Page 15

TEN

MARA

T he victory lasted exactly three days before Griff's protective instincts turned toxic. He had been dreaming of a dark future. A dark world waitded for them, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

The freed consciousness that had carried echoes of Sarah's love had faded with the dawn, leaving behind only grateful smiles and promises to remember.

The other liberated individuals had been reunited with families who had thought them lost forever, their tears of joy filling the inn with the kind of emotional warmth that made even the ancient building seem to settle more comfortably into its foundations.

But as the days progressed and the reality of what they'd faced began to sink in, Griff found himself studying every interaction between Mara and Tilly with the hypervigilant attention of someone looking for threats that might not exist yet.

"Daddy, you're making the coffee pot nervous," Tilly said from her position at the kitchen table, where she was drawing pictures of the freed shadow beings with crayons that glowed faintly with their own inner light. "It keeps trying to hide behind the toaster."

Griff looked at the kitchen counter and realized that his emotional state was indeed affecting the household appliances, his bear's anxiety manifesting as low-level magical interference that made electronic devices behave erratically.

The coffee pot was actually vibrating slightly, as if trying to edge away from his agitated presence.

"Sorry, baby girl," he said, forcing himself to take a deep breath and rein in the protective fury that had been building all morning. "Daddy's just... processing everything that happened."

"You're scared," Tilly said with the devastating directness of childhood. "You're scared that the bad thing might come back and hurt Miss Mara and me, so you're thinking about making us go away so we'll be safe."

Mara looked up from the herb garden she'd been tending just outside the kitchen window, her green eyes sharp with understanding and growing concern. She'd been giving him space to work through his emotions, but Tilly's observation had clearly struck too close to home for comfort.

"Is that what you're thinking?" she asked, stepping back inside with dirt under her fingernails and worry written across her features. "That separation will somehow keep us safer than staying together?"

"The entity specifically targeted founder bloodlines," Griff said, his voice rougher than he intended.

"It spent centuries hunting people like you and Tilly, consuming them to add their power to its collection.

What if there are others like it? What if word gets out about what Tilly can do, about how powerful she is when our bloodlines work together? "

"Then we face whatever comes together," Mara said firmly. "The same way we faced the entity. The same way we've faced everything since I came back to this town."

"You came back to this town to escape something that was hunting you," Griff pointed out, his bear pacing restlessly with the need to eliminate threats that were too nebulous to fight directly.

It was eating him inside and out, screaming at him to do something.

"And now you're in more danger than ever because of your connection to us. Because of your connection to me."

Tilly's crayon snapped in her grip, the broken piece flying across the kitchen with enough force to embed itself in the wooden cabinet door.

The air around her began to shimmer with unstable energy, responding to the emotional tension between the adults with the kind of chaotic magic that could short-circuit the town's electrical grid if left unchecked.

"Stop it," she said, her young voice carrying power that made the windows rattle. "Stop thinking scary thoughts. You're making my magic all bumpy and wrong."

But Griff was already too deep in the spiral of protective panic to pull back easily.

The memory of the entity's hungry gaze focused on his daughter, the casual way it had spoken about collecting and integrating her power, the knowledge that similar threats might be converging on Mistwhisper Falls even now, all of it was combining into a perfect storm of paternal terror.

"Maybe bumpy and wrong is better than dead," he said, his voice cracking with the weight of fears he'd been carrying since Sarah's death. "Maybe if your magic is unstable, if our connection is broken, then things like that entity won't see you as a target worth pursuing."

"That's not how it works," Mara said, moving closer with the determined stride of someone who recognized a crisis in progress.

"Griff, isolation doesn't protect magical children.

It makes them more vulnerable, not less.

Tilly needs stability, support, connection to people who understand her abilities. "

"Tilly needs to survive," Griff shot back, his bear too close to the surface with the desperate need to do something, anything, to protect his cub from threats he couldn't see coming.

"She needs to grow up, needs to have a chance at a normal life that doesn't involve cosmic horrors trying to steal her soul. "

"This is her normal life," Mara said, her voice rising with frustration and hurt.

"She's a founder descendant with multiple bloodline influences living in a supernatural community.

There is no version of normal that doesn't include magic and responsibility and yes, occasionally terrifying threats that require all of us to work together. "

Tilly's magic gave another unstable pulse, this one strong enough to make every light bulb in the house flicker simultaneously.

Her amber eyes were beginning to glow with power that had nowhere safe to go, the emotional chaos between her parents creating interference in her natural magical patterns.

"I can't lose you," Griff said, the words emerging as barely more than a whisper.

"I can't lose either of you. I won't survive it, Mara.

I barely survived losing Sarah, and that was before I really understood what love could be.

If something happens to you or Tilly because of my choices, because I was selfish enough to let you get close. .."

"So your solution is to guarantee that we lose each other?

" Mara demanded, tears of frustration beginning to gather in her green eyes.

