Page 17

LYRA

L yra's emotions destabilized her magic further the moment she walked back into the inn after storming out of the council meeting.

The building seemed to sense her distress immediately, responding to her chaotic energy like a supernatural tuning fork.

Pictures rattled in their frames without any wind to move them.

The floorboards creaked in harmonies that sounded almost musical, if music could be made of frustration and desperate confusion.

Even the ancient grandfather clock in the hallway began chiming random hours, as if time itself was responding to her emotional turmoil.

"This is exactly what they're talking about," Lyra muttered to the empty inn, the air around her fingers shimmered with power. "I can't even be upset without breaking things."

She tried going to the kitchen, thinking that making tea might help her calm down, but the moment she touched the kettle, it began boiling without being turned on.

The refrigerator started cycling through temperatures fast enough to make the compressor whine in protest. When she opened the cabinet to get a mug, every piece of dishware inside began rattling like it was caught in an earthquake.

"Son of a hex," Lyra said, backing away from the chaos she was creating just by existing.

The glowing rune etched into her skin was burning now, pulsing with increasing intensity as her emotional state fed back into the magical systems of the inn.

She could feel something responding deep beneath the building—not the Mistbound, but the rune itself, drawing power from her distress and amplifying it back through the building's bones.

That's when she felt the pull toward the cellar.

It wasn't the hungry compulsion she'd experienced at Hush Falls—this felt more like a summons from something that wanted to help rather than harm.

The founder's rune was calling to her, not with malevolence but with the promise of understanding, of answers to questions she was finally desperate enough to ask.

Lyra descended the cellar stairs with her magic sparking around her like a personal aurora.

The rune was glowing when she reached the basement floor, its blue light pulsing in rhythm with the mark on her palm.

But the crack that had appeared when she'd first touched it was wider now, branching across the obsidian surface like a spider web of silver fractures.

"Great," she said, settling beside the stone. "I broke the magical prison lock. That's definitely going to look good on my supernatural resume."

The moment her palm touched the rune's surface, though, the chaos in her mind didn't still the way it had before.

Instead, power began pouring out of her in waves that was unrelated to what was actually happening.

Her magic, already destabilized by her emotional turmoil, found the rune's amplifying effect and exploded outward enough to send a tremor to the cellar walls.

"No, no, no," she gasped, trying to pull her hand away from the stone, but the connection had deepened beyond her ability to break. Magic flowed through her like a river in flood, wild and chaotic and completely beyond her control.

The crack in the rune widened further, branching across its surface with sounds like breaking glass.

Each new fracture released another pulse of ancient power, and Lyra could feel something vast stirring beneath the inn's foundation—not the Mistbound, but the binding itself, straining against forces it was never meant to contain.

The inn above began to shake, the old Victorian structure groaning as magic poured through it in ways its builders had never anticipated.

Dust rained from the ceiling, and somewhere upstairs, she could hear the sound of things falling over as the entire building began to resonate with unstable energy.

That's when she heard footsteps on the stairs, and Cade's voice cutting through the magical chaos like a blade.

"Lyra! What the hell?—"

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, taking in the scene with the kind of rapid assessment that suggested he'd dealt with magical emergencies before.

Lyra was kneeling beside the rune with her palm fused to its surface, power crackling around her like visible electricity.

The cellar walls were vibrating hard enough to shower dust from the ceiling, and the ancient stone was developing new cracks by the second.

"I can't control it," she said, her voice strained with effort. "The magic—it's too much. I'm going to bring the building down."

Cade moved toward her without hesitation, though she could see his wolf struggling against the assault of chaotic energy. "Let me help."

"You can't touch me," Lyra warned. "The feedback will?—"

But Cade was already kneeling beside her, his hands covering hers on the rune's surface. The moment their skin made contact, everything changed.

His wolf surged forward so intensely it made his bones crack and his muscles ripple.

Golden light blazed from his eyes as his human form began to shift, revealing glimpses of the predator that lived beneath his careful control.

