Page 125 of The Breeding Cave
Fire dripped from my entire body. I shoved him off me and heaved.
Yeosin. I need to find Yeosin.
I spun around, heart pounding, and sprinted toward the prison door. Inside, fire burned the cages; phoenixes were flying through the air, battling warrior dragons; and beasts were doing what they could on the ground.
“Yeosin!” I shouted through the flames, my body still burning. “Yeosin!”
My beast clawed at my insides, desperate to find her, to make sure she was okay. She had to be. I needed to see her, hold her, feel her against me. She was pregnant, and she had gone down here all alone.
I let her come down here alone.
I scanned the prison, hoping to find her, but locked on to someone else’s gaze entirely. My entire body froze, and I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. She stood there, staring back, in the middle of the battleground, untouched by the flames.
“Mom?” I whispered.
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.
