My Rouge Luna

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Judgement Day

Christa’s P.O.V.

The council chamber was suffocating. Heavy oak doors sealed us in, the smell of wax, iron, and wolf musk thick in the air. Seven elders sat in their carved chairs two of them being my aunt Maggie and her husband Pablo who just yesterday invited me into their home and told me the truth about my father my mother and me being the rightful heir and alpha of this pack but today Their eyes cut through me like blades.

Alpha Regent Marisol aka Maggie my aunt. Her hazel eyes, so much like mine studied me with a sharpness that made my wolf bristle.

To my left, Carlos loomed, shoulders squared though his grief was written in every line of his face. Javier’s death clung to him like a shadow, and yet his gaze never strayed far from me. The mark on my neck burned under his scrutiny, a reminder of the bond I never asked for.

And to my right, Serenity and Aaliyah stood, silent and unyielding. My blood. My sisters.

The air was thick with accusation.

“Javier is dead,” Elder Tomas growled, his silver beard trembling with fury. “Slain by rogue claws and witch fire. On sacred pack soil. This is an act of war.”

Serenity bared her teeth. “It was an act of justice. He murdered our sister Normani. He left her to die in my arms.”

Gasps rippled through the council, but Marisol raised a hand, silencing them. Her eyes flicked to me. “And what say you, Christa? The bond on your neck says you’ve chosen Carlos. Yet your silence tonight says you’ve chosen your sisters. Which is it?”

My throat tightened. The room blurred at the edges.

Carlos stepped forward before I could answer, voice steady but edged in steel. “She is mine. Marked. Mated. She belongs to this pack now. Any blood spilled by her sisters will be answered by me.”

Serenity snarled. Aaliyah’s magic sparked at her fingertips. And my heart nearly split in two.

“Belongs?” I hissed, whipping toward him. “I am not yours to claim, Carlos. Not when your pack spilled my sister’s blood. Not when you sent your wolves to kill us.”

A murmur rose from the council. Carlos’s jaw locked, eyes darkening, but before he could speak, Marisol leaned forward, her voice cold and cutting.

“Enough.”

Her gaze pinned me like a hawk. “You think we don’t know who you are, Christa? The whispers have reached us for years. The ghost pack. The rogue she-wolves and their witch. Assassins. And yet you stand here, bearing the mark of our Alpha.”

Her words sank like lead.I couldn’t understand the woman who cried when she met me and had so much love in her heart for me wanted me punished?

“You are not just a rogue,” she said, softer now, almost regretful. “You are blood. The rightful heir of this pack. Your father’s lies scattered you, groomed you into a weapon, sent you to kill your own mate.”

My stomach dropped. My father. The man who had shaped me into the blade I had become. The man who had sent us here with a target on Carlos’s back.

Lies. All of it lies.

The fire roared in the hearth, but all I felt was ice.

“You are the key to this pack’s future,” Marisol said, her voice echoing through the chamber. “But only if you choose it. Choose your mate. Choose us. Or choose blood and betrayal, and you’ll go down as nothing more than another rogue killer.”

My sisters’ eyes burned into me. Carlos’s wolf pressed against mine through the bond. The council waited, poised on the edge of war.

And I stood there, caught between two worlds, two truths, two lives.

My father’s lies had brought me here. But my choice… my choice would set everything on fire.Chapter 15

Judgement Day

Christa’s P.O.V.

The doors at the far end of the chamber sighed closed and for a heartbeat the world narrowed to the crackle of the fire and the pounding of my blood. Then the heavy oak shifted again and Ricardo’s wife swept in like she owned the room.

Maria.

She wore a dress the color of dusk and a look that said she’d eaten regents for breakfast and still had room for more. Ricardo followed behind her, twin to his brother in jaw and slope, but with an expression that made it clear he’d sent his wife on purpose — a political salvo wrapped in charm.

Maria moved to the center of the floor, hands folded, eyes glittering at every face in the chamber. She didn’t wait for permission. In this pack you learned to speak or be spoken over; Maria never wasted a second being polite.

“Elders,” she said, voice smooth and authoritative, “family—” she nodded to Marisol, a small, politically pointed bow, “—I come on behalf of House Marisol-Ricardo; and I speak now to uphold the law that binds us all.”