Fangs elongated. Claws extended. His entire presence became something wilder and more primal than anything Lyra had experienced.

But instead of adding to the chaos, his wolf's power provided an anchor point for her spiraling magic. The steady, grounded energy of his shifted form drew her chaotic power like a lightning rod, giving it direction and purpose instead of letting it flail destructively.

"Better?" he asked, though his voice had dropped to a growl that was more animal than human.

"Much better," Lyra breathed, feeling her magic settle into patterns that worked with his instead of against everything around them.

That's when the bond between them snapped fully into place.

Not the tentative connection they'd felt before, but the complete, overwhelming fusion of two souls recognizing their perfect match.

Lyra could feel Cade's wolf as if it were part of her own spirit—protective, devoted, fierce with love that went beyond rational thought.

She could sense his memories, his fears, the careful walls he'd built to keep people at a distance and the way those walls crumbled completely when it came to her.

And he could feel her—the bright chaos of her magic, the stubborn determination that made her fight for what she believed in, the loneliness she'd carried her entire life until she'd found this place and these people who understood what it meant to be different.

"Lyra," he said, her name coming out like a prayer.

"I know," she whispered, because she could feel what he was feeling, could sense the way the bond was rewriting fundamental parts of who they were. "I can feel it too."

The magic flowing between them stabilized, but it was no longer entirely under their conscious control.

Power pulsed back and forth like a shared heartbeat, wolf energy and chaos magic finding perfect balance in their connection.

The cellar stopped shaking, but the rune beneath their joined hands was glowing brighter than ever.

"The seal," Cade said, his shifted senses apparently picking up something she couldn't detect. "It's responding to the bond."

Lyra could feel it too—the way their combined magic was feeding into the rune, strengthening the binding that held the Mistbound in its prison.

But she could also feel the cost. Every pulse of power that flowed into the seal drew energy from both of them, and she wasn't sure how long they could sustain it.

"How long do we have to—" she started to ask, but the question was cut off by a sound that made both of them freeze.

The crack in the rune was spreading again, but this time it wasn't caused by her uncontrolled magic. Something was pushing against the seal from the other side, testing the boundaries of its prison with patient, deliberate pressure.

"It knows," Cade said quietly. "It can sense that the bond is forming, and it's trying to break free before we can strengthen the binding."

"Can it do that?"

"I don't know. But we need to?—"

The rune cracked again, a fracture so deep it seemed to go all the way through the stone. Ancient power leaked through the gap, carrying with it the scent of something hungry and old and absolutely malevolent.

Above them, the inn's lights began to flicker in patterns that suggested something was trying to communicate. And from somewhere deep beneath the foundation, Lyra could hear the Mistbound's voice, no longer distant and ethereal but close enough to make her bones ache.

"Soon," it whispered, the words seeming to come from the stone itself. "Soon we will be free, and the daughters of magic will feed our hunger as they were always meant to do."

Lyra met Cade's eyes, seeing her own determination reflected in his golden gaze. The bond between them was complete now, unbreakable, but it might not be enough. The seal was failing faster than they could repair it, and the entity beneath the inn was growing stronger with every passing moment.

"We need help," she said quietly. "We need to find another way."

"There has to be another way," Cade agreed, his voice carrying the fierce conviction that had made him an alpha. "I won't share you with anyone, bond or no bond. And I won't ask you to sacrifice what we have for some ancient interpretation of how magic is supposed to work."

"Then we figure out a different solution," Lyra said, though she could feel the weight of responsibility pressing down on both of them. "We find a way to make this work without giving up what matters most."

The rune pulsed once more beneath their joined hands, its light flickering like a dying flame. Through their bond, Lyra could feel Cade's determination matching her own—they would find another way, no matter what the council believed about ancient requirements.

But first, they had to survive whatever the Mistbound was planning to do next.

And somewhere in the darkness beneath Mistwhisper Falls, something ancient and patient began to laugh.