couldn’t do it because I had a business to attend to, but Elizabeth could.

And maybe Yeosin too … especially if she had someone following her.

“We should kill the Dragon Clan,” he said.

“We don’t have the beasts for it,” I said. “We barely survived last time.”

“We might not have the beasts, but we have the money. We can pay for it.”

“Pay who?”

“The Colossals.”

“Fuck no,” I growled. “They’re nothing but trouble. Once we make an alliance with them, they might kill our enemies, but they’ll steal our packs, our women, and the little children we have left.”

When he didn’t respond, I bit back a growl. He wasn’t asking me. He was telling me.

“You already met with them without running it by me first?”

“We don’t make decisions together.”

“ We have to look out for our own.”

He paused. “They have a daughter they want you to meet.”

“No.”

“She’s strong enough to be a warrior … or a luna.”

“I’m not interested.”

“You need to rebuild. We both do.”

“Which is our reason for creating The Breeding Cave,” I said, “to rebuild.”

“The Breeding Cave is for just that—breeding. Not finding mates.”

“We can’t have mates anymore,” I said.

“Well, we need to find someone strong, someone like us, someone with enough power to defeat the Dragon Clan right by our sides. Humans are only for pushing out more children to help expand our lineage. And if I were you, I would suggest having multiple of them.”

“I’m already planning on having multiple pups with?—”

“Multiple humans you bring to the cave. Better chance at getting one pregnant and better odds of your family surviving if you have a handful of women pushing out children every other year or so.”

The thought made my stomach turn. How could he think such a thing?

“You’re talking nonsense,” I said. “What happened to having one mate?”

Fated mates had always been so important and innate to beasts like us. One person to obsess over, one person to live with, grow older with, to raise a family of strong warriors with. Maybe I was just too old for this shit anymore.

“Times have changed,” Theo said. “We have to change with it.”

I gritted my teeth and stayed quiet. I didn’t have it in me to argue with him tonight. I had to meet with Yeosin in just a couple of minutes, and I needed to make sure that she was all right. I couldn’t let his words get to me.

Still though, was that what this world had come to? Breeding with multiple partners?

“We’ll speak more,” I said, heading to the front door.

“I look forward to it, Luciano. I know we can take them down and get her back.”

“We will,” I said, though I hated the thought of working with those human-looking creatures who could shift into Colossal beings at a moment’s notice. They were ugly monsters who lost control of themselves in that form.

Not only that, but they were selfish and believed everyone desired them.

Once he left, I headed toward The Breeding Cave.

If the Dragon Clan really had taken Elizabeth, then Yeosin might be next. Hell, they might have already been looking for her. I really needed Joseph to tell me who had been stalking her in that SUV earlier today.

Either way, I couldn’t risk losing her.

I had searched for someone capable and fertile to birth my pups, and I wasn’t planning on bringing anyone else to The Breeding Cave either. Yeosin needed to stay safe, and she could do that in my penthouse or with the others.

Her scent drifted through the woods from the cave. I nodded to Joseph, who was still parked, and then he drove off so we could be alone. He’d be back later, once I finished filling her up and claiming her tight little body.

When I reached the cave, Yeosin stood near the end with her back turned to me and her long black hair flowing down to below her mid-back. Moonlight glimmered against it as she brushed her fingers across the chains that I had tied her up with the last time she was here.

I walked toward her slowly, careful not to make a sound until my fingers grazed against the skin of her forearms, and all the worries of the Dragon Clan seemed to disappear for a moment. “Yeosin, I’m so glad you’re safe and he?—”