Page 42 of Kael (Monsters & Mates #2)

CHAPTER

EIGHTEEN

I wake to heat and strong arms. It’s not an unfamiliar position—one I’ve been in before—but this time, there’s no calm, no bliss. Just panic. I jolt, adrenaline punching through me as I try to sit up?—

—but the arms around me are too strong.

“Sonny.” Kael’s voice is soft, hoarse, but real.

My breath hitches.

“You saved me,” he whispers, and there’s so much rawness in those three words that my eyes sting before I even realise I’m crying.

“I saved us,” I murmur, burying my face into his neck, clutching at him like he might disappear again. “Don’t ever do that again, you arsehole.”

He chuckles—fucking chuckles —and kisses the top of my head, loosening his grip just enough for me to sit up and grab his face. My lips crash to his. The kiss is frantic, possessive, a jumbled mess of teeth and desperation, and when our bond surges to life again, I don’t even bother with words.

“I love you. I want you. I’m not losing you again.”

His thoughts flood mine in return— “Mine. Always. Forever.” Raw, unfiltered emotion washes over me—his gratitude, his awe, the utter reverence in his love.

But then he groans. Not the good kind.

I pull back fast. “What is it? Are you hurt? Where—fuck, your wound—” My hands are already fumbling at the buckles of his armour. “Take it off. Now.”

There’s amusement in his eyes, but he obeys without argument, stripping down until his bare chest is exposed—beautiful and strong and not at all the distraction it usually is. Because my eyes zero in on the place where I stabbed him.

The cloth beneath is ripped, darkened by dried blood—but the skin underneath? It’s healed. A clean, angry scar sits puckered just above his hip. I let out a breath that nearly breaks me.

“It really worked,” I whisper, brushing my fingers over the mark in awe.

“It did,” he murmurs, gaze never leaving mine.

I kiss the scar. Hard. Then I sit up properly, still straddling his thighs. And yes, okay, my brain definitely goes there. His chest is bare, he’s alive, I’m alive, and it’s been a shit day, and we’ve earned a little inappropriate post-near-death celebration.

I grin down at him. “Do you think we have time to get off?”

He blinks. “What?”

“You know. A quickie. Life-affirming orgasm. We literally just died, Kael. That kind of thing requires celebratory sex.”

His lips twitch, that luminescent glow in his eyes sparking with laughter. “Literally, huh?” He snorts. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Hot. You mean hot.”

“I mean distracting.”

“Still hot.”

He groans again, but this time it’s paired with the subtle lift of his hips beneath mine. “Five minutes?”

“That’s all I need,” I shoot back smugly, but a flicker of light catches my attention. I turn, and shock slams into me like a punch to the gut.

The wall of light is gone. In its place… is a library.

Like, an actual motherfucking library.

“What the hell?” I whisper.

Kael sits up, gaze narrowing as he follows my stare. His armour is back on in seconds—rude, but I get it. Priorities. I stare dumbly as he steps towards the trail of faintly glowing sigils on the floor, tinged with smears of blood.

“They lead all the way to… where the door should be,” he says. “We found it.”

I gape. “We’re so much faster than Indy or Lara Croft. Fuck, Kael, when all this is over, we should be treasure hunters or some shit.”

He looks amused, but the expression shifts quickly into something more serious. “Just because this is a library,” he says carefully, “doesn’t mean it’s the one.”

I scoff. “Mate, come on. Hidden for centuries? Secret sigils? Floor panels that eat you alive? What, you think it’s the local public reading room?”

Still, he narrows his eyes at the space ahead. “Let’s just stay focussed. If this place has anything about fated mates, or a way to help Aelith and Dawson… we have to find it.”

I nod, the weight of everything slamming back into my chest. “All right,” I say. “Let’s go crack open some ancient secrets.”

The moment we cross the threshold into the library, the air changes. It’s thick. Heavy. Laced with something that tastes almost metallic, almost electric. Like the hum before a storm.

The space opens out far wider than I expected.

Columns stretch towards the domed ceiling, their surfaces carved with unfamiliar markings—some similar to the glowing sigils I’ve come to associate with Kael, but others older, rougher, like they’ve been etched by hand over time.

The floor is stone, cool beneath our boots, lined with inlaid paths of dull metal veins that seem to pulse faintly as we move.

