Page 20 of Hexy Bear
The inn fell silent except for the sound of people crying, some with relief at their freedom, others with joy at being reunited with communities they had thought lost forever. Outside, thefirst rays of true dawn were breaking over Mistwhisper Falls, painting the sky in shades of hope and new beginnings.
But even as they celebrated their victory, none of them could shake the feeling that the entity's final words had been a promise rather than a threat. The battle for their town might be over, but the war for the future of supernatural society was just beginning.
TEN
MARA
The 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 withthe 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. "Sheneeds 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 sayin 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."
