Page 7 of The Monster's Daughter
Kage doesn’t say a word. He moves ahead of me, huge and silent, every footstep crunching gravel and glass. His shoulders roll with a weight I can’t see but feel in the air around him. He doesn’t look back once. Not to check if I’m keeping up. Not to see if I’ve bolted. He just… trusts I’ll follow.
And gods help me, I do.
I trail behind him, hands shoved into the pockets of my scorched jacket, my boots scuffing dust. The silence stretches so wide it could swallow me whole. Usually, I’m good at filling silence—I’ve got sarcasm on tap, a never-ending fountain of shit talk. But now? My heart’s not in it.
“Hey, you know this isn’t exactly the scenic route,” I call, voice bouncing thinly against the skeletal buildings. No reaction. “Next time you kidnap a girl, maybe take her somewhere with less ambiance. Beach trip, maybe. Margaritas, sand between the toes, that kinda thing.”
Nothing.
I sigh, dragging my tongue over the cut on the inside of my cheek. The metallic tang of blood lingers. I want him to snap at me, growl, tell me to shut up. Anything. Instead, he just keeps walking, his massive frame cutting through the smoke-hazy light like a shadow that learned how to breathe.
And worse, my eyes won’t stop dragging over him. The way the silver streaks ripple faintly when the sun catches his scales. The thick cords of muscle shifting under all that armor of flesh. The sheerpresenceof him, so solid it makes the whole ruined street feel small around him.
He’s an enemy. He could kill me with one twitch. He already threw me over his shoulder like a sack of laundry. And yet—my stomach flips every time the light glances across him. My chest tightens when the wind ruffles the dust off his back and I catch another glimpse of those silver patterns like starlight painted on obsidian.
I hate it. I hate myself for it.
And worse, I hate that I want him to look back.
By the time the sky goes lavender and the ruins cast long, jagged shadows, we stumble into what used to be a transport hub. The roof’s half-collapsed, glass panels shattered across the floor, old metal benches bent and warped. The place reeks of rust and wet concrete, but it’s shelter.
Kage sets his pack down with a grunt and lowers himself against a pillar. He doesn’t even glance at me, just stares off into the dark like the ghosts are more interesting company.
I sit across from him, the distance deliberate. My back digs into a bent steel beam, the cold seeping through my jacket. For a while, it’s just the whistle of wind through the broken rafters.
Then I do something I don’t plan—I pull a ration bar from my pocket and toss it across the gap. “Here. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
He catches it without looking, claws closing around it like it weighs nothing. For a second, he just stares at it. Then he peels the wrapper back slow, deliberate, like he doesn’t know if it’s a trick.
Our hands brush when I pass him the second half. Just a flicker, skin against scale. But the contact lights me up like I stuck my finger in a socket. Electricity snaps up my arm, hot and dizzying, and I yank back so fast the wrapper tears in my hand.
“Shit.” My voice comes out higher than I mean, sharper. My pulse hammers in my throat. “Don’t—don’t make it weird.”
Kage finally looks at me. Really looks. His eyes catch the dying light, silver swirling like liquid mercury, and his face is unreadable. Not angry. Not amused. Just… watching.
And my stomach does another one of those traitorous flips.
I glare at him, heart racing, trying to summon my usual bite. “Seriously. You’re my captor. You don’t get to give me—” I wave my hands in the air. “Whatever the hell that was. Butterflies. Nausea. Both. Doesn’t matter. Just don’t.”
But it’s already too late. My chest knows it. My gut knows it. It’s not just fear anymore. Not just adrenaline.
Somewhere I don’t want to look too closely, I want him.
And that’s the scariest battlefield I’ve ever walked into.
CHAPTER 6
KAGE
Her footsteps are loud on purpose.
She scuffs her boots through the ash, kicks at broken glass, lets every scrap of rubble sing out beneath her like a warning bell. She wants me to notice, to say something, to turn around and remind her she’s still my captive.
I don’t.
I keep walking, one foot grinding into the ruins after the other. The alleys taste of smoke and rust, the wind carrying whispers of scorched insulation and bone dust. Collapsed homes lean against each other like drunks, and in the cracks I catch the glitter of children’s toys, bent spoons, a bedframe melted into slag. All of it is wrong. All of it is gone.
And every step, her voice tries to pierce the storm in my skull.