"Your solution is to throw away everything we've built together, everything we've proven we can be as a family, because you're afraid of possibilities that might never happen? "

"My solution is to keep you alive," Griff replie, his voice carrying the authority of someone who made a decision that felt like cutting out his own heart. "Even if it means I have to live with the consequences alone."

"And what about what I want?" Mara asked, her herbal magic beginning to crackle around her fingers with the kind of defensive energy that suggested her own protective instincts were engaging.

"What about what Tilly wants? Don't we get a say in whether we want to be protected or want to stay and fight for what we've built together? "

"Sometimes protecting the people you love means making decisions they won't thank you for," Griff said, hating every word but unable to stop himself from speaking them. "Sometimes love means being the bad guy if it keeps them safe."

Tilly suddenly stood up from her chair, oozing with energy that made kitchen thick and difficult to breathe. "No," she said with enough force to make the house's foundation shudder. "No, no, no. You don't get to decide that for us. You don't get to break our family because you're scared."

But the damage was already done. Griff's bear, driven by instincts that predated rational thought, had committed to a course of action that felt like the only way to protect his territory and his cub.

The fact that it was also the most emotionally devastating choice he could make was irrelevant compared to the possibility of keeping them safe.

"Mara, I need you to pack your things," he said, his voice steady despite the way his heart was breaking with every word. "I need you to go back to your place, back to your apothecary practice, back to the life you had before you got tangled up in our supernatural drama."

"I won't," Mara said, her chin lifting with stubborn determination. "I won't leave, and you can't make me. This is my home now, Griff. You and Tilly are my family. I'm not running away just because you're having a panic attack about hypothetical future threats."

"It's not hypothetical," Griff said, his bear finally breaking through his human control enough to color his voice with inhuman harmonics.

"There are things out there that hunt people like us, that target families like ours.

I've seen what they can do, what they did to Sarah. I won't watch it happen again."

"Sarah died in an accident," Mara said gently, recognition dawning in her eyes.

"A magical accident at the clinic where she worked.

That's not the same thing as being hunted by cosmic entities, Griff.

That's just... life. Dangerous, unpredictable, magical life that doesn't come with guarantees but is still worth living. "

"Sarah died because I wasn't strong enough to protect her," Griff said, the words torn from somewhere deep in his chest where he'd been hiding them for five years.

"She died because I trusted that our love was enough to keep her safe, that being together made us stronger instead of just giving our enemies more targets. "

Tilly's magic exploded outward in a wave of chaotic energy that shattered every piece of glass in the kitchen simultaneously.

The six-year-old was crying now, tears streaming down her face as her power responded to the emotional devastation with the kind of uncontrolled surges that could level city blocks if left unchecked.

"Stop hurting each other," she sobbed, her young voice carrying anguish that children shouldn’t ever have to experience. "Stop saying mean things and stop making our family break. I need both of you. I need you to love me together, not separately."

But Griff's protective instincts had moved beyond reason, beyond emotional appeals, beyond everything except the desperate need to ensure his daughter's survival even if it meant destroying everything that made her life worth living.

"I'm sorry, baby girl," he said, crossing to where Tilly stood and pulling her into his arms despite the magical energy crackling around her small form.

"Daddy has to make some very hard choices right now.

But I promise you, everything I'm doing is because I love you more than anything in the world. "

"Then why does it feel like you're throwing me away?" Tilly asked, her words hitting him like physical blows.

Before he could answer, Mara was gathering her belongings with movements that were too controlled, too precise, the kind of careful composure that meant she was holding herself together through sheer force of will.

Her magical supplies went into their travel cases with efficient haste, while her clothes disappeared into the duffel bags she'd brought when she first moved in.

"This is a mistake," she choked. "You're making a mistake that's going to hurt all of us, and I don't know if we'll be able to come back from it."

"I know," Griff said simply. "But it's my mistake to make."

"And Tilly's mistake to live with," Mara pointed out. "And mine to survive. But you're right about one thing, Griff. You get to decide what kind of person you want to be. You get to choose between fear and love, between isolation and connection, between protecting your family and destroying it."

She paused in the kitchen doorway, her green eyes holding a mixture of love and disappointment that cut deeper than any anger could have. "I just hope you can live with the choice you're making."

After she left, the house felt like a tomb. The magical warmth that had filled every room since her arrival was gone, replaced by an emptiness that seemed to echo with the ghost of laughter and conversation and the simple domestic joy of being part of a real family.

Tilly sat at the kitchen table surrounded by broken glass and crayons that had lost their magical glow, her small shoulders shaking with silent sobs that broke Griff's heart into smaller and smaller pieces.

Her magic was chaotic now, responding to emotional trauma with the kind of instability that made lights flicker and appliances malfunction and the very air feel charged with dangerous potential.

"I hate you," she said without looking at him, her young voice holding the kind of devastation that only children could express with such devastating honesty.

"I hate you for making Miss Mara go away.

I hate you for breaking our family. And I hate you for pretending that any of this is about keeping me safe. "

Before Griff could respond, shadows began gathering in the corners of the kitchen, not the friendly presences that had tried to warn them about the entity, but something darker and more aggressive.