Shelves stretch in all directions—some wooden, some stone, some suspended in ways that don’t make any kind of architectural sense. A few float several metres off the ground with no visible supports. I eye one that’s swaying slightly like it’s daring me to question it.

Kael walks beside me, one hand brushing my lower back. Protective. Steadying. Which, honestly, I need, because this place? It’s straight out of a fantasy novel. A creepy, majestic, very possibly haunted fantasy novel.

“I don’t get it,” I mutter, running my hand across a dusty ledge. “If this place has been hidden for centuries, how the fuck does it look like this? Like… like someone was here yesterday.”

He doesn’t answer right away. His gaze is roving the space, tense but calculating. “Some energy fields are self-sustaining. If it’s bonded to ancient Glowranth sigils… time might not move here the same way.”

I blink at him. “Okay, Gandalf.”

He smirks. “You said you wanted treasure hunting.”

“Yeah, I was thinking more Indiana Jones and less ‘cursed Labyrinth meets Stranger Things .’” Still, my fingers tingle. The bond hums between us, reacting to the energy like it’s recognising something in the air. Something important.

We walk deeper.

A massive table—no, altar—sits at the centre of the space. Books and scrolls are scattered across it in a way that feels less forgotten and more left mid-research. Kael’s hand tightens on mine.

“This is it,” he murmurs. “Someone’s been here.”

That jolts through me like a shock. “Wait. Like recently?”

He crouches, fingers skimming one of the scrolls. A smear of red—dried blood, fresh enough that it hasn’t turned black—edges the parchment.

“I don’t like this,” I say immediately. “Who the fuck was bleeding down here, and why does it feel like the beginning of a horror movie?”

Kael stands, his eyes scanning. “I think we’re alone.”

Before I can fully spiral, my gaze snags on a worn leatherbound tome tucked beneath a stone weight. I lift it carefully, coughing as dust clouds up in a plume. The cover is marked with the same symbol that shimmered on the floor beneath Kael—the same pattern that’s still faintly glowing on my arm.

I crack it open.

The pages are handwritten in neat but archaic Glowranthian. I recognise some of it, not because I’m fluent—please, I’m still trying to master rolling my R ’s—but apparently my kick-arse bond with Kael comes with special privileges. Enough to catch phrases like:

Bonded energy transfer—accelerated healing, transmutation, life-for-life preservation.

I look up. “Kael,” I say hoarsely. “I think this is it.”

He’s beside me in an instant, eyes scanning the page, his breath catching. “It speaks of what the prince has done.”

“And what I did for you,” I whisper, my voice suddenly too small in this huge, ancient room.

We share a look. The weight of what we’ve found is slowly dawning.

There’s a rustle behind us. My heart slams into my throat—but it’s just air shifting. Or… maybe not just air. The sigils on the far wall flicker to life, casting the whole room in soft golden light.

“Okay,” I breathe, clutching the book. “Let’s keep going. I’ve got a good feeling about this.” It doesn’t mean I’m not still creeped out, but I’m trying on the whole “stay positive” vibe.

Kael nods, the tension in his jaw easing just enough to let the faintest smile through. “Together,” he says.

“Always.”

We step deeper into the library and work in near silence, my fingers brushing against ancient bindings, rough parchment, and the occasional scroll so brittle, I’m terrified to breathe near it.

He reads quietly for a few moments more before he finally speaks, voice low and deliberate. “I think I found something.”

I straighten. “Please say it’s not a story about Glowranth mating with space dragons or whatever.”

Kael tilts the book slightly, showing me an illustration—faded, almost erased by time. It’s a crude figure surrounded by what looks like swirling shards, stepping through a tear in the sky.

The title beneath it reads The First Breach of Terrafeara .

A chill rolls down my spine. “The Shardwalker.”

Kael nods. “This must’ve been written long after the events. But it aligns with what I told you. A Glowranth royal… bonded to something—someone—not from this world. When they joined, their bond didn’t just change them. It tore open a rift that never fully healed.”

I run my hand over the page, reverent despite myself. “That… doesn’t sound like something you casually shelve and forget.”

His expression hardens. “They didn’t. It says here the council of that time—not yet a queendom—buried the heart of the rift’s power source beneath what would eventually become the citadel.”

