All Chapters of The Crescent Heir : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

---The Mercedes-Benz GLE rolled into Mooncrest's driveway and eased smoothly into the estate garage. Anna and Isabeau stepped out into the cool evening air.Anna looked tired. Not just the body-tired that sleep fixes, but the deeper kind , the type that settles into your bones after a day that pulls too much from you at once. The fun, the laughter, the thrill of the afternoon had all quietly drained away, leaving behind a hollow feeling she couldn't quite name. She stood for a moment beside the car, blinking at nothing.Isabeau was already wrestling with what could only be described as a mountain of supplies."Don't worry about it, madam," Isabeau said, not even looking up. She hoisted two bags at once with the confidence of someone who had clearly done this before. "I'll handle all of it, you look like you're about three seconds from hitting the floor , get some rest. I'll get the estate staffs to help me sort everything out."Anna smiled. It was small and genuine. "Thank y

---"I saw it!"Seraphina's voice echoed loud through the entrance . Her eyes were stretched wide , not with excitement, but with the kind of terror that crawls up from somewhere deep and ancient. Heavy mist escaped her lips with every exhale, proof that she had run the entire length from her chambers without slowing once.The council chamber went stiff. Every head turned, every pair of eyes locked onto her silhouette at the doorway — disordered, heaving, wild in a way that didn't suit her carefully composed nature. An uncomfortable silence pressed down on the room as they watched her, unsure whether she was still caught in some lingering trance, still half-submerged in whatever world the spirits dragged her through.Then, like a candle steadying against the wind, she came back to herself.Her spine straightened, the wildness behind her eyes dimmed, not gone, but buried."I'm so sorry, forgive me. So sorry." The words stumbled out of her in fragments as heat rose to her face.

--- Jebediah drove slowly through the main road of Mooncrest territory, the black asphalt rubbing softly beneath the tires. A dead silence sat between him and Emmett — the kind that doesn't ask to be filled. That was the strange part. Jebediah was, by nature, a man who couldn't survive five minutes without cracking a joke or saying something entirely unnecessary. Silence, for him, was usually an accident. But that morning, his face was stone, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, and his mouth — for once in his life — stayed shut. Emmett watched him from the passenger seat and said nothing. He knew why. They were returning from the mountains, from their visit with the Storm-Fang clan. A routine enough trip on paper, but the previous night had been anything but routine. It had come without warning, the spark — pulsing, vast and electric moving through them like a second heartbeat . Emmett had felt it slam into him like a wave and nearly laughed out loud from the sheer, baffling ru

---"I'm sorry JB, if any of that made you feel bad."Anna's voice was quiet, careful. The kind of voice you use when you're not entirely sure what the right words are, but you know silence would be worse.The morning had settled into a heavy, uncomfortable stillness after everyone filtered out of the sitting room. It's not the peaceful kind of stillness — it's the kind that sits heavy on you. Even Mama Eunice hadn't found a single opening for a joke, which said everything about the temperature of the room.Jebediah had slipped away to the balcony.Anna found him there, leaning against the railing with his eyes somewhere far off — past the Estate grounds, past the tree line, somewhere she couldn't follow. She studied him for a moment before approaching, he didn't look angry, neither did he look broken. He just looked like a man who had been carrying something quietly for so long that the weight had become part of his posture.She thought about what his mother had said.Alpha of Alphas

Maureen stood by the tall, narrow window of the west tower. The stone walls felt cold against her palms. Below, the gravel crunched as Jebediah’s Mercedes began to move. She watched the sunlight glint off the roof of the car as it passed through the massive iron gates of the Estate. It looked like a small beetle crawling across a vast green carpet. She didn’t move until the car was nothing more than a speck on the horizon, swallowed by the thick pine forests that guarded their borders.With a heavy sigh, Maureen reached for the velvet cord and pulled the heavy blinds shut. The room fell into a soft, grey dimness, the kind of light that made everything look like a ghost of itself.“JB will be fine, sweetie. You don’t need to babysit him with your eyes. He’s a grown man, even if he acts like a hermit,” a voice drifted from the corner of the room.Mama Eunice was sitting in her favorite high-backed armchair, tucked away in the deepest shadows of the master bedroom. Even in the dim l