Page 119 of The Breeding Cave
Luciano placed his hands on my hips and squeezed gently. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks.” He pulled away and looked at Gideon. “Protect her with your life, or I will take yours if she doesn’t come back alive.”
“I will.” Gideon nodded and peered at Ruby. “I’ll be back.”
What is that? Ruby and Gideon? Good. Gets her out of my mate’s life.
Gideon slipped through the dungeon door and started down a ladder. I followed, peering up at Luciano one last time, my heart pounding quickly inside my chest. While I had been collected up until this point, suddenly, everything felt like the night the dragons had taken me away from Luciano.
My chest tightened, and tears pricked the corners of my eyes. Luciano was worried—and for good reason. What if this was the last time we saw each other? What if … they found him and killed him? I couldn’t dwell on it.
I stared down the ladder and didn’t look back up. We had to do this.
The air grew colder as we descended into the earth. Gideon grunted and hit the ground, grabbing my waist to help me down to the floor, as the ladder stopped a few feet from the bottom. I placed a hand on my belly.
“Which way?” I asked.
“Don’t you know?”
“No.”
Gideon lit the tip of his finger on fire and illuminated the paths. I stared at each one of them for a few moments, finding the energy that spoke to me the most, the path that was the strongest.
“I think it’s this way,” Gideon said, nodding toward the right, where I had decided to go.
I followed after him. “It is.”
Gideon’s breathing was steady, as if he wasn’t half as scared as I was. He didn’t have a mate like I did. He didn’t have a family of his own. It had only been a couple moments without Luciano, but all I could think about was the worst.
Were the dragons in the mountain? Or were they out, searching for us?
The more we ventured through the path, the stronger the energy became until we hit a door. I closed my eyes and pressed my hand to the door, feeling the energy from the phoenixes flowing through me.
The iron was thick and reinforced, and while I was certain this wasn’t the door I had seen in that dream, it led to the phoenixes. They were inside of here, somewhere, somehow. This would lead us right to them.
“Ready?” Gideon whispered.
“Yes.”
He pushed on the door, but it didn’t budge. I tried it and nothing.
“Pull at the same time,” Gideon instructed me.
I placed my hands over his and tugged at the same time as him.
No movement. Not even a creak.
Maybe we do need Luciano.
“What do you think is?—”
Before I could finish my sentence, Gideon slapped a hand over my mouth and tugged me toward him. The sound of boisterous men laughing was in the distance, the sound of their voices coming closer and closer and closer.
They were coming from where we had just come from.
Fuck!
“We have to hide,” Gideon whispered into my ear from behind.
But there was nowhere to hide. Nowhere at all.
