Page 53 of The Monster's Daughter

Because I know—she still hasn’t told me everything.

And whatever it is, it’s coming for us.

Like a storm on the horizon.

And when it breaks, nothing will be the same.

CHAPTER 31

BELLA

Iwake up to heat and stillness.

Kage's body is wrapped around mine like armor, like gravity, like something I can't name without bleeding for it. He's so damn big it should be suffocating—but it's not. It's shelter. It’s a blanket made of scars and bad dreams and a pulse I trust more than my own.

His chest rises slow against my back, every exhale brushing warm over my neck. One massive hand rests just under my ribs, fingers curved like he’s holding something precious. And maybe I am. Maybe I’m something worth guarding, for once. He smells like sleep and salt and ozone, that particular storm-washed scent he always gets after he’s been brooding too long under open skies.

I don’t move. I barely breathe.

Because Kage, asleep, is something rare. It’s not just the quiet. It’s the way his face softens. The scars don’t vanish, but they stop snarling. The creases in his brow ease. His mouth, that deadly, kissable mouth, isn’t curled in a warning for once. He looks… young. Not in years—he’ll never be young again—but in the way kids look before they’ve learned to brace for pain.

I stare at him like a thief.

And I feel it. The bond. Jalshagar. Fated mates. Whatever the hell you want to call it, it’s pulsing in my chest like it’s got its own heartbeat. I thought I could bury it under sarcasm and war trauma and the careful distance I keep from things that can ruin me.

But it's there. Stronger than ever.

My fingers twitch. I want to touch him. Just one graze down his jaw, to see if he’s real and not some fever dream cooked up by my lizard-brain and a decade of sexual frustration. But my hand hovers useless in the air before I snatch it back.

Because touching him might wake him.

And if he wakes, I might tell him.

And if I tell him…

God, how do I say it? How do I tell this man that he has a daughter? That I kept her secret like a coward? That the little girl who clung to his shoulders yesterday with sticky fingers and a smile too big for her face is the part of him I never meant to keep hidden?

I roll away before he can stir. The cold hits me fast. I don’t deserve the heat anyway.

The floatingmarket is a cacophony of joy and chaos stitched together with neon lights and the smell of food on open flames. People shout in half a dozen languages. Colorful stalls sway from suspension cables, bouncing with every footstep on the mesh gangways. Glimner’s twin suns bake the air with gold, but the wind off the sea keeps it bearable.

Kage walks like he was made for this—stoic, towering, but softened somehow by the tiny hands on his horns.

Natalie sits on his shoulders, squealing as she points at everything. “That one! No, that one! It’s shiny!”

“Everything here is shiny,” Kage says, but his voice is fond, amused. She’s tugging his horns like reins and he’s just letting her.

“You’re shiny,” she retorts.

I laugh so hard I snort.

It’s disgusting how good they look together. My weird, scaled brute of a soulmate and our absurd little shapeshifter. She lights up around him. Glows. And he—he watches her like she hung the damn stars.

I trail behind them, heart in my throat, trying to memorize every second.

Natalie buys him a rainbow-striped hat from a vendor who swears it’s “Glimner’s finest sunshade for gentlemen with unusual cranium shapes.” It has pompoms.

Kage puts it on without hesitation.