Page 32 of Kael (Monsters & Mates #2)

The door slams open, and Kael storms in, eyes wild, his bioluminescent markings blazing like lightning beneath his skin.

He takes one look at the room—the floating books, the warped air, the bent metal ladder I use to hang my clothes on—and zeroes in on me, sitting wide-eyed on the floor like I’m summoning a demon.

“Hi,” I squeak.

Kael doesn’t smile. He crosses the room in two strides, drops to his knees in front of me, and grips my shoulders. “Are you hurt?”

“No?” I offer weakly. “Just… spatially challenged.”

His eyes flick across my face, down my arms. “What did you do?”

I glance at my palm. “Energy manipulation?”

“You folded the room,” he says, like I just admitted to shifting tectonic plates.

“Unintentionally!”

He exhales hard, forehead bumping against mine. “You scared me.”

“I scared me .”

He cups my cheek, grounding me, the heat of his skin steadying the last of the chaotic energy. “Next time you want to bend the fabric of reality,” he mutters, “call me first.”

“Deal,” I breathe. My heartbeat slows. The air settles. No more wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey bullshit. Just Kael. And my very slightly imploded bedroom.

Next time, I’m starting with something safer. Like lifting a spoon.

But also, what the fuck? If I can do this, an untrained, completely-making-shit-up-as-I-go human, what the hell can Glowranth really do?

The ones here in Dathanor? They keep it low-key.

Use their abilities for small shit. Lights.

Precision. Warming or cooling things, mostly.

I’ve never seen any of them do anything like… that .

That has to mean something.

If energy can bend a room, manipulate the very space around us, then deliberately tearing through dimensions isn’t just a theory—it’s a possibility. With strength and intent.

And holy shit, this is huge.

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“No,” I say, my voice still high-pitched with leftover adrenaline.

Kael closes the distance, hands on my face, scanning me. He pulls me close, pressing his lips to my forehead before we move off the floor and to my bed.

While Kael is calming down—and I’m pretty sure inhaling my scent—my brain is whirling. I’m hyperaware of just how deep we’re in this now. Seriously, if I can do this, then we’re standing on the edge of something massive.

And someone— somewhere —knows it.

Kael’s breathing has finally evened out, the wild panic that chased him into my room now settled into a slow, steady thrum. His hand is still curled lightly around the back of my neck, clawed finger brushing gently over the column like he needs to feel I’m here. Real. Whole.

“I’ve been thinking,” I begin, voice cautious. “If I can do that—whatever the hell that was—just by messing around… untrained, unprepared…”

Kael hums low in his throat. His heartbeat stutters slightly, like he already knows where I’m going.

“… then what can you really do? What can the Glowranth really do?”

A flicker of guilt flashes across his face—and brushes against my chest through the bond, cool and ashamed. He doesn’t meet my gaze right away.

“It is… possible,” he says slowly, each word like a stone laid with care. “What you did today? That kind of manipulation? It’s within reach. I can only theorise it would be especially possible for bonded pairs.”

“So… what, you’re saying tearing through dimensions, rifting space—whatever brought me here—that’s definitely possible for a Glowranth?”

Kael nods. Hesitantly. “It would take strength. Purpose. Deep intent. But yes, it’s within the scope of power. For some.”

My mind spins. “Some. Like… who? The queen?”

He pauses. That tells me everything before he even opens his mouth. “She is powerful,” he admits. “But not the strongest.”

“What?”

“She is… strategic. Cunning. And yes, gifted in energy manipulation. But the strength you speak of—the ability to bend reality, to pull from worlds, to shape—” He pauses, his emotions stuttering as he thinks something over.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know for certain since I only have stories to go from, but that would require a Glowranth born of royal blood and them being bonded to a fated mate. A complete bond.”

I stare at him. “So… fated mates are really… what? The ultimate weapon?”

His jaw tightens. “Not a weapon. But a force. The joining strengthens both—amplifies. Our energy entwines. And the royal bloodline is… different.”

“I’ve seen it,” I say. “Your markings. Aelith’s. Yours are darker, his brighter. But it’s not just pigment, is it?”

Kael’s shoulders rise and fall in a deep sigh. “No. Our markings carry lineage, power, history. And when one of us bonds… I think the abilities we’ve trained all our lives become something else entirely. It’s more than power. It’s legacy.”

The word settles like stone in my stomach.

“And that’s why you didn’t come for me,” I say, piecing it together aloud. “Because if you did… if you claimed me, and our bond took hold….”

“I would become a threat,” Kael finishes, voice low. “Not just to the crown. To the entire queendom.”

His regret slams into me, a wave of sadness edged with something that feels a lot like self-loathing. I reach out instinctively, my fingers curling around his.

“Kael….”

“I wanted to,” he says. “From the moment I felt you arrive. I felt it. The pull. The instinct. Every day I fought it. Because the moment I came for you?—”

“You’d be choosing treason.”

He nods once. “Yes.”

I swallow thickly, heart thudding. “So, if it wasn’t you… if it wasn’t Aelith… then who has that kind of strength? Who could’ve opened two rifts at once? Who could’ve pulled from across the world—and through the centre of the Earth?”

Kael’s expression darkens, shadows gathering in the hollow of his gaze. “That,” he says, “is the question I fear the answer to most.”

He doesn’t say anything more. His silence is telling. Not thoughtful. Careful .

