Chapter 1

The air in the hidden grove crackled.

Tonight was my Awakening, the night I, Sarah Miller, would claim my birthright as a true Moon Bay Guardian.

I was supposed to command the skies, to call storms.

My hands rose.

Wind whipped around me, a small cyclone, just as I'd practiced.

Then, it faltered.

The cyclone died to a nervous breeze. My power, once a budding tempest, shrank. I could barely rustle the Spanish moss hanging from the old oaks.

My fiancé, Richard, stepped back. His face, moments before alight with pride, twisted.

"A mere whisper of wind?" he scoffed. "This is the power you offer?"

He turned to Olivia, my adopted sister, standing demurely in the shadows.

"Olivia," he announced, his voice loud enough for every assembled Guardian to hear. "You will be my bride."

Humiliation burned through me. Whispers followed, sharp and cruel.

Then, a cold darkness slammed into me. It wasn't a storm I could see, but a crushing weight, a vile energy. It felt like being struck by invisible lightning.

What little power I had left vanished. I reached out, tried to summon even a puff of air.

Nothing.

I was empty, a hollow shell where a Guardian's strength once resided.

The elders murmured, their eyes filled with pity and disdain. "She's lost it all. Like a commoner."

Just as the shame threatened to swallow me whole, Ethan Blackwood, the Patriarch, leader of all Moon Bay Guardians, stepped forward. His presence silenced the crowd.

He wasn't young, his face etched with the gravity of his position, but his eyes held a strange intensity as they fixed on me.

"Sarah Miller," his voice was deep, resonant. "I offer you my name, my protection."

He held out a velvet box. Inside lay an ancient silver locket, a key Guardian heirloom, and beside it, rolled scrolls – deeds to some of the oldest properties in the French Quarter.

"Become my wife," he said. "You will be the matriarch of this family."

I stared, stunned. From the brink of being an outcast, I was offered the highest position.

The family gasped. Olivia's smile froze.

I looked at Ethan, searching his face. He offered a small, unreadable smile.

With nothing left to lose, I nodded.

I became Sarah Blackwood, wife to the most powerful Guardian in New Orleans.