Page 81 of The Breeding Cave
“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he whispered, tugging me closer. “Please.”
I curled into his chest. “Monsters hurt me when you’re not around.”
Every single time he wasn’t with me, some monster found its way to me. It was almost as if I attracted them, almost as if they knew where I was, had orders to hurt me. I wouldn’t put it past Alvin to have told them to.
Especially Alpha Alf earlier.
They could blame the full moon all they wanted, but how people had begun acting around me when they never did so before … something had changed in the past few weeks since I’d met the beast within Luciano.
Luciano curled his arms around my smaller body and rested his head against mine. “They won’t hurt you when I’m here beside you. They’d have to burn me alive before they could get to you.”
Truly, I wanted to believe him. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Alvin might’ve won the war a long, long time ago, but Luciano didn’t know anything about Alvin. He didn’t see Alvin the way I did. He didn’t witness what Alvin was capable of, the manipulation and torture.
“One day, when this is all over and the Dragon Clan ceases to be, we’ll get out of that city. We’ll rebuild the packhouse. We’ll have the nicest bed to sleep on. And you’ll never have to worry about a thing.”
I turned onto my back and gazed up at the ceiling of the dark cave. Some moonlight flooded in through the cracks and crevices, gleaming against the rock. My hand found Luciano’s, and I intertwined my fingers with his.
It was nice to dream, wasn’t it?
Only he didn’t know that I’d probably be dead before then.
Luciano lifted my arm into the air so he could see my scars, but didn’t let go. With his free hand, he drew his fingers against them. When he turned our intertwined hands over so he could see my fingers, I could see the faint scars on his hand.
They were just like mine—burns from the Dragon Clan—but his had healed, almost to where they weren’t visible. Though I could still see them.
“Tell me about it,” I whispered, listening to his even breathing, feeling the heat of his breaths, touching his skin that was rougher than mine. “About your past, about your pack, about life before the Dragon Clan.”
“Life before the Dragon Clan,” he said. “It was so long ago that I almost don’t remember it.”
I playfully rolled my eyes. “You’re not that old.”
A low chuckle left his mouth as he continued to mindlessly play with my fingers.
“We were comfortable. Too comfortable. And I … I was a terrible leader. I should’ve been more on edge, more untrusting of people. I should’ve protected them more when they attacked.”
I released his hand and rolled over onto my stomach. “I said, life before the Dragon Clan, not during the war.”
“What do you want to know about?” he asked.
“Your family.”
Sadness shone in his eyes, which was quickly replaced with hardness.
He wasn’t going to tell me. He was trying to block it all away.
But he didn’t know that I knew that look all too well. I’d mastered that look. I had forgotten things about my childhood, before the Dragon Clan, that I couldn’t remember anymore. I had these long stretches of time that I had no recollection of. At all.
Thoughts and memories that I would never recover, and if I did… I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember them.
I gently cupped his face and kissed him on the mouth. He stiffened at first, then suddenly melted into the kiss, seizing my waist and tugging me closer to him.
When I finally pulled away, I rested my forehead on his. “Tell me about your family.”
“I had two younger brothers,” he whispered. “We did everything together. We made promises to travel the forest one day and see the world, to visit every type of species that we could find.”
I brushed some hair out of his face. “What were their names?”
