Page 2 of Hexy Bear
Tilly nodded solemnly, her small face scrunched with the concentration of someone memorizing life-or-death instructions. "Are you going away because of the broken thing in the forest?"
Griff's heart stopped. "What broken thing?"
"The big stone circle that's supposed to keep the mean things out. It has a crack in it now, like when I dropped your coffee mug but worse. The trees are crying because they can feel it." Tilly's voice took on the eerie certainty that always made the hair on the back of Griff's neck stand up. "That's why all the animals ran away. They know something's coming."
Before Griff could ask more questions, his phone buzzed with a text from Leo:Where the hell are you? It's getting worse.
"I have to go help Sheriff Leo with some work stuff," Griff said, kissing the top of Tilly's head and breathing in the familiar scent of strawberry shampoo and childhood innocence. "Mrs. Henderson will be here in a few minutes to stay with you. I want you to stick close to her, okay? No wandering off, no exploring, no trying to help any more woodland creatures find their way home."
"Okay, Daddy." Tilly burrowed back under her covers, clutching Mr. Gruff like a lifeline. "But be careful. The pretty lady doesn't like people who try to fix things. She wants everything to stay broken."
Twenty-five minutes later, Griff was standing at the edge of the Mistwhisper Falls Wildlife Sanctuary, staring at a scene thatmade his bear want to shift and fight something that wasn't there to fight.
The eastern section of the preserve, nearly three hundred acres of old-growth forest that had stood undisturbed since before the town was founded, looked like something from a fever dream. Ancient oaks that had weathered centuries of storms were twisted into impossible spirals, their trunks corkscrewing toward the sky. The undergrowth had erupted into chaotic growth, with ferns reaching shoulder height and vines thick as his forearm strangling everything they could reach.
But it was the silence that made his skin crawl. No bird calls, no rustle of small mammals in the brush, no buzz of insects. Even the wind seemed muted, as if the forest itself was holding its breath.
"Started around midnight," Leo said, appearing beside him with the silent approach that marked him as predator. The lion shifter looked like he'd been running on pure adrenaline and coffee, his golden-brown hair disheveled and his uniform wrinkled. "Park rangers tried to investigate and made it maybe fifty yards before their equipment started malfunctioning and they decided discretion was the better part of not becoming supernatural casualties."
"Any idea what caused it?" Griff asked, though he was beginning to suspect he already knew.
"Follow me," Leo said grimly, leading him deeper into the preserve along what had once been a well-maintained trail and was now an obstacle course of twisted vegetation and ground that seemed to pulse with its own rhythm.
They walked in silence for ten minutes, picking their way carefully through terrain that felt actively hostile. Griff's bear was on high alert, every instinct screaming warnings about territory that had been claimed by something that definitely wasn't natural. The air grew thicker with each step, chargedwith the kind of magical pressure that made mundane humans unconsciously avoid certain areas and sent supernatural residents looking for the nearest exit.
"There," Leo said, pointing ahead to where the trail curved around a massive oak that had to be at least two centuries old.
The tree was growing in a perfect spiral, its trunk twisted like a corkscrew, bark stretching and warping in patterns that defied everything Griff knew about how plants were supposed to work. But it wasn't the impossible geometry that made his blood run cold. It was what lay at the base of the tree.
The ground was marked with symbols, burned into the earth itself as if someone had used magical fire to etch sigils directly into the forest floor. The marks were clearly ancient, weathered by seasons of rain and snow, but they pulsed with a faint silver light that suggested whatever magic had created them was far from dormant.
"Founder-era wardstone," Leo said, crouching beside the largest of the burned symbols. "Dr. Thorne confirmed it this morning. This is one of the original protective barriers the first settlers established around the town's perimeter."
Griff knelt beside him, studying the intricate pattern of interconnected circles and lines that seemed to shift and change when he wasn't looking directly at them. At the center of the design, a jagged crack split the main sigil nearly in half, the edges of the break glowing with an angry red light that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"It's broken," he said, though the understatement felt inadequate given the evidence of magical catastrophe surrounding them.
"As of sometime last night, yeah." Leo straightened, his expression grim. "Question is what broke it, and whether we can fix it before whatever it was designed to keep out decides to come calling."
As if summoned by his words, movement at the edge of Griff's vision made him turn sharply toward the treeline. For just a moment, he could have sworn he saw figures standing in the shadows between the twisted trees, watching them with the patient stillness of predators waiting for the right moment to strike.
But when he looked directly at the spot, there was nothing there except darkness and the growing certainty that their seven months of peace had just come to a very permanent end.
"Leo," Griff said quietly, not taking his eyes off the forest. "I think we're not alone out here."
The sheriff's hand moved automatically to the weapon at his hip, though they both knew that conventional firearms were useless against the kind of threats that broke founder-era wards. "What do you see?"
"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything." Griff rose slowly, every movement careful and deliberate. His bear was demanding he shift, demanding he put himself between the potential threat and the rest of his territory, but human logic knew that charging blindly into unknown supernatural danger was a good way to become a cautionary tale. "But I think we need to get back to town and start making some very urgent phone calls."
As they retreated along the twisted trail, Griff couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched by eyes that had been waiting far too long for exactly this moment. Behind them, the broken ward pulsed with malevolent light, and somewhere in the distance, you could hear what sounded almost like laughter echoed through the corrupted forest.
His quiet life was officially over, and whatever was coming for Mistwhisper Falls had already begun its hunt.
TWO
MARA
The lavender sachets were screaming.
