Page 74 of The Breeding Cave
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
LUCIANO
While chaos ensued around me, my world seemed to stop completely. Heat from the flames that burned my skin faded from my existence. My feet were frozen on the ground.
Mom? Alive? Standing in front of me as if I hadn’t seen her die decades ago?
What was this? Had Gideon been right about all of it? Had he known ?
She walked toward me, her features softening the way they had when I was just a boy, when I had come back from playing outside with all my packmates, covered in dirt and mud and grass. I opened and closed my mouth a handful of times, unable to make a sound.
Yeosin. I need to find her.
Yet I couldn’t move.
“Luciano,” Mom whispered when she reached me.
I swallowed hard because this couldn’t be her and stepped back. No, this can’t be her. How is she here? Has she been in this prison for decades? All alone? Trapped? If I had known … I would have … I could have …
“Luciano,” she repeated, taking my face into her hands. She stared up at me with tears heavy in her eyes. “My boy. My baby boy, how I’ve missed you so much. I knew that you’d find me, that you’d come save all of us.”
My throat was dry, my heart pounding inside my chest. I gently placed my hands over hers, feeling her flesh. She was real, not some figment of my imagination, not some trance, not some ghost. Real.
“Mom,” I said softly, my gaze scanning her face. “How are you …”
“We don’t have time to talk now,” she said. “I will explain everything later.”
“But—”
She swiped the pad of her thumb across my cheek to wipe away a tear. “Yeosin is fine.”
Suddenly, everything seemed to shift back to reality, and I snapped my gaze from my mother, who I had thought was dead, to the chaos around me. Dragons still breathed fire on the phoenixes. Beasts were being thrown around like rag dolls. Yeosin was … nowhere to be found.
“Where is she? I need to find her and our baby.”
Mom nodded. “You will, Luciano. She’s here.
But we have a greater task at hand. Alvin was only part of the Dragon Clan, not the leader of it.
From what I’ve gathered, there are several sections to the clan.
The Dragon Clan is vast, and they want more than revenge.
They want their empire back. And they can take it if they get their hands on the phoenix eggs. ”
“Phoenix eggs?” I repeated, gaze still trailing across the prison for my mate.
What did phoenix eggs have to do with this? Mom gave me one to keep at the office.
“With all the eggs, they can easily rise to power again, reclaiming their empire through fire and destruction. You must find them before the rest of the dragons do.” She swallowed. “You’ve only defeated one section of their forces. More are coming.”
More? More? How can we defeat more? We could barely handle this sector.
“Trust me and trust yourself,” she said. “We can do this together. The dragons haven’t fought a troop of phoenixes like this for over a thousand years. To imprison us, they captured us one by one. We’re unstoppable now, especially once we get those eggs.”
“Luciano!” Yeosin called, her voice faint. “Luciano, please!”
“Go,” Mom urged.
I snapped my head toward the sound, my heart thumping so loud that I could hear it in my ears. My legs started moving before I could process what I was doing, running through the fire, through the flames, through the battlegrounds, where my dead packmates lay, leaving Mom.
“Yeosin!” I shouted, finally spotting her through the haze of smoke.
She was kneeling on the ground in the middle of an open cell with tears running down her cheeks as she clutched something to her chest. My heart raced. She lifted her gaze, meeting mine, and I almost froze a second time.
A baby. Our baby.
“Yeosin,” I whispered, rushing toward her.
Once I reached the prison cell, I dropped to my knees beside her and pulled her and our baby into my arms with bloody, trembling hands. Our baby … she was so small. So tiny.
“Luciano,” she cried. “Tell me that he’s … that he’s dead.”
“Alvin is dead,” I whispered, placing my forehead against hers. “And you, us— we are safe.”
For now.