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 withunfamiliar 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.
