Page 18

CADE

T he magical storm arrived at sunset, rolling over Mistwhisper Falls like the wrath of ancient gods made manifest in wind and lightning.

Lyra felt it building before she saw it—a pressure in the air that made her mark burn and her magic twist restlessly in her chest. She was in the inn's main parlor, surrounded by research books Nico had delivered that morning along with a note that simply read "Knowledge is power.

Use it wisely." She'd been trying to understand the intricacies of triad bonding, hoping to find some alternative to the path everyone seemed determined to push her down.

The first rumble of thunder made every window in the inn rattle simultaneously.

"That's not natural," Lyra said to the empty room, moving to the front windows to peer out at the approaching storm.

The clouds were wrong—too dark, too uniform, moving against the prevailing wind patterns.

Lightning flickered within them, but it was the wrong color, cycling through purples and greens that belonged in aurora displays rather than mountain thunderstorms.

Her phone buzzed with an emergency alert: "SUPERNATURAL WEATHER EVENT. SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. AVOID CONTACT WITH ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS."

"Well, that's specific," Lyra muttered, but she was already moving away from the windows as the first drops of rain began to fall. Except it wasn't quite rain—the droplets glowed faintly as they hit the glass, leaving trails of phosphorescence that pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat.

The storm reached the inn with enough energy to make the entire building shudder.

Wind howled around the Victorian structure, finding every gap and weakness in the aged construction.

The lights flickered once, twice, then went out entirely, leaving Lyra in darkness broken only by the eerie glow of the storm's lightning.

But it was the voices that made her blood run cold.

They came with the wind, dozens of them, speaking in languages she didn't recognize but somehow understood.

Ancient words of hunger and binding and the promise of freedom that had been denied too long.

The Mistbound was riding the storm, using the chaotic energy to push against the boundaries of its prison.

"This is my fault," Lyra said to the darkness, her magic sparking involuntarily in response to her distress. Every surge of power made the storm intensify, as if her chaos energy was feeding the supernatural weather system. "I'm making it worse just by being here."

The rational part of her mind knew she should call for help, should reach out to Cade through the bond that connected them or contact the town council.

But the growing certainty that she was the problem, that her very presence in Mistwhisper Falls was endangering everyone she'd come to care about, made her reach for her car keys instead.

The inn fought her every step toward the door.

The front entrance wouldn't open, despite the fact that she could feel no magical lock holding it closed. The back door's handle came off in her hand. Even the windows seemed to resist her attempts to force them open, as if the building itself was trying to keep her inside where she'd be safe.

"I'm not staying," Lyra told the inn, her voice raised to carry over the howling wind. "I'm not going to be responsible for what happens when that thing breaks free."

The house's response was immediate and dramatic. Every light fixture blazed to life despite the power outage, the grandfather clock began chiming midnight despite the fact that it was barely past seven, and from somewhere in the walls came a sound like groaning that might have been protest or pain.

That's when the foundation began to crack.

Lyra felt it through the soles of her feet—a tremor that started small but grew with each pulse of her panicked magic.

Dust rained from the ceiling as the building's bones began to shift under forces they were never designed to withstand.

The inn was connected to the founder's rune in the cellar, and the rune was connected to her, and the feedback loop was tearing the entire structure apart.

"Stop," she said, pressing her hands against the nearest wall. "Please, just let me go. I'm trying to protect everyone."

But the inn's magic was older than her understanding and bound by purposes she'd only begun to grasp. It wouldn't let her leave, and her presence was destroying it from the inside out.

The sound of splintering wood echoed through the parlor as one of the support beams cracked.

Somewhere upstairs, glass shattered as windows gave way to the building's distress.

The magical storm outside intensified in response, lightning striking so close that the thunder was instantaneous and deafening.

Lyra was still trying to force the front door when she heard the truck.

Engine noise cut through the storm's chaos, followed by the slam of a vehicle door and heavy footsteps on the porch. The front door, which had refused to budge for her, swung open the moment Cade touched the handle.

He was soaked from the supernatural rain, his dark hair plastered to his skull and his clothes clinging to his frame.

But it was his eyes that made Lyra's breath catch—they were blazing gold with wolf fire, and his entire presence radiated the kind of controlled panic that meant his human restraint was hanging by threads.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded, taking in her car keys and the desperate way she was standing by the door.

"Leaving," Lyra said, lifting her chin defiantly. "Before I bring this whole town down around everyone's ears."

"That's not happening."

"Look around, Cade!" Lyra gestured at the chaos surrounding them—the cracked walls, the fallen plaster, the way the very air seemed to vibrate with unstable energy.

"I'm destroying everything I touch. The storm, the inn, the seal below the falls—it's all connected to me, and I can't control any of it. "

"So you're running away?"

