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LYRA

T he whispers started the night after the forest clearing, soft and insistent, like voices carried on wind that wasn't there.

Lyra first noticed them while she was washing dishes in the inn's kitchen, a sound so faint she might have dismissed it as water in the pipes or settling wood if not for the way her magic stirred restlessly in response.

The voices seemed to be coming from somewhere below, threading up through the floorboards with words she couldn't quite catch.

She turned off the water and listened, but the whispers stopped the moment she focused on them, leaving only the ordinary night sounds of an old building.

"Probably just tired," she told herself, though her magic disagreed with prickling awareness along her skin.

The fog arrived an hour later.

Lyra first noticed it through the kitchen window—a thick, silvery mist that seemed to roll uphill from the direction of the falls. But fog didn't move against gravity, and it certainly didn't move in the deliberate, purposeful way this particular weather system was approaching the inn.

She stepped onto the back porch for a better look and immediately felt her breath catch.

The fog wasn't just defying physics; it was moving with intention, flowing around obstacles like water but maintaining coherent shapes that looked almost like figures.

As she watched, mesmerized, the mist seemed to reach toward the inn with tendrils that stretched and grasped before dissipating.

Her phone vibrated and the screen flashed with an incoming message from Cade: "Stay inside. Lock the doors. Don't go near the cellar."

"Why not?" she texted back, though something in her chest was already pulling her toward the basement stairs.

"Just don't. I'm on my way."

But the pull was getting stronger, and the whispers were getting louder, and Lyra found herself moving toward the cellar door despite every instinct that told her to listen to Cade's warning.

The voices were clearer now, rising from the darkness below with words that made her founder's brand tingle: "Daughter of magic. Blood of the binding. Come home."

"Home," Lyra repeated, her hand already on the doorknob. The word felt right in a way that should have been alarming but somehow wasn't. Whatever was calling to her felt familiar, welcoming, like family she'd forgotten she had.

The cellar stairs creaked under her feet as she descended, each step taking her deeper into air that thrummed with ancient power. The founder's rune was glowing again, its cracked surface pulsing with soft blue light that illuminated the stone mosaic in patterns she hadn't noticed before.

But it wasn't the rune that drew her attention. It was the voices.

"Founder," they whispered, the sound coming from everywhere and nowhere. "We have waited so long."

"Who are you?" Lyra asked the darkness, settling beside the rune as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"We are the first," the voices replied, and suddenly Lyra could see them—translucent figures gathered around the edges of the cellar, watching her with eyes that held centuries of patient waiting. "We are the guardians who came before."

The spirits of the original founders. Lyra knew this with the same bone-deep certainty that told her the inn was truly home, that Mistwhisper Falls was where she belonged, that the magic flowing through her veins was legacy as much as power.

"What do you want?" she asked, though part of her already knew.

"To finish what we started," the witch founder said, stepping forward from the group.

She looked exactly like the vision Lyra had experienced when she'd first touched the rune—copper hair, amber eyes, features that could have been Lyra's own if viewed in an antique mirror. "To seal what must be sealed."

"The binding beneath the falls grows weak," added the wolf founder, a man whose presence made Lyra think of Cade—the same predatory grace, the same protective intensity. "Without living blood to anchor it, the prison will not hold."

"Prison?" Lyra leaned forward, her mark pulsing in rhythm with the rune's glow. "What's imprisoned?"

"Something that should never have been," the fae founder said, their voice carrying harmonics that hurt to hear. "Something that feeds on chaos and grows strong on discord. We bound it when the world was younger, but bindings require renewal."

"Renewal how?"

"Three bloodlines," the witch founder explained. "Three powers working as one. As we did. As you must."

The pull Lyra felt toward the rune intensified, and she found herself reaching out to touch its cracked surface.

The moment her palm made contact, visions flooded her mind—flashes of the original binding, of power so vast and hungry it had taken the triad of formidable supernatural focus of their age to contain it.

