Page 52 of The Breeding Cave

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

LUCIANO

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and glanced in the rearview mirror, spotting a flash of fire in the distance between the trees. That fucker is following us.

Gideon had tried his hardest to hide himself from me, but I knew he was there.

Rage rattled inside my rib cage. I gritted my teeth, my canines slicing through a couple of thin layers of skin on my lip. Yeosin had one hand on her growing belly and her eyes on the road, surrounded by forest, in front of us.

“Are we going to the mountain?” she asked.

“No.”

“To the cave?”

“No.”

She twisted her head toward me, brows furrowed together. “Where then?”

Truth was that I had been driving around these back roads in the forest to try and lose Gideon. I eyed the number of miles until the gas tank was empty on my dashboard and growled under my breath. If I didn’t lose him soon, we’d run out of gas.

“We’re going to run out of gas soon,” Yeosin noted, following my gaze.

“We are.”

“Do we have another container somewhere? I doubt there’s a gas station this deep.”

“No.”

“Then what are we?—”

“Yeosin,” I growled, harsher than I should’ve, “you’re not helping.”

Usually, I was okay under pressure, but since finding Yeosin and admitting that she was my mate who was carrying my child, everything had become much more stressful. I needed to protect her, but all I could worry about was losing her.

Yeosin’s eyes filled with tears, and then she turned her body away from me and faced the window. I blew out a sigh through my nose and glanced over at her, my beast whimpering at the thought of upsetting our mate.

With my free hand, I placed my hand on her thigh, squeezed, and turned her back toward me. “Gideon is following us, and I’m trying to lose him, but I can’t think straight. Don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m stressed out too.”

“Why?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and peered in the rearview mirror, shrugging.

She was intentionally keeping something from me because she thought I couldn’t handle it, which pissed me off. But honestly, I had been keeping something from her since we had met Gideon in the alleyway.

Long ago, when I had been cursed to never have a mate again, there was one exception to the curse. I would only be granted a mate who would be shared among the strongest creatures in the forest. Those creatures were named, and a bird of fire was one of them.

All this time, I had thought that it was a fire dragon. That it was Alvin.

Though it was Gideon. It had to be Gideon.

I sank my fingers against Yeosin’s thigh and squeezed. No way was I going to share her, not when she had my baby inside her. I had waited for far too long. I couldn’t have anyone take her away from me.

No fucking way.

The dashboard began blinking with the Low Gas message, and I cursed to myself. I had maybe twenty more miles of gas left. The last thing I wanted was to be stranded in the middle of the forest with a pregnant mate.

So, I pulled off the road and began forging my own path, heading straight toward my old packhouse. If this really was Gideon following after us, he had to know where we were going. And if it wasn’t, then I had the upper hand.

I could kill him if I needed to, and I could prove to Yeosin that he was not to be trusted.

Because years ago, I had buried Gideon with my very two hands underneath our childhood swing set. Either this was a fake Gideon, or he had risen from the dead, or my brother had died and been reborn into the bird of fire who was fated to have my mate.