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SIX

AERIN

F our days of working in close proximity had established a routine that felt both professional and dangerously intimate.

Aerin spent her mornings in the inn's converted library, surrounded by ancient texts and modern detection equipment, while Leo maintained his supervisory presence from a chair positioned to watch both her and the approaches to the building.

The arrangement should have been awkward, but instead it had developed into something that felt surprisingly natural—two people working toward a common goal despite the undercurrent of attraction that made every casual interaction feel weighted with significance.

The visions had started on the second day.

They came without warning, triggered by seemingly random contact with objects that carried traces of founder magic.

A teacup that had belonged to Vera Whitaker.

A fountain pen found in the inn's desk drawer.

Even the brass doorknob on the library's entrance had sent Aerin into a brief fugue state that left her gasping and disoriented while Leo caught her before she could fall.

"Another one?" he asked, his arms steadying her as the present day reasserted itself around the library's familiar furnishings.

"Stronger this time," Aerin managed, her voice shaky from the intensity of what she'd experienced. "It's like the betrayal sigil's activation opened some kind of psychic channel to the past. I'm seeing things that happened centuries ago as clearly as if I were standing there watching them unfold."

Leo guided her to the nearest chair, his lion's protective instincts making him hyperaware of her physical state.

In the last few days, he'd learned to recognize the signs that preceded her episodes—the way her breathing changed, the distant look that came into her pale eyes, the subtle shift in her magical signature.

"What did you see this time?"

Aerin closed her eyes, trying to organize the flood of images and sensations into something coherent.

"Mordaine and her lion shifter mate. His name was Kieran, and he was.

..he was beautiful. All golden hair and golden eyes, just like.

.." She opened her eyes and looked directly at Leo, noting details that had become increasingly significant. "Just like you."

"The resemblance thing again," Leo said, though his tone suggested the similarities were becoming harder to dismiss as coincidence.

"It's more than resemblance. It's like looking at the same soul wearing different faces.

" Aerin reached for her notebook, needing the familiar comfort of recording data to ground herself in the present.

"In this vision, I saw the moment she made her choice.

The moment she betrayed everything she believed in to save him. "

"What kind of choice?"

"The Mistbound wasn't just contained by the founder binding—pieces of it were absorbed into the founders themselves, distributed among their bloodlines to prevent it from ever reconstituting fully.

" Aerin's hands trembled slightly as she wrote, the implications of what she'd witnessed almost too terrible to record.

"But Mordaine discovered that carrying part of the entity's essence was slowly corrupting the host. It was designed to be a slow poison, turning the founders against each other from within. "

Leo settled into his usual chair, though his relaxed posture was belied by the intensity of his attention. "So she decided to break the binding?"

"She decided to cheat the system. Instead of letting Kieran slowly succumb to corruption, she used her fae magic to transfer his portion of the Mistbound's essence into a contained matrix—a magical storage system that would hold the corruption without affecting the host." Aerin's voice grew quieter as she continued.

"But the process required her to bind part of the entity directly into their mating bond.

She had to corrupt their connection to save his life. "

"Without telling him what she was doing."

"Without telling him about it," Aerin confirmed. "She let him believe she was strengthening their bond when she was actually poisoning it with the very thing they'd sworn to contain."

Leo went silent for a long moment, processing implications that struck uncomfortable parallels to their own situation. "And when he found out?"

"He screamed. Not just from pain, but from betrayal.

She'd violated the most sacred trust between mates, used their bond as a weapon against the very entity they'd fought to contain.

" Aerin set down her pen, unable to continue writing while the emotional weight of Mordaine's choice pressed against her consciousness.

"But she'd also created exactly what she intended—a back door in the seal that the Mistbound could use to influence future generations of founder descendants. "

"A back door that's probably being exploited now," Leo said grimly. "Which would explain the cascade failures at other sites."

"The betrayal sigil’s purpose was to detect and cleanse that specific corruption," Aerin continued, her academic mind focusing on the technical aspects to avoid dwelling on the emotional devastation she'd witnessed.

"But its activation means the Mistbound has learned to use Mordaine's back door.

It's been manipulating founder descendants, convincing them to weaken their own seals. "

Leo stood abruptly, pacing to the window that overlooked the garden toward Hush Falls.

"There's something I haven't told you about my brother's death," he said, his voice tight with old pain and growing suspicion.

"He didn't just die investigating supernatural crimes.

He died here, in Mistwhisper Falls, two weeks after telling me about dreams that were driving him crazy. "

"Dreams about what?"

"About waterfalls and binding ceremonies.

About a fae woman who kept telling him he had to help her fix something that was broken.

" Leo's hands clenched into fists as he stared toward the falls.

"He came here convinced he was having some kind of breakdown, but what if he was being manipulated?

What if the Mistbound used Mordaine's back door to lure him here and eliminate him before he could interfere with whatever it's planning? "

The possibility hung between them like a physical weight. Aerin felt her heart ache for Leo's pain while her analytical mind cataloged the implications of his brother's experience.

"We need to know more about the original binding," she said, reaching for the ancient texts she'd been translating. "If the Mistbound is using Mordaine's back door to manipulate founder descendants, there might be patterns we can identify, ways to detect the influence before it becomes dangerous."

"And if we're right about being reincarnated echoes of the original founders?" Leo asked, turning back from the window. "What does that mean for our ability to remain objective about this research?"

It was a question Aerin had been avoiding, though the evidence was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Her dreams had been filled with memories that weren't her own—Mordaine's guilt and desperate love, her knowledge of fae magic that went far beyond anything Aerin had studied academically.

And Leo's presence triggered responses in her that felt less like attraction and more like recognition, as if her soul was remembering someone it had loved and lost centuries ago.

"I think," she said carefully, "it means we need to be very careful about the choices we make and the trust we place in each other."

"Because you might betray me to save me, like she did to him?"

"Because I might already be compromised by the same corruption that influenced her, and not know it until it's too late."

Leo returned to his chair, studying her with the focused intensity that had become familiar over their days of working together. "Is that what you think? That you're being manipulated into some kind of betrayal?"

"I think I'm terrified of repeating Mordaine's mistakes while being drawn to you in ways that feel bigger than choice or logic.

" Aerin set aside her academic materials, deciding that honesty was more important than professional detachment.

"I think the connection between us is real, but I'm not sure how much of it is genuine attraction and how much is magical manipulation designed to recreate the conditions that led to the original binding's corruption. "

"So what do we do about it?"

"We stay focused on the research and try not to make any irreversible decisions about personal relationships until we understand what we're dealing with.

" Even as she spoke, Aerin knew the advice was more sensible than practical.

The attraction between them had only grown stronger over the past few days, and the inn's magical amplification made every moment of proximity feel charged with possibility.

Leo nodded, though that he wasn’t convinced than she was about their ability to maintain professional distance. "Speaking of research, I had my own strange dream last night. Different from the usual nightmares about Marcus."

"What kind of strange?"

"I was in a forest clearing beside a natural pool, but everything felt ancient and wild in ways that don't match the current landscape.

There was a binding circle made of black stone, and three figures working magic that made reality bend around them.

" Leo's voice took on the distant quality of someone reliving a vivid dream.

"But I wasn't watching the ceremony. I was part of it.

And I could feel something vast and hungry fighting against the containment spell, trying to break free. "