Page 20 of Kael (Monsters & Mates #2)

CHAPTER

NINE

“Well, something about Dawson’s arrival is seriously messed up. And not just because of the whole fated mate thing.”

Kael tilts his head, waiting.

We’ve been travelling for maybe two hours.

The sun is rising, the storm has passed, and thankfully, after another hour of climbing almost vertically, we’re at the top of the mountain.

Snow glistens on the ground, and with each step Kael takes, his booted feet disappear.

I’m even more grateful to be in his kinky backpack.

I shift slightly, trying to get comfortable.

“I’ve been here, like, two years. Dawson?

Barely a few days. But here’s where it gets really strange.

” We’ve been discussing Dawson’s arrival, and go me, I’ve managed to not get sulky even once with the whole “well, Prince Aelith came straight for his mate, but you didn’t, arsehole” thing.

Everything shifted last night. Okay, make that almost everything.

I don’t want to throw myself at Kael and fully commit just yet.

“Dawson was pulled through the rift in Portugal.”

Kael frowns. “You both sound similar.”

“Yeah, we’re both Aussies. But the weird part is that he wasn’t the only one, was he?”

His brows lift slightly. “Jack.”

I nod. “Jack from Queensland. Which is on the complete opposite side of the planet from Portugal. But if you put a ruler through the Earth—” I mimic drawing a straight line with my hand in front of his face.

“—their locations are practically parallel.” I exhale, thinking back to the discussion I’d barely had with Varek about this before I left.

“No one’s ever heard of something like this happening. Not that I know of. Ever.”

Kael is silent, his fingers pressed against my ankle, but I can tell he’s thinking. Finally, he nods. “True. I’ve met a lot of Riftborn over the years, and only one rift, in one area, has happened at the same time.”

A fizz of excitement bubbles in my gut that I’m onto something. “I think that’s what went wrong.”

He blinks, looking over his shoulder. “Wrong?”

I nod. “He wasn’t just pulled through a rift.

He was pulled through the centre of the Earth to get here.

Maybe the rift got confused, maybe it was unstable, maybe something else messed with it—but whatever the case, he came through wrong.

” Jack’s words filter into my brain about the possibility of someone being responsible for the rifts, but I keep my mouth shut.

Kael’s jaw tightens. “Dawson’s arrival wasn’t natural.”

“No,” I say, wondering at his word “natural.” Does he also think someone was responsible? Fuck, considering his position, what if he knows more? Knows the truth? I forge on carefully, saying, “And now something’s happening to him. Something’s wrong, and if we don’t get him help soon?—”

Kael doesn’t let me finish that thought. His grip flexes slightly on my leg before smoothing out again.

“We’ll get to the doctor,” he says, voice full of certainty. “We’ll save him.”

I let out an unsteady breath. Dawson has to be our focus, but the lingering thoughts of the reasons behind the rifts remain. “Yeah.”

We stay silent for a moment, the terrain changing gradually around us to something?—

“Holy shit!”

Gone is the snow and rock. In its place, a landscape so familiar, my throat closes up.

Green grass spreads like a dream, the rolling hills and rich earth stretching towards the horizon.

The air is different here—softer, thick with the scent of damp soil and sun-warmed leaves.

And in the distance, something that makes my heart stutter.

A windmill.

The blades turn slowly, lazily, against the pale blue sky, exactly like the ones I grew up watching in movies. The kind that dotted countrysides back on Earth, where the air held the faint, distant scent of wheat and cattle. My breath catches in my chest, my pulse hammering too fast.

“Put me down,” I murmur, my voice shaky, my fingers tightening in Kael’s tunic.

He hesitates, his grip on me firm, his warmth grounding. A muscle feathers in his jaw, but after a beat, he obeys, setting me carefully on my feet. The cold shock of missing his heat barely registers as I sway slightly, legs shaky beneath me.

Kael helps unstrap me, his hands sure and steady as I stare at the impossible sight before me.

Home . It looks like home.

A lump rises in my throat, my body caught between longing and the eerie wrongness of it all. This can’t be real. It shouldn’t be real. Something isn’t right.

The wonder curdles into unease when Kael stiffens beside me. I feel it before I see it—the shift in the air, the way the world suddenly holds its breath. His eyes sharpen, darkening as he scans the horizon, his body moving subtly, positioning himself between me and whatever lurks unseen.

Every hair on my body rises.

“We’re not alone,” he says, voice quiet but edged with steel.

Dread lurches through me, cold and thick. My stomach knots painfully.