I shift closer on the bed, knees drawn up, watching the tension return to his shoulders. Not panic this time. Not guilt. Something else.

Fear.

“You know something,” I say quietly. “Don’t you?”

His luminous eyes flick to mine—uneasy, calculating. “I know… stories,” he says finally. “Old ones. Not in the records. Not shared anymore. But I remember them from when I was a child. Before the prince. Before I became part of the guard.”

“Stories?” I repeat, my voice sharper than I mean it to be. “Kael, we’re talking about rift theory turning into real possibility, and you’ve got stories in your back pocket?”

“They were forbidden,” he says tightly. “Tales whispered by my father, who had them whispered to him by his father. Meant to frighten us. Or humble us.”

I blink at him. “Okay, you’re gonna need to be more specific before I combust again and turn the walls to Jell-O.”

His lips twitch—but he doesn’t smile.

“There was once a Glowranth,” he says, voice low, as though the walls themselves might be listening. “A royal heir. Long before the reign of Queen Serresta. Before the queendom unified the outer dominions. His name was erased from our histories. But in whispers, they called him the Shardwalker.”

I straighten, heart thumping. “That sounds… not terrifying at all.”

Kael ignores me. “He was the most powerful of our kind. Fated to one not from our world but another. He found a way to bring his mate here. When they bonded, it is said the rift between their dimensions… broke. Permanently. Reality bent for them. Rules—changed. And they didn’t use that power wisely. ”

I inhale slowly. “Let me guess. War? Chaos? Death?”

He nods grimly. “They brought destruction. Not just to our kind but to others. They are the reason fate stepped in and prevented any more true bonds from forming for the Glowranth. Our species dwindled. Fragments of worlds collapsed. What was left of the rift—their rift—was sealed by the council of that time and buried so deep, it no longer appeared in royal records. Only the oldest bloodlines whisper the old stories.”

“And your family is one of them…. You don’t think they’re just stories made to frighten you,” I murmur.

Kael doesn’t deny it.

“I think what we’re seeing now… it may be something like that. Not the same, but similar. Someone with power—maybe even a bonded pair—has reopened that kind of wound.”

I suck in a sharp breath. “So, you’re saying you’re pretty certain there’s someone out there who can do this…

and we don’t know who. Or why. Someone who could have even been here before all the recent rifts started?

” As far as I’m aware, the rifts have been more regular over the past few years, but they span a couple of decades at most.

“I’m saying I need to find out,” Kael says.

The weight of his words settles between us.

“You’d have to leave,” I say slowly. “To find answers.”

He nods. “Yes.”

“With everything going on—with Aelith, Dawson?—”

“I’d have to go,” he says again, firmer. “But not without you.”

My stomach flips. I don’t know if it’s fear or excitement or both. “You’d take me with you?”

“I won’t leave you,” he says, no hesitation this time. “And you’ve already proven you’re stronger than anyone gives you credit for—including yourself.”

I exhale slowly, already thinking of Varek. Of the community. Of what they’d say if I took off now.

But then I meet Kael’s eyes. That same intense glow that always cuts straight through me.

“And if this is real,” I murmur, “if someone’s been slicing worlds open like oranges and it’s not the queen striving for more power…?”

His expression hardens, but not with anger. With resolve.

“If it’s not her,” he says slowly, “then the unknown feels riskier.”

True. But still, whoever did this brought me to Kael. Jack and Solan together. I tell him as much, adding, “They could be all about the love—an interdimensional Cupid who shoots lightning bolts rather than arrows.”

Am I grasping here, searching for the good? Absolutely, but with so much uncertainty, what else is a loved-up bloke meant to do?

Kael’s jaw works, but he doesn’t argue. Doesn’t need to. He knows I’m reaching for hope—no matter how ridiculous it sounds. But he also knows I’m not wrong. Someone brought us here. Maybe it was chaos. Maybe it was cruelty. Or maybe, somehow, it was something else.

His fingers brush against mine again, hesitant at first, before they thread through with a quiet certainty. His grip is firm. Solid. Like he’s silently saying, I don’t know what we’re walking into, but I’m with you.

The silence holds—not awkward but charged. Something between us settling. Strengthening. Maybe it’s delusion. Maybe it’s madness. But maybe, just maybe, it’s fate doing its weird, messy, terrifying thing.

“We need to sleep on it,” I say eventually, my voice quieter than I intended. “We need to think. You need rest. We both do.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just watches me.

I sigh and give his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m not saying no to leaving. I’m just saying… fuck it all to hell.”

Kael lets out a soft exhale—equal parts amusement and exhaustion. “That’s fair.”

I lean forwards, brushing my forehead to his. “We don’t even know what we’re facing.”

“No,” he agrees. “But we won’t face it apart.”

I swallow hard against the lump in my throat. Bloody hell, I wish I could bottle that kind of certainty and drink it by the litre. “Okay,” I whisper.

He tugs off the heavier layers of his armour and places them in a neat pile by the door. I throw off my outer tunic and collapse back onto the mattress with all the grace of a sacked potato.

Kael joins me, curling close behind. Not sexual. Just solid.

Secure.

Safe.

His arm slides around my waist, and I sigh into the pillow, my muscles uncoiling one by one. “Sleep,” he murmurs, already half under.

My lips curl into a small, stupid smile. “Only if you promise not to go all broody and noble on me tomorrow.”

A pause. Then, soft and low: “No promises.”