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NINE

LEO

T he nightmares started the night after the festival, rippling through Mistwhisper Falls like a supernatural contagion.

By dawn, Sheriff Torres had fielded seventeen calls about disturbing dreams involving ancient bindings, betrayal, and something vast and hungry stirring beneath the earth.

Every supernatural resident in town had experienced variations of the same vision—darkness rising from beneath Hush Falls, reaching out with tendrils that turned love into corruption and trust into weapons.

Aerin hadn't slept at all. She'd spent the night in the inn's library, surrounded by detection equipment that painted increasingly alarming pictures of magical instability.

The betrayal rune's interaction with the primary seal wasn't creating the harmonious cleansing effect she'd hoped for—instead, it was destabilizing both systems, creating feedback loops that threatened to tear apart the entire founder network.

"The resonance patterns are getting worse," she announced when Leo arrived for his morning supervisory duties, his appearance suggesting he'd gotten about as much sleep as she had. "Whatever activated during the festival triggered a cascade response that's spreading beyond Mistwhisper Falls."

Leo moved to examine the data displays, his lion's senses immediately picking up the scent of magical overload that clung to Aerin's equipment. "How bad?"

"Salem's seal collapsed completely at three AM.

Seattle reported critical instability warnings an hour ago.

New Orleans is experiencing the same nightmare phenomena we're seeing here.

" Aerin's voice carried the brittle precision of someone holding panic at bay through sheer force of professional focus.

"We're not just looking at local containment failure anymore—we're looking at continental cascade collapse. "

The weight of that revelation settled over the library like a physical presence.

Leo felt his protective instincts surge as he processed the implications of supernatural catastrophe on such a massive scale, while his analytical mind began calculating response strategies for threats that extended far beyond anything he'd trained to handle.

"How long do we have?" he asked, settling into the chair beside her workstation despite the way proximity made his lion pace restlessly.

"At current degradation rates? Maybe forty-eight hours before the primary seal fails completely.

After that, every remaining founder site will collapse within days.

" Aerin's hands trembled slightly as she pulled up projections that painted an increasingly dire picture.

"Leo, we're not just talking about the Mistbound breaking free.

We're talking about the release of every entity the founders bound across the entire continental network. "

"Entities plural?"

"The founder network wasn't just about containing one ancient being—it was about containing pieces of something much larger that had been scattered across the continent.

" Aerin's voice dropped to a whisper as she shared discoveries that recontextualized everything they thought they understood.

"The Mistbound isn't the primary threat.

It's just one fragment of something that the original magical communities couldn't destroy, only dismember and contain. "

Leo felt his blood chill as the scope of the crisis became clear. "And if all the fragments are released simultaneously?"

"They'll begin to reconstitute. Whatever the founders dismembered will become whole again, with centuries of accumulated power and a very personal grudge against the bloodlines that imprisoned it.

" Aerin pulled up historical texts that painted pictures of devastation from before the founder binding.

"Based on pre-containment records, we're looking at an entity capable of corrupting every supernatural on the continent, turning our own communities into weapons against the human population. "

The magnitude of potential destruction made Leo's lion want to shift fully and fight something tangible, but the enemy they faced couldn't be defeated through physical strength or traditional protective strategies.

This was a magical crisis that required magical solutions, and their window for finding those solutions was closing rapidly.

"The betrayal sigil," Leo said, forcing himself to focus on actionable possibilities. "You said it was designed to cleanse corruption from the network. Can we use it to stabilize the primary seal?"

"That's what I've been trying to determine all night," Aerin replied, her exhaustion evident in the way she rubbed her temples. "The theoretical framework suggests it should work, but the activation requirements..." She trailed off, unable to meet his eyes.

"What activation requirements?"

"I told you. We need perfect magical harmony between the bloodlines, sustained intimate contact during the cleansing process, and absolute emotional trust between the operators.

" Aerin's voice carried the flat tone of someone reciting facts she wished weren't true.

"Essentially, we would need to complete the mating bond while channeling our combined power into the betrayal sigil's matrix. "

Leo felt his curse mark pulse with heat at the mention of mating bonds, a sensation he'd been experiencing with increasing frequency since the festival. "And the risks?"

"If we're successful, the corruption gets cleansed from the entire network and the seals stabilize permanently.

If we fail, the mating bond activates Kieran's curse mark and we become the corruption we're trying to eliminate.

" Aerin finally looked at him, her pale eyes reflecting the impossible choice they faced.

"We either save the supernatural world or destroy it. There's no middle ground."

They worked in tense silence for the next several hours, searching for alternatives that didn't exist while magical storms gathered in the skies above Mistwhisper Falls.

The air itself felt charged with unstable energy, and Leo's enhanced senses detected changes in atmospheric pressure that didn’t involve the natural weather patterns.

It was during their lunch break, when they were sharing sandwiches Lyra had prepared and trying to maintain normal conversation despite the apocalyptic circumstances, that Leo's curse mark began to manifest visibly.

The pain started as a burning sensation along the side of his neck, where Aerin had traced the invisible pattern during the festival.

At first, he tried to ignore it, assuming the discomfort was stress-related tension, but the burning quickly intensified into something that felt like molten metal being pressed against his skin.

"Leo?" Aerin's voice carried sharp concern as she noticed him wincing. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said automatically, then gasped as another wave of pain lanced through his nervous system. "Just a headache."

"That's not a headache," Aerin said, moving closer with the focused attention of someone whose research had prepared her to recognize magical symptoms. "Let me see your neck."

Leo tried to protest, but the pain was making it difficult to think clearly, and Aerin's hands were already reaching toward the source of the burning. The moment her fingers touched his skin, though, everything changed.

The curse mark blazed to visible life, silver traceries appearing along his neck and spreading down his shoulder in patterns that looked like circuit boards designed by something inhuman.

The marks pulsed with their own internal light, and Leo could feel something stirring in his bloodline—something hungry and patient and absolutely malevolent.

"Son of a hex," Aerin breathed, her fingers tracing the glowing patterns with academic fascination and personal terror. "The mark is activating in response to the seal's instability. Leo, we need to?—"

Her words were cut off as the inn shook around them, windows rattling with force that almost shatters them. The primary seal beneath Hush Falls was reacting to the curse mark's activation, and the feedback was powerful enough to destabilize the building's magical infrastructure.

Leo's vision blurred as pain spiked through his nervous system, and for a moment he could swear he heard voices that definitely weren't coming from anyone in the inn.

Ancient voices speaking in languages he didn't recognize, promising power and freedom in exchange for cooperation that would doom everyone he cared about.

"Fight it," Aerin said urgently, her hands framing his face as she tried to anchor him to the present. "Leo, whatever you're hearing, whatever you're seeing, it's not real. It's the curse trying to take control."

"I can hear it," Leo gasped, his lion clawing at his consciousness as supernatural corruption tried to rewrite his fundamental nature. "The thing beneath the falls. It's not just hungry—it's intelligent. It's been planning this for centuries."

"What's it planning?"

"To use the mating bond as a gateway," Leo claimed, his voice full of pain and growing understanding. "If we complete the bond while the curse mark is active, it won't just corrupt us—it'll use our connection to spread corruption to every supernatural who's magically linked to founder bloodlines."

The implications were staggering. The supernatural communities of North America were interconnected through bonds of pack, coven, and court allegiances that stretched across the continent.

If the entity could use a corrupted mating bond as a transmission vector, it could turn the entire network of supernatural societies into extensions of its will.

"So we don't complete the bond," Aerin said, though her voice lacked conviction. "We find another way to use the betrayal sigil."