Page 75 of The Breeding Cave
Suddenly, pressure erupts through my round belly, and my eyes widen. I glance down at Luciano, who stares up at me with a smirk on his lips. If she doesn’t stop, then she is going to … she is going to kill our baby.
“Stop!” I scream, but nothing comes out of my mouth. “Stop, please!”
Luciano waited so long for this. Luciano chose me. Not her.
“He doesn’t want you,” she says with a smile, her eyes almost as wide as my stomach. She lifts me so I am level with her face. “I will have his child. I will give him a family. You will be nothing to him.”
With that, she squeezes me in her fist. My ribs shatter in her hold, blood beginning to gush out of my mouth. I spit it up, my sight becoming hazy. My insides feel like they are being turned inside out.
Death will be easier than this pain, than this torture.
I let my eyes flutter closed. It is never-ending.
“Stay with me,” a soft voice says from a distance.
Everything is so loud yet so quiet at the same time. Yet I see a flame in the woods behind Ruby and past Luciano. Someone is coming for me. Someone is here for me. Someone is trying to pull me out of this nightmare that is life.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT
LUCIANO
After building a fire for Yeosin, the crook of my neck began blazing. I placed my hand over it and seethed. Suddenly, the pain spread from my neck to the rest of my body like a wildfire, overtaking every inch of me.
Mate, my beast howled inside my mind. Mate is in trouble.
My gaze traveled from the fire to the cave’s pathway, which led to the hot spring. I chucked a log of wood at Brent and ran through the pathway, following Yeosin’s scent to the hot spring, immediately spotting her seizing on the rock where I had left her.
And her body … her body was on fire!
Flames burned from her scars. I scooped her body into my arms and leaped right into the hot spring. The water sizzled around us as her body continued to seize in my arms. I cradled her head and dunked her underneath the water to put out the fire on her face.
“Yeosin,” I murmured, pulling her into my arms and holding her trembling body. My fingers curled into her sides as she continued to sleep, the flames out but her body still steaming. “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”
No response.
I leaped out of the hot spring because maybe the warmth of the water was making it worse, and I brought her to the other room. After stumbling right past the fire, I exited the cave and let the cold air hit her skin.
“What the fuck happened?” Brent asked, hurrying over.
“Her scars were on fire.”
“What?!”
“Get me a towel from the back room and some lotion.”
Brent disappeared deeper into the cave. Suddenly, the seizing stopped, and her burns didn’t feel quite as hot. Her eyes fluttered open, and she peered up at me through tears, seeing my face.
“Luciano,” she whimpered.
“I’m here,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”
Yeosin’s quiet tears turned into hiccups, and she began trembling in my arms again. She gripped on to me tightly, her nails digging into my shoulders. “I don’t want you to leave me,” she cried. “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“Y-yes, you w-will!” she sobbed. “Because Ruby is better.”
