Chapter 1

My brother, Julian, shoved me into the hunting cabin. The door slammed shut, the heavy bolt scraping across the wood. It was a final, ugly sound.

"A week, Elena," he said through the door, his voice muffled but clear. "Just a week. Think about what's best for everyone."

"What's best for everyone is for you to let me out of here," I yelled, my voice shaking.

"What's best is for you to give up Carter," he shot back. "Cassandra loves him. She deserves him. You're just an accident, a mistake we're forced to deal with."

His words were cold, deliberate. He knew they hurt.

"You're a Sinclair now," he continued, his tone softening into a manipulative sort of reason. "We can't have you embarrassing the family by clinging to an engagement that was meant for Cassandra. Just agree to break it off, and I'll come back for you. I'll even find you a suitable match later, someone more... appropriate for your background."

A suitable match. Like the ones my parents promised when they first found me. They promised a loving family, a real home. All I got was a room in the back of the mansion and their constant disappointment.

Julian's footsteps faded, leaving me alone with the smell of mold and decay. I knew his promise was empty. He was just like our parents, Richard and Eleanor, obsessed with their perfect public image. Cassandra was the daughter they raised, the polished jewel of New Orleans society. I was the rough stone from the mountains, a stain on their legacy.

I sank to the floor. The ultimatum was clear: give up my fiancé, Carter Vanderbilt, or be left here to rot. Julian knew about the squatters, the dangerous transients who used these abandoned cabins. He was counting on them to break me.

For two days, nothing happened. On the third night, I heard them. Rough laughter, the crack of a bottle breaking outside. My heart hammered against my ribs. They were circling the cabin, testing the door, peering through the grimy windows.

"Someone's in there," a gravelly voice said.

The door shuddered as a heavy weight slammed against it. Then again. And again. The old wood groaned, splintering.

Panic seized me. I scrambled back, my eyes darting around the filthy room. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Then, I remembered a story an old woman from my hometown once told me, a piece of local Creole folklore she'd picked up somewhere. A desperate pact. A last resort.

I ripped a piece of my shirt, bit my own finger until it bled, and drew a crude symbol on the floorboards with my blood. My voice was a choked whisper, a desperate prayer to the darkness of the bayou.

"I offer myself in marriage," I sobbed, the words tasting like ash and fear. "To the Gentleman of the Bayou. Save me, and I am yours."

The cabin door burst open. Three large, shadowy figures filled the doorway, their faces cruel in the moonlight. They started towards me, grinning.

I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable.

But it never came.

A sudden, bone-deep cold filled the room. The men stopped, their grins freezing on their faces. A shadow detached itself from the corner of the cabin, darker than the night itself. It moved without a sound.

I heard a choked gasp, then a wet, sickening thud. Then another.

When I dared to open my eyes, the men were gone. The doorway was empty. The only thing left was the chilling silence and the faint, sweet smell of magnolias and damp earth. A powerful, unseen force had answered my plea. I was saved. And I was betrothed.