Page 126 of The Breeding Cave
“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.
CHAPTER
SEVENTY-FIVE
YEOSIN
Fire blazed all around us. I gripped our baby in my arms as Luciano carried me through the chaos. Dragon and beast corpses lay in puddles of blood in the prison around us. I shielded our baby’s eyes and squeezed mine shut too, all the sensations too powerful.
“It’s going to be okay,” Luciano murmured. “Don’t worry.”
Luciano slipped through the door into the corridor that Gideon and I had hidden in less than an hour ago. The stench of blood and rotting flesh drifted through my nose, and I opened my eyes in time to see us passing Alvin’s body.
Chunks of his body were scattered around the dark hallway, and his dragon scales were littered down the pathway. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes because I knew that my mate had done this. My mate had killed Alvin for me. For us.
After weaving through the halls, Luciano finally found a hole in the ceiling above us that led to the outside. He set me down onto my feet, then took the baby from me, cradling her in his large arms. “Can you make it up there?”
“Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t sure how to use my flight yet.
I stared up at the hole in the ceiling and took a deep breath, trying and trying and trying to summon my wings, like the other phoenixes had. A moment passed, and then I felt Luciano’s hand on my hip.
“Don’t worry about your powers right now,” he said. “Jump, and I’ll lift you.”
Warmth spread through my chest, and I used all the strength I had left in my legs to leap into the air. Luciano lifted me higher, shoving me as hard as he could. I gripped the edge of the ceiling and pulled myself outside.
The heat from the sun hit my exposed skin, and I looked around to see the outside was just as chaotic as the prison, except out here, the Colossals were fighting the dragons. Fire raged in the trees. We needed to get to safety as soon as we could.
I dropped to my knees and leaned over through the hole, reaching for the baby.
Once Luciano handed her to me, he leaped out with the use of his beast. Then he scooped us into his arms once more and began a trek through the battle, dodging fire and dragons falling from the sky.
“Hold on tightly,” Luciano said.