She saw the sacrifice they'd made, pouring their life force into a seal that would hold for centuries but would eventually weaken without their bloodlines to maintain it.

"I don't know how," Lyra said, her voice barely a whisper. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"You will learn," the founders said in unison. "You must learn. The time grows short."

That’s when the sound behind her broke the spell—heavy, urgent, radiating the kind of controlled panic that meant Cade was in full alpha protection mode.

"Lyra!" His voice cut through the spiritual atmosphere like a blade. "Step away from the rune. Now."

But she couldn't move. The connection between her and the stone had deepened, and she could feel something vast stirring beneath the inn's foundation.

Not the imprisoned entity—something else.

Something that recognized her presence and was reaching up through layers of earth and magic to touch her mind.

"I can't," she said, though whether she was speaking to Cade or the founders, she wasn't sure. "It won't let me go."

Cade took the stairs three at a time, his wolf so close to the surface that his eyes blazed gold in the rune's light. The moment he reached the cellar floor, though, everything changed.

The founders' spirits turned toward him with recognition and approval. The wolf founder stepped forward, studying Cade with eyes that held centuries of accumulated wisdom.

"Blood of my blood," the ancient wolf said. "You have grown strong."

Cade's human control slipped for a moment, and Lyra caught a glimpse of something wild and primal in his expression. "You're not supposed to be here. The dead should stay dead."

"We are not dead," the witch founder corrected gently. "We are the memory of the binding, held in the stones until our purpose is fulfilled."

"Your purpose was fulfilled two hundred years ago."

"Our purpose," the fae founder said with a smile that held too many teeth, "was to ensure the prison would hold for as long as necessary. That purpose continues through you."

The air in the cellar was growing thick with competing energies—the ancient power of the founders, the primal strength of Cade's wolf, and Lyra's chaos magic responding to all of it like a tuning fork struck too hard.

The rune beneath her palm was burning now, not with heat but with cold fire that seemed to rewrite her DNA with every pulse.

"Cade," she said, her voice strained. "Something's happening. I can feel it—the thing beneath the inn. It's waking up."

He was beside her in an instant, his hand covering hers on the rune's surface. As soon as his skin met hers, the spiritual maelstrom in the cellar exploded into something far more immediate and urgent.

Power flowed between them like liquid lightning, their founder bloodlines recognizing each other and fusing into something stronger than either could achieve alone.

Lyra could feel Cade's wolf through the connection, wild and protective and absolutely devoted to keeping her safe.

His thoughts and memories brushed hers, unfiltered and raw—the weight of alpha responsibility, the loneliness of command, the careful control that kept his wilder nature in check.

And he could feel her—the chaos of her magic, the warmth of her laughter, the stubborn determination that made her fight for what she believed in even when she was terrified.

"The bond awakens," the founders said in unison, their voices filled with satisfaction. "As it was meant to."

"What bond?" Lyra gasped, though she could feel it forming—invisible threads of connection that tied her magic to Cade's wolf, her chaos to his control, her heart to his in ways that wasn’t their choice and everything to do with destiny.

"The mating bond," Cade said, his voice rough with strain and tinged with what could only be longing. "Founder bloodlines are meant to work together. To balance each other."

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I," Cade admitted. "But I can feel it. The pull. The need to—" He cut himself off, jaw clenched with the effort of maintaining control.

The need to what, Lyra wanted to ask, but the words died in her throat as Cade's grip on her hand tightened and she felt the full force of his wolf's attention focus on her.

The founders' spirits were still watching, their ancient magic amplifying every sensation, every emotion, every desperate need that had been building between them since the moment they'd met.

"The bloodlines call to each other," the witch founder said softly. "As they always have. As they always will."

Lyra tried to pull her hand away from the rune, to break the connection that was making it impossible to think clearly, but Cade's fingers were wrapped around hers and he wasn't letting go.

"Don't," he said, his voice barely human. "Don't fight it."

"Fight what?"

"This. Us. What we are."