Under the Bayou Moon Read Online Free PDF

I’m an open book. Now tell me about my parents; my real parents.”
    “I’m your soul mate and your parents are in Louisiana waiting on you.”
    Speechless, that’s what she was, speechless. Her stomach flip-flopped. It was too much to take in, so she tried to focus on the fact that he knew her family and must know who she was. It was her dream come true. She’d loved the Palermos, they’d given her a wonderful life, but deep down she’d been like most adopted kids, always dreaming of one day meeting her real parents.
    “Angel, finding you was no accident. I can’t go into a lot of detail right now because you’d be lost, but here’s what I can tell you. My family rules the Lafayette pod, which borders your family’s Baton Rouge pod. Our families are friends. Your parents are Thomas and Sofia LaFleur. They’re wonderful, well-respected gators, and they’ve missed you.”
    Tears came to Angel’s eyes. Thomas and Sophia, those were her parents’ names. Her throat constricted as she fought to speak aloud.
    “So, they regret giving me up?”
    Her voice sounded tight, even to her own ears. She brushed away a tear before lifting her chin. She would not be cowed by the people who abandoned her.
    “Gave you up? Angel, your parents never gave you up. You were abducted. Your abduction is a legend in Louisiana. They’ve spent decades looking for you. So has my family.”
    “What, abducted!” Angel shook her head in disbelief.
    “I was left at a hospital in Vegas when I was a few months old. There was a note with my birthdate and name on it, but that was all. If I was abducted, how’d I end up at a hospital in Las Vegas?”
    “The people who took you were Louis and Annette Monreux. On the day that you were delivered, you should have been brought to your parents, but they ran away with you.”
    “What do you mean, I should have been brought to my parents? Didn’t my mom have me?”
    Jacques looked around the restaurant.
    “In gator culture, we have what’s called an exchange. When a gator couple is having problems bearing children, they go to a gator priestess who will give an offering to the bayou god. If the offering is accepted, an exchange is made between our people and the humans. A human female in a similar situation will carry and give birth to the child. When the child is born, it could either be human or it can bear the mark of the gator. If the child is human, the gator parents can no longer try to conceive or do another exchange; if the human has a marked child, the priestess will bring the child to the gator parents. In your case, you were taken from the priestess.”
    “You mean they didn’t abandon me?”
    “No, cher your parents were devastated. Louis’s and Annette’s bodies were found in a hotel room in Texas, the papers said it was a murder-suicide, but you, cher , were nowhere to be found.”
    Jacques reached out and took her hand in his. She accepted his comfort and took solace in the warmth their connection seemed to generate.
    “Why would they take me and then kill themselves?”
    “ Cher , the bayou takes what belongs to it, and it punishes those who double-cross it. Louis and Annette were cursed from the time they left with you. I would hazard their death wasn’t entirely up to them, if you catch my drift.”
    Angel nodded but she was numb on the inside. Her parents were waiting for her. They’d been trying to find her, and all along she was just a couple of states away.
    “Do you want to get out of here?”
    “Yeah, I think I need to be alone for a bit. Think things through.”
    Jacques quickly had their dinner boxed and paid for, and they were out the door in no time. Angel was in a haze. She felt angry at the people who’d taken her, yet happy that she could finally meet her parents. She’d played out their meeting one thousand and one times in her mind. She thought she’d be angry at the person who’d given her up. In her mind she thought it would be a woman who’d