"Nico called a meeting," said Marcus Blackwood, the vampire from Asheville who'd become a regular guest. "Said he had information the community needed to hear."
"What kind of information?"
"The kind that requires coffee and carbohydrates to process properly," Nico said, appearing in the kitchen doorway with his usual dramatic timing. But his pale eyes were serious, and Lyra could see the tension in his shoulders that suggested whatever news he carried wasn't good.
"How bad?" Cade asked bluntly.
"Bad enough that I've spent the last week confirming it through multiple sources before bringing it to you," Nico said, settling at the kitchen table with the fluid grace that marked him as definitively not human. "The seal beneath the falls isn't the only one showing signs of stress."
Lyra felt her stomach drop. "There are others?"
"Three more, scattered across the continent. Each one built by different founder lines, each one designed to contain... entities... that were too dangerous to destroy outright." Nico pulled out a folder thick with documents and photographs. "Seattle has a binding beneath Pioneer Square that's been showing fluctuations for months. There's something under the French Quarter in New Orleans that's been making the local supernatural community nervous. And the founders' seal in Salem has been completely compromised."
"Compromised how?" Sheriff Torres asked. Lyra hadn't noticed her arrive, but the law enforcement officer was leaning against the kitchen doorframe with the alert posture that meant she was already thinking about crisis management.
"As in no longer functional," Nico said grimly. "As in the entity it was designed to contain broke free two weeks ago and disappeared into the general population."
The kitchen fell silent except for the sound of coffee percolating and someone's sharp intake of breath.
"What kind of entity?" Lyra asked, though she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer.
"A Siren," Nico said. "One of the old ones, from before the supernatural communities learned to coexist peacefully. It feeds on emotional chaos—broken hearts, shattered families, the kind of despair that makes people do desperate things."
"And it's loose?"
"It's loose, it's hunting, and it's getting stronger." Nico's expression was grim. "Which brings me to the really troubling part of this report."
"There's a worse part?" Marcus asked.
"There's a connected part," Nico corrected. "The timing isn't coincidental. All four seals began showing signs of degradation within weeks of each other, despite being separated by thousands of miles and maintained by completely different founder lines."
"Meaning?" Cade asked, though Lyra could feel through their bond that he already suspected the answer.
"Meaning something is actively working to weaken the bindings. Something with enough power and knowledge to target multiple seals simultaneously." Nico paused, letting the implications sink in. "The founders didn't just bind individual entities. They bound parts of something larger, somethingthat's been trying to reunite its scattered pieces for over two centuries."
Lyra set down her coffee cup with hands that weren't quite steady. "You're saying there's a master entity? Something that's been orchestrating the breakdown of all the seals?"
"I'm saying the Mistbound beneath our falls might not be the primary threat," Nico said quietly. "It might just be one piece of something much more dangerous."
The weight of that revelation settled over the kitchen like a blanket of dread. Lyra felt Cade's protective instincts surge through their bond, along with the kind of strategic thinking that came from years of pack leadership.
"What do we do?" she asked.
"We strengthen our seal as much as possible and prepare for the probability that we're going to have company," Nico said. "The other founder bloodlines are awakening, Lyra. I've had reports of supernatural surges in at least six different cities, all associated with families that carry genetic markers consistent with founder heritage."
"They're being called," Lyra realized. "The same way I was called here."
"Exactly. Which means we're about to become the center of a convergence that could either save the supernatural world or destroy it entirely."
Before anyone could respond to that cheerful assessment, there was a knock at the inn's front door. Lyra moved to answer it, grateful for any interruption to the increasingly dire conversation, but when she opened the door, no one was there.
Just a letter on the doormat, addressed in elegant script to "The First Founder's Heir."
"That's new," she muttered, picking up the envelope. The paper felt expensive, and there was something about thehandwriting that seemed familiar, though she couldn't place where she might have seen it before.
She was about to open it when movement at the edge of the forest caught her attention. A woman stood at the treeline, watching the inn with the kind of focused attention that suggested more than casual interest. She was tall and elegant, with dark hair and features that seemed to shift whenever Lyra tried to focus on them directly.
"Cade," Lyra called, not taking her eyes off the mysterious figure. "You might want to see this."
