Chapter Text
May 1
The air in the Bayou was a thick, wet blanket, heavy with the scent of cypress, decay, and the lingering ghost of Oliver’s cheap whiskey. Dawn was a rumour, a pale, bruised smear of light on the eastern horizon that did little to penetrate the gloom of the cabin.
It was 6:53 a.m. on May 1st, 2011.
The world was waking up.
Esmeralda Adelaide Bailey was running for her life.
Her heart hammered a frantic, panicked rhythm against her ribs, a trapped bird beating against the bars of its cage. Every creak of the old floorboards, every sigh of the wind through the Spanish moss, sounded like his footsteps. She moved with a desperate, jerky efficiency, her small, curvy frame coiled with a tension that threatened to shatter her bones.
The beat-up black bag was already half-full. Her grimoires, thick, leather-bound tomes filled with the scrawled secrets of generations of Spirit Witches, went in first. They were heavy, solid, the only real inheritance she had left. Her family’s grimoires, older still, their pages brittle with the weight of ancient power, followed. Then, the flimsy papers that defined her existence: her Canadian passport, her dual citizenship, her birth certificate. And finally, the photographs, their edges softened with wear, the only tangible proof that she had once belonged to a family, that she had once been a child with a mother’s arms around her. She shoved them all into the bag, a chaotic jumble of magic and identity.
She paused, her hands hovering over the last item on the rickety nightstand. It was a small, framed ultrasound picture. Eight weeks. A tiny, bean-shaped promise. She hadn’t even known about the baby then. She had only known the terror and the pain.
Esme’s hand trembled as she touched the cool glass. A wave of nausea, not from the pregnancy but from the memory, washed over her. She could still feel the phantom throb of the cracked rib Oliver had given her that night, the one she had to heal herself in secret, channelling the spirits of her ancestors to knit the bone back together. He’d been so apologetic afterward, his wolfish eyes full of a remorse that was more terrifying than his rage.
“Just a little too much strength, my sweet Esme,” he’d murmured, his large, calloused hand stroking her hair. “You know how I get on the full moon.”
She knew.
Oh, she knew.
She knew the monster that lived under his skin, the feral predator of the Crescent Wolf Pack. But worse, she knew the man who wore its face.
She left the picture. It was a risk. A loose end. Her hand went to her own stomach, still flat beneath the cheap, stretched fabric of her red and blue polo shirt. She was only four weeks pregnant. The secret was a fragile, precious thing, nestled deep inside her—his secret.
Theirs.
Her gaze swept the room one last time. Olivia’s cottage. A safe house for werewolves on the run, ironically. Now, it was a cage she was finally breaking free from. The air was stale with his scent, a mix of pine, sweat, and something wild that once made her feel safe. Now, it just made her skin crawl.
She slung the bag over her shoulder, the weight of it a familiar ache. Her hair, a mass of dark brown waves, was hastily thrown into a messy bun, strands already escaping to frame her chubby cheeks. She wore ripped yoga pants, a testament to a frantic escape through the undergrowth days ago, and the polo shirt. Her only shoes were a pair of worn black flats. She was a vision of a terrified refugee, not the powerful Spirit Witch she was born to be.
Her hazel eyes, usually soft and full of a quiet wisdom, were wide with fear. She looked down at her stomach, her voice a barely audible whisper in the silent cabin.
“Well, Cookie…” The nickname, something she’d started calling the tiny life inside her, was a fragile shield. “This is our chance, Cookie. Your Daddy can’t find us if we go now.”
She swallowed, the lump in her throat painful.
“Mr. Cary said this is the only chance we have. St. Anne will be a safe haven. And the King of New Orleans… he’ll be able to keep us safe on Full Moons when Daddy can be human again.”
The words felt like a prayer, a desperate incantation to ward off the evil she was leaving behind. Mr. Cary, the gentle old librarian with eyes that saw too much, had risked his life to get her this message. He was the one who’d told her about the King. About Marcel Gerard. The only way to be powerful enough to stand against the pack.
This is it, Esme thought. It had to be.
Her chance to leave the Crescent Wolf Pack.
To sever the ties that bound her not by blood, but by a twisted, suffocating version of love.
She moved to the door, her hand hovering over the knob. Her senses, honed by years of navigating the treacherous waters of her own powers and Oliver’s moods, flared. She reached out with her mind, a soft, subtle probe, not quite telepathy, but a form of clairvoyance. She felt for the echoes of his presence, the psychic residue of his rage. The cabin was quiet. The bayou was quiet. But it was the wrong kind of quiet—the stillness before the predator springs.
She couldn’t afford to be wrong.