It has to be him. The Hendroy.

I swallow hard, forcing my feet to move forwards even as every instinct screams at me to run. My pulse roars in my ears, my breath sharp in my chest.

“I know you’re here,” I call out, trying to keep my voice steady, though it wavers just enough to betray me. “I come in peace.”

Silence. A heavy, unnatural silence that presses against my skin. Something moves at the edges of my vision. A ripple in the air, a disturbance in the stillness.

I wet my lips, forcing myself to keep going. “Do you remember me?” My voice is too fast, too desperate, but I can’t stop. “I know Iris. She liked me! Not like that. I’m into dudes. I’m just saying, she didn’t hate me.”

The wind changes. The air thickens.

Smoke.

It doesn’t rise from the ground or spill from a fire—it manifests, curling and seething, thick and black, swirling in the shape of something enormous.

A figure emerges from the dark.

Monstrous.

Too tall, too broad, his presence warping the space around him.

Shadow and substance bleeding together into something jagged, shifting.

His limbs are too long, his body wrapped in an armour of dark, glistening ridges that flex and move like living metal.

Spines curve along his arms, his back, his shoulders.

His face—if it can even be called that—is a mask of shifting bone and blackened flesh, eyes burning red in the depths of his skull.

My stomach twists, my knees locking as every part of my brain screams, Wrong, wrong, wrong .

Kael moves. Not towards him but in front of me. Lethal, unyielding, his entire stance coiled and ready to strike. His blade is in his hand before I even register him drawing it, his muscles taut with the promise of violence. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t challenge.

He just waits.

The Hendroy steps forwards, his presence like a void, sucking the air from my lungs. When he speaks, his voice is a thing of nightmares—low, distorted, vibrating with something ancient and terrible.

I don’t understand the words. But I don’t need to.

The intent is clear.

Glowranth are not welcome.

He must die.

My breath catches. My fingers tremble at my sides, my body screaming at me to move, but I can’t. The air distorts around the Hendroy’s hands, something jagged forming in his grasp—black, sharp, brimming with an energy that crackles and spits like living lightning.

I can’t think.

Kael is a statue, unmoving, unwavering, his entire being a blade poised to strike. But I know the Hendroy will be faster.

My body moves before my brain catches up. I shove forwards, the words tearing from my throat in pure, unthinking desperation. “He’s my mate!”

Time snaps.

Everything freezes.

The Hendroy halts, the deadly energy he wielded poised midair, humming with power, inches from unleashing hell.

My legs give out.

I hit the ground hard, pain ricocheting up my side, my lungs burning. Kael shouts something—distant, warped—but my ears ring too loudly to make sense of it.

Then a new voice slices through the chaos.

Sharp. Commanding.

“Enough!”

Iris.

A gasp claws up my throat, but I don’t have time to do more than register her presence before the world tips.

And then?—

Fuck it all to hell. Not again.

Darkness.

“—doesn’t come around soon, I’m going to put your balls in a vice.”

Iris’s words pierce through the fog in my skull, dragging me towards consciousness like barbed wire snagging skin.

“He’s awake.”

Kael.

Terror crawls up my throat even as relief bounces around my chest. My body pulses with something raw, sharp-edged, emotions not entirely my own. My breath shudders out. My fingers twitch.

And then it slams into me.

Fear. Not mine.

Kael’s.

It grips my lungs, coils tight in my ribs, a gut-deep panic that doesn’t belong to me but pulses through my bloodstream as if it does. My stomach lurches. My hands clench. The unease grows, hot and suffocating, right alongside a searing anger.

I gasp.

The bond. Fuck.

The events play out behind my closed eyelids—Kael, the Hendroy, the sheer, inhuman terror of standing in front of him, of knowing Kael was about to die. And then my voice, my body moving before thought, throwing myself between them. The words I spat out: He’s my mate.

I started the process.

And Kael knows it.

Knows I’m awake. Knows I can feel him. His worry mounts, rising in waves, crashing over me so fiercely that my own thoughts scatter. I need to move, to let him know I’m here, but my body still feels like lead, sluggish and wrung out.

Move, idiot.

I force my hand up, blindly reaching into the space beside me.

Kael’s fingers latch onto mine instantly, strong and grounding, his grip firm like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.

A second later, his other hand brushes my hairline, fingers sifting through strands damp with sweat, sweeping them back with a gentleness that rattles me.

“You’re okay,” he murmurs, rough with relief. “You’re okay.”