My Rouge Luna

Chapter 9

Undeniable

Christa’s P.O.V.

When I opened my eyes for the second time I was in a different cell no sisters no raging b***h Selma the world was a hard, clinical white. Fluorescent bulbs hummed overhead and made the edges of everything ache. My wrists burned where plastic zip-ties bit into my skin; my legs were slick against a tarp spread across the chair. For a breathtaking second the scene didn’t register — then it did: sterile walls, a camera lens in one corner, a metallic tang in the air. Lover-boy had put me in a kill room. Charming.

Disappointment slid through me colder than the lights. Had I really believed in him? After all the men I’d used, all the men I’d loved when it suited me, after the bodies I’d left behind — did I truly think I’d get something like a second chance at anything called “love”? The thought soured quickly and sensibly into survival. I cataloged my options: fight and probably kill some of my own pack — an ugly calculus — or wait and save my teeth for when they mattered. Xavier came first. Always Xavier.

Time thinned into an indistinguishable stretch. Minutes or hours — everything lurched at the same slow speed. I sensed movement beyond the glass and knew I was being watched; the knowledge felt like a weight on my chest. I amused myself with fantasies of what I’d eat once I escaped. Steak, garlic, cilantro. Simple things to distract a woman who could smell blood and strategy in the same breath.

Then he was there — dressed expensive, smelling of dark cologne and smoke and the faint metallic note that always clung to him. The sight of him unclenched something I didn’t know I’d held tight. Moisture pooled where it shouldn’t between my legs; my wolf pricked for that rare, dangerous hunger. When his eyes darkened he could smell it. He could see how badly I wanted him.

He unfastened his tie with slow, deliberate fingers and began to pace. His voice slipped into the room, rough and careful. “Look,” he said. “If you’re going to undress yourself on me, we can’t have this conversation. Control yourself. Because if you don’t — I won’t. I’ll take you right here, mark you, claim you. I won’t ask twice.”

For most of my life I’d been built to resist. Independence had been my armor; I distrusted men who expected obedience. I’d dismissed most of them before they finished introducing themselves. Yet this man — dangerous, handsome, confident — made me want to fold into something softer. That thought frightened me more than the zip-ties.

I chose my words slow. “Let me out of the chair,” I said. “Unclip me. We talk. I won’t bolt.”

He crouched close enough that I could feel heat from his chest. “I’m going to let you out in a second,” he said. “But there are people I want you to meet. You may trust them more than me — and that might help. Whatever you think you know about that night… you don’t know. The truth is not what you believe. I’m not your enemy. I want something you probably think impossible — I want to love you, and to be loved by you, when this is over.” He sounded… earnest. Dangerous and earnest.

The door hissed and opened. An older couple entered, the man a step ahead of the woman as if shielding her from me. Two guards from the factory followed at their heels. Their presence made something inside me clench and unclench at once.

“Who are they?” I asked, the question sharper than I intended.

He began cutting the zip-ties with a small knife, blade whispering through plastic. When he leaned close enough to whisper in my ear, I heard words that rearranged the axes of my life. “That woman is your aunt — your father’s sister. That’s her husband. Those two young men behind them are your cousins. This is your blood.”

I stood before the chair, backing until my spine pressed cold against the wall. Family. The word felt foreign and suspicious at the same time. I had been raised to be efficient, lethal, single-minded — father and then sisters, then the pack. Aunt, uncle, cousins: strangers with features like mine. The woman beside the man had my mother’s eyes and hair; that detail snagged at something raw.

Without warning the woman pushed past her husband. She ran at me and the world narrowed to a single, impossible motion: she wrapped me in her arms and cried the kind of cry that belonged to people who had kept a flame alive through a storm. Her tears soaked my shoulder. “I thought we lost you,” she sobbed. “I thought you were gone that night. I prayed you lived. You—” she pulled back and peered at me as if searching for a memory, “—you look like your mother. You’re beautiful. I’m so sorry. I should have tried harder.”

She pressed a name into my ear before I could answer. “Maggie,” she said, voice shaking. “I’m your aunt. That’s Pablo — my husband — and those two are Ramiro and Ricardo.” The younger man with long black hair — Ramiro — beamed at me with the kind of unguarded joy you rarely see in a full-grown warrior. He wrapped me in a hug so fierce my feet left the ground. His warmth felt like a surprise that the body hadn’t warned me about. Ricardo’s expression was small, guarded — a nod instead of an embrace. I catalogued him quickly: observant, still.

I let them sit me back down. For the first time in years, my heart felt like it belonged in a house with more than one set of hands shaping it. But the practical part of me kept working: who were they really? Why show up now? Was this a set-up, another lesson in betrayal?

Aunt Maggie brushed the hair from my face and smiled with a tired warmth. “We want you to come home. Dinner. Your sisters. Your people. We can tell you everything about that night.” Her fingers were callused and steady. Her touch was familiar in a way that punched open a small, dangerous well of longing inside me.

I laughed, or tried to — the sound tasted like metal. “So you’re just going to let me walk out of a kill room and have dinner? After my sisters tried to kill your Alpha and his brother?” My voice held the edge of accusation.

Carlos moved forward then, all calm competence. “You will be escorted,” he said, authoritative. “Under heavy security. You’ll have dinner with family. We want answers as much as you do. You’re not a prisoner here, Christa.”

Aunt Maggie draped my arm over her shoulder as if I were fragile china. We walked through a corridor that smelled faintly of lemon oil and old wood toward what they called the pack house. The building itself looked less like a compound and more like a carefully curated gallery: polished floors, tasteful art, an understated wealth that didn’t shout but suggested long, patient power. Security was visible — cameras and guards — and members of the pack moved through the spaces with the easy confidence of people who belonged.

We passed a library where teenagers bent over books and instructors guided hands. Small, ordinary scenes that felt like contraband in my life of violence. Outside, the afternoon sun glinted on an SUV where my sisters stood, tense and watchful.

When I saw them, the taut wires of anger and confusion frayed into something softer. I ran. Serenity’s eyes widened when she saw me, confusion and relief wrestling for space on her face. Aaliyah’s jaw tightened; she did not move to hug me at first, but relief softened the lines.

“What’s going on?” Serenity demanded as I wrapped her hard. She smelled of gun oil and smoke and all the work that long nights build. Aaliyah’s head tilted, concern raw. It dawned on me then that they were terrified — not because of me, but because of what they hadn’t been told.

“I don’t know everything,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “But for now — we’re safe. Let’s go.”

And for the first time since I could remember, I let myself go with them, trusting the fragile, dissonant promise of strangers who claimed to be blood.