"I'm being responsible," Lyra snapped. "I'm removing the source of the problem before more people get hurt."

Cade stepped further into the parlor, and immediately the inn's distress seemed to ease slightly. His wolf's presence provided a grounding influence that her magic instinctively responded to, and Lyra could feel some of the chaotic energy bleeding away.

"You think you're the problem?" he asked, hhis voice dipped into a rasp that meant the beast inside him was barely leashed. "You think removing yourself from the equation will somehow fix everything?"

"Won't it?"

"No, Lyra. It'll make everything infinitely worse.

" Cade moved closer, and she could see the lightning reflecting in his golden eyes.

"The bond between us isn't just emotional or magical—it's structural.

You're part of the seal now, part of the binding that holds the Mistbound in its prison.

If you leave, if you break that connection, the whole thing collapses. "

"Then we'll find another way," Lyra said desperately. "There has to be something else, some other solution that doesn't require me to?—"

Her words were cut off by a sound like breaking glass, but magnified a hundredfold. The rune in the cellar had cracked again, and this time the fracture was deep enough to let something through.

Mist began seeping up through the floorboards—not the natural fog of the mountains, but something gray and writhing that moved with purpose. Where it touched, the wooden floors began to blacken and decay, as if the very presence of the Mistbound's influence was corrosive to living things.

"Too late," a voice whispered from everywhere and nowhere. "The binding fails. The prison opens. Soon we feast on the magic of this place."

Lyra's magic flared in response to the threat, but instead of her usual golden chaos energy, what emerged was something darker and more volatile.

The founder's sigil on her palm blazed with light so intense it burned into her vision, and she could feel power building inside her that was far beyond anything she'd experienced before.

"Lyra," Cade said urgently, "you need to calm down. The more energy you put out, the faster the seal deteriorates."

"I can't," she gasped, her entire body beginning to glow with uncontrolled magic. "It's too much. I can't hold it back."

The inn groaned around them as another support beam cracked. Upstairs, something heavy crashed to the floor, and the mist creeping through the floorboards was spreading faster now, reaching for anything that contained life or magic.

"Then don't hold it back," Cade said, stepping directly into the path of her chaotic energy. "Channel it through me. Use the bond."

"I'll hurt you."

"You'll hurt everyone if you don't try." Cade held out his hands, palms up, his expression resolute despite the danger. "Trust me, Lyra. Trust us."

The word "us" hit her like a physical blow, carrying with it the weight of everything they'd shared and everything they could be if she just stopped running from the connection between them.

"I'm scared," she admitted, her voice barely audible over the storm's fury.

"I know," Cade said gently. "I'm scared too. But I'm not scared of you, or the bond, or what we might become together. I'm only scared of losing you."

The confession hung between them like a lifeline, and Lyra felt something shift in her chest. Not just the magical bond, but something deeper and more fundamental—the recognition that she wasn't facing this alone.

"You won't lose me," she said, reaching for his outstretched hands. "Not if I can help it."

The moment their skin touched, the connection between them blazed to life strong enough to make the air shimmer. But this time, instead of chaos, there was harmony. Cade's wolf energy wrapped around her magic like a stabilizing framework, giving her power direction and purpose.

The supernatural storm outside began to calm, its fury diminishing as the energy source that had been feeding it was channeled into more constructive patterns. The mist seeping through the floor retreated, unable to maintain its hold in the face of their combined strength.

But the inn was still failing around them, its structure compromised by the magical stresses it had endured.

"We need to get to the cellar," Cade said, his voice strained with the effort of maintaining their connection. "If we can reinforce the rune directly, we might be able to stabilize everything."

"Together?"

"Together," Cade confirmed, and the word carried promise that went far beyond their immediate crisis.

They made their way through the failing inn hand in hand, their combined magic holding back the worst of the structural damage. But Lyra could feel time running out—not just for the building, but for the seal beneath it and possibly for Mistwhisper Falls itself.

At the cellar stairs, she paused to look back at the parlor where she'd tried so desperately to leave.

"I was really going to run," she said quietly.

"I know," Cade replied. "But you didn't. When it mattered, when people needed you, you stayed and fought."

"How did you know to come?"

Cade's smile was rueful but warm. "Because I finally figured out that I'd rather risk everything with you than be safe without you. Because I love you, Lyra Whitaker, founder bond or no founder bond."

The words hit her like sunlight breaking through storm clouds, and for the first time since the crisis began, Lyra felt genuinely hopeful.

"I love you too," she said, and meant it with every fiber of her being.

Behind them, the Mistbound whispered its frustration into the darkness, but its voice was growing fainter as their bond grew stronger.

The real battle was just beginning, but no matter what came, they’d meet it as one.