Chapter 1: The Choice of the Covenant

Part 1

⚡️ **My Father Slapped My Mother and Demanded I Disown Her For $10,500 – But the Truth Was Far Worse.**

Elara just witnessed her father, Brother Theron, slap her mother, Sister Maeve, twice during the evening prayer circle. He bellowed, accusing Maeve of stealing $10,500 from the community tithes.

Then he demanded Elara publicly disown her mother or be cast out from the Faith Compound herself. After a lifetime inside the tranquil walls of the Everlight Faith, Elara knew the choice meant losing everything she had ever known.

But the look in her mother’s eyes sealed her decision. Elara rushed to Sister Maeve’s small room in the women’s dorm.

Maeve’s face was still red, her hands trembling as she pulled clothes from a chest.

“We have to go, Elara,” Maeve whispered, her voice raw.

“I know, Mama.” Elara started gathering the few books she owned, her heart pounding.

Sister Beatrice, an elder who had always been kind, stood by the doorway, her shoulders slumped. Tears streamed down Beatrice’s face.

“He can’t take your inheritance, Maeve,” Beatrice choked out. “Not without your formal renunciation.”

Maeve shook her head, a desperate sob escaping.

“He tried to, Sister. He said it was for the ‘Prosperity Project’ – my own $10,500 from Aunt Clara’s will.”

Elara froze, a stack of worn scriptures falling from her hands. Her father hadn’t just slapped her mother and demanded she be disowned. He had lied about the very reason, turning Maeve’s own money into an accusation of theft.

What else was Brother Theron capable of hiding behind his righteous fury?

Part 2

I dropped the scriptures. My mother pulled me out the back gate of the compound just as the sun set. We drove in silence to a motel on the edge of town. The room was small, with strange smells and a television I’d never seen before.

Every shadow seemed to hold a lurking elder. Maeve kept peering out the window. She finally took out her old, hidden cell phone.

She tried calling Sister Beatrice first, but the line went dead almost immediately. Then she called Joshua’s home number.

His mother answered, her voice cold and flat.

“Brother Theron has issued the ‘Covenant of Purity’.”

“No Everlight member is permitted to speak with you.”

We were suddenly cut off from everyone we had ever known, deepening our terrifying isolation.