The hex's aftermath crashed over Mira like a tidal wave, her body betraying her in fevered waves that left her shivering under silk sheets in the Voss mansion's master suite, the cliffside view a blurred haze of crashing sea and stormy skies.
What began as nausea in the moonlit woods escalated into a bone-deep ache, the poison's arcane residue warring with her sealed wolf, drawing beads of sweat across her brow as visions flickered, clawed shadows, Kael's gray form, a distant howl that tugged at her soul.
Eleana, alerted by a frantic campus call from Lena, descended like a fury, her private jet slicing through clouds to land at dawn, frailty forgotten in maternal panic.
"My girl, hold on," she rasped, hovering at the bedside with a team of discreet specialists, her pale hands clutching Mira's, eyes shadowed with terror that mirrored the illness's grip.
IV drips hummed, monitors beeping a frantic rhythm, but Eleana's worry etched deeper, her terminal coughs suppressed as she paced the marble floors, whispering vows to the empty air. "No one's taking you from me, not now."
Word of Sophia's supernatural traits spread through Eleana's networks like digital wildfire, Lena's tip igniting a Voss Empire hunt, algorithms sifting dark web forums, satellite pings tracing rune-etched artifacts to a secluded Virginia estate, the heart of the Arden Coven, a lineage of hex-weavers cloaked in old-money facades.
"They're real, witches with a grudge," Eleana confirmed to her security chief over a encrypted line, her voice steel despite the tremor.
"Deploy the shadows: drones, jammers, the neural net. Neutralize their grid before they touch her again.
" Unseen operatives mobilized, Eleana's tech web spinning silken traps, EMP bursts to fry their wards, AI phantoms flooding their covens with false trails, her empire's innovation a blade honed for this, worry fueling a ruthless precision that chilled even her aides.
"For Mira," she murmured to the glowing screens, the sea's roar outside echoing her resolve, the billionaire's love twisting into a guardian's wrath.
Mira's treatment unfolded in the mansion's sanitized sanctuary, away from campus eyes, the fever breaking in fits as herbal elixirs, sourced from Eleana's black-market contacts, clashed with the hex's residue, her wolf traits accelerating the purge in hidden surges of heat.
Kael, barred from the woods' aftermath by dawn's light, haunted the perimeter until Mira's text pierced the silence, "Come. I need you."
He arrived under cover of a delivery van, heart pounding with seer's foresight of this pivotal threshold, his student disguise shed for a simple jacket that hid his runes.
Eleana intercepted him in the grand foyer, marble echoing his footsteps, her emerald-ringed gaze appraising the tall stranger with blue eyes that held too much depth.
"You must be Kael," she said coolly, extending a hand that belied her frailty, the air thickening with unspoken assessment.
Mira, propped in a nearby lounge on plush cushions, watched with bated breath, her skin still flushed but eyes clear.
"Mom, this is... the one," she confessed, voice soft with vulnerability, lacing their fingers as Kael approached, the affair spilling in halting words, stolen kisses, moonlit truths, the fire that had claimed her heart from Jax's gentle hold.
Eleana's welcome was gracious, a nod to the chair beside Mira, tea steaming in porcelain cups, but her senses, honed by boardroom battles prickled at the anomaly.
Kael's too-steady pulse, the faint ozone tang of his skin like a storm before rain, eyes that reflected light unnaturally.
"Mira speaks highly of you," she said, sipping slowly, her tone warm yet probing, worry for her daughter clashing with instinctual wariness.
"A transfer student with a knack for... timing." Kael met her gaze evenly, charm veiling his tension, motives layered, winning Eleana's trust to safeguard Mira, his seer's visions whispering of alliances forged in fire.
"She's extraordinary, fierce, brilliant. I couldn't stay away," he replied, squeezing Mira's hand, the touch grounding her amid the room's charged hush.
Eleana smiled faintly, but her mind raced, later querying her AI on "anomalous biometrics," the strange aura lingering like a puzzle unsolved.
"Take care of her," she warned softly, excusing herself with a cough, leaving them in tentative peace, her deployment against the coven humming in the background like a distant thunder.
Mira healed swiftly under the mansion's care, the hex's grip loosening by evening, her wolf essence knitting flesh with subtle fire that left her ravenous and restless, Kael's presence a soothing balm as he fed her soup by the window, their fingers brushing in electric silence.
"You scared me," he admitted, voice low, blue eyes shadowed with the weight of unspoken futures, his pursuit now a tender vigil.
Gratitude swelled in her, the affair's heat tempered by this intimacy, Jax a distant ache she'd released for this deeper claim.
As strength returned, Mira's gaze drifted to the sanctum's door, Eleana's revelations calling like a siren's song, the neural map, algorithms for the unseen, a power she could harness to bridge her worlds.
"Show me more," she urged Eleana later, over a private dinner of chilled lobster and encrypted tablets, the sea's crash a rhythmic underscore.
Eleana obliged, her frail form leaning into the console, screens blooming with code cascades. "Its pattern recognition spots the irregular heartbeat, the shadow that doesn't cast right," she explained, fingers dancing over holograms, worry easing into pride at Mira's rapt focus.
Mira dove in with voracious intent, her enhanced wit devouring the algorithms like prey, tweaking lines to amplify supernatural signatures, hex wards flickering red, wolf scents digitized into predictive maps.
"This could track anything," she murmured, eyes alight, the tech a bridge to her buried wildness, Eleana's strange sense of Kael forgotten in the thrill.
"Even things that howl." Eleana watched, a maternal glow cutting through her fatigue, the coven's estate now isolated on the grid, drones circling like silent hawks.
"Harness it, Mira, make it yours. For us." Nights blurred into study sessions, Kael joining under pretense of "support," his hand on her back as code flowed, tension coiling in stolen glances, the affair deepening amid the glow of screens.
But as the coven hunt closed in, Sophia's family scattering like rats, Eleana's wariness resurfaced, a quiet query to Mira.
"That boy... there's power in him. Like yours?" Mira's heart stuttered, the harnessed secret a weapon she wielded alone for now, love and legacy entwining in the mansion's shadowed halls.