Page 63 of The Monster's Daughter

For a minute, we’re quiet.

Then I whisper, “You’re stuck with us now, you know.”

His chest rumbles with a low laugh. “I’ve been stuck since the first time you spit in my face.”

I grin, snorting softly. “You deserved it.”

He presses a kiss to my temple. “Probably.”

The lights dim on their own. The city hums in the distance, a soft lullaby.

I feel full.

Like maybe, this is what peace looks like.

CHAPTER 36

KAGE

Peace feels like a lie.

It’s warm. It’s soft. It smells like cinnamon and little-girl shampoo and Bella’s skin after a shower. It wraps around me in lazy loops, pulls me under in the way a predator might lull prey with warmth before the strike.

And I want it.

But it itches. Somewhere deep in my bones. Like a warning rumble before the quake. A buzz I can’t locate, can’t silence. It’s the kind of feeling that saved me on battlefields—told me when a sniper was watching, when the floor would explode beneath me, when a comrade was about to scream and not because of the fight.

So I lie there, in the dark, watching the slow rise and fall of Bella’s breathing. Natalie curled in the crook of her arm, mouth parted in a whisper of a dream. I watch them like they’re stars I’ve been lucky enough to land beside.

And still—I can’t rest.

I peel away from the bed silently. My feet hit the floor with practiced grace. I slip out the sliding door onto the balcony, the air sharp and cool against my skin.

Glimner’s sky is alive tonight. Aurora stains it like bruises on velvet. A flickering storm of gold and blue licks at the horizon.

But something else pulses behind it.

It’s faint. Just a flicker.

Then gone.

I narrow my gaze, every nerve on alert. There’s nothing there. Just the skyline. The usual quiet hum of patrol drones. The glow of city flora. But that flicker—it wasn’t natural. It was too exact. Toorhythmic.

I grit my teeth.

“Kage?”

Bella’s voice startles me. I turn but she’s not there.

My head snaps back toward the bedroom. The sound didn’t come from her.

It came from inside the apartment.

No, deeper.

From Natalie’s room. I don’t hesitate. I move.

The door creaks as I step through it, heart hammering against my ribs like it’s trying to warn me, too.