I blink. “So, this place isn’t just hiding a library. It’s hiding the rift?”

“Or its remnants,” Kael says. “Whatever was left.”

Suddenly the energy in the air makes more sense. The odd pulsing. The ache in my arm where Kael’s markings now live. Maybe we’re not just here to read about history. Maybe we’re sitting on top of it.

“Does it say what happened to them?” I ask. “The Shardwalker and his mate?”

Kael’s mouth flattens. “No. Just that they were powerful. Unstoppable. And dangerous.”

I swallow. “Sounds familiar.”

His eyes lift to mine, something sharp and worried flickering there. “It’s a warning. These scrolls… they weren’t meant to be kept as knowledge. They were meant to contain it.”

A beat passes. I reach for the nearest bundle of texts and start tying them off. “Cool. Let’s take it all anyway.”

He huffs but doesn’t argue. We’ll need help translating the rest. Iris, Shanae, and even Varek, if he can pull his head out of his tortured romance for five seconds. We’ll have to get all this back to Dathanor. Quietly.

We move fast.

There’s no time to sit and read, no matter how much Kael’s fingers linger reverently over the spine of each book he selects.

I’m stuffing scrolls into the pack like we’re looting a magic version of Officeworks.

A twinge of guilt hits me—like maybe the ancient Glowranth of lore would rather we read their life’s work than treat it like takeaway—but survival trumps manners.

Kael lifts a bundle of aged parchment and slides it into his satchel. “We need to prioritise the texts that reference the Shardwalker, fated bonds, and the original breach. Anything that connects it to the citadel.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” I mutter, not for the first time. “Although if I ever meet the ancient Glowranth equivalent of Arthur Conan Doyle, I’ll personally deliver a glowing Yelp review.”

He arches a brow. “That was a sentence.”

I shrug, even as my mind races. “I’ve got questions, Kael. Lots. But one of them won’t shut up.”

He stops, glancing over.

“I get that the current rifts are different,” I say, my voice low.

“They come in storms, right? They rip through and vanish. Slice a bit of a world and stitch it onto Terrafeara. But this? The one we’re apparently standing on?

The very first one—it didn’t seal on its own.

It was open. Wide. They had to close it manually and then build a damn citadel on top of it. ”

Kael nods, tension tightening his jaw. “It had permanence. Like a doorway instead of a tear.”

“Right,” I say, grabbing another scroll. “So whoever’s creating the new rifts now—they’re doing it differently. More erratic. Temporary.”

“And harder to trace,” Kael murmurs.

I pause, straightening. “You think they’re doing it from here? This location?”

His gaze sharpens. “I don’t know. But the energy down here—it’s not dormant. It’s alive. And it responded to us.”

“You think it’s a fated bond thing?” Something that Varek mentioned earlier.

“I think… I don’t have all the answers,” he admits, “but someone must. And if they’re manipulating rifts now, they might have learned how by coming here.”

I shudder. “Great. So we just waltzed into the tutorial zone of Rift-Tearing 101.”

He doesn’t smile.

“I’m serious, Kael. This could be it. The place it all started. But that also means it could be where someone’s coming back to. Using.”

Hesitation slices across his features. He wants to stay to discover the truth. Find answers and potentially put a stop to what’s going on. His emotions are crystal clear.

“We can’t stay,” I say quickly. “Dawson and Aelith need us.”

His jaw clenches, but he nods. “You’re right.”

“But we know where to return to, yeah?”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” I agree, relieved he’s focussed on the most urgent thing. Slinging the last of the scrolls into my pack, I say, “I guess we’re walking back to Varek and Pax? Through the trappy hall of doom?” Assuming we can of course. There has to be a way out of here.

Kael glances towards the dark exit. “We’ll have to find another route. I don’t trust the one that collapsed on us. And we don’t know if it was designed to separate us intentionally.”

“Well, if it was,” I mutter, dusting off my hands, “whoever built this place can kindly suck my?—”

“Sonny,” he warns, even as amusement slips through the bond.

“Fine. Let’s just not die on the way back, okay? I’ve nearly died enough this week. Honestly, my quota’s full.”

Kael pulls his sword again, light pulsing from his palm, and offers me his other hand. “Then stay close.”

“Always.”

I take it, and we begin our search for the way back.