There was murmuring; even Carlos’s shoulders tightened.

My heart lurched. I had expected threats and spite and maybe a show trial. I had not expected a lawyer — or whatever the pack’s version of one was — to step in and dismantle the room with civility.

Maria’s hands moved delicately, as if she were arranging knives. “The Pack Codex is clear,” she said. “Article V, Section 3: ‘No line of rightful blood bearing a claim by mark or bond shall be executed, exiled, or stripped of inheritance for acts committed under duress of claim, nor shall such a person be summarily punished until rites of confirmation and paternity are conducted, except by unanimous council decree.’” She let the words hang there, like an iron weight.

Marisol’s face twitched. The elders murmured. Ricardo, standing to the side, gave me a long, unreadable look.

“You’re reaching,” Tomas barked. “That law is for children, for heirs who stand uncontested. This woman stood among rogues. She aided them.”

Maria’s stare cut him off. “Christa is not ‘this woman.’ She is blood. It is public knowledge in every ledger and whisper that she is the child of—” she inclined her head at me with unsettling gentleness, “—the rightful line. To ignore that would be to strip this house of its lineage legitimacy. To punish her now would be to set precedent that lineage can be voided for political expediency.”

Carlos stepped forward, voice iron. “Law or no law, my brother lies dead because of their hands.”

“And your brother,” Maria said, softer now, “has been slain by House retaliation. The law provides avenues for justice. It does not demand spectacle.” Her eyes widened slightly, and she added with lethal grace, “Moreover: Article VIII states that any mated and marked heir — and I quote — ‘bearing the mark of a sitting alpha, or reasonably suspected to carry that alpha’s seed, must be accorded temporary immunity from capital reprisal pending confirmation of progeny, and shall be allowed sanctuary until such time as rites of choice and binding are performed.’”

The room exhaled. Carlos’s face went ashen. The Mark on my throat flamed as if in agreement, hot and traitorous.

“Carried his seed?” Tomas barked incredulously. “You ask us to believe she might be—pregnant?”

Maria’s mouth twitched, not unkindly. “Not to ask, Elder Tomas. To invoke the law. The Codex was not written for sentiment. It was written to preserve lineage and to prevent cycles of vendetta that destroy houses.” She fixed me with a quick, appraising glance. “If she is carrying his child — and that is for the Sisters and their healers to confirm — then she is, by ancient law, protected from summary punishment. If she is not, the council has every recourse. But the law binds us first.”

Ricardo edged forward then, voice low and controlled. “My mother did not raise me to be reckless. I sent Maria because she understands polity. We do not ask for leniency — we ask for law to be applied. Marisol, for the sake of this House, do you prefer your legacy to be judged by fury or by law?”

Marisol’s expression crumpled almost imperceptibly. There was a war under the surface — the aunt who had tears when she first held me now a ruler expected to preserve the pack more than a niece.

Silence lengthened like a held blade. Carlos’s hands curled into fists; his wolf flicked at the edges, hungry and betrayed. My sisters’ postures tightened; they were the sharpened iron edge to my soft, bleeding core.

Marisol rose. Her voice, when she spoke, was tired and absolute. “Procedures.” She lifted a hand. “We will abide by the Codex. For the sake of order and for the preservation of our bloodline, we will call the midwives and the binders. Christa will be given sanctuary within the northern wing under watch. No one will touch her pending decree. If production of proof of paternity or pregnancy is inconclusive within three moons, the council will convene to determine punishment or pardon.”

Gasps. Some of them sounded like relief; others like the grinding of a new siege being planned.

Carlos’s jaw worked. “You shield her because of law?” he rasped. “You protect her because she carries my blood? You make a home for the woman who let my brother die?”

“She did not ‘let’ your brother die,” Aaliyah snapped from my side, voice like thrown knives. “She stood in the same circle of war we all walk. This is vengeance repaid. Law does not preclude consequence.”

Marisol’s gaze swung to me, not unkindly but with a weight that nearly buckled me. “You will be sheltered. You will undergo the rites. You will be examined by the healers of both houses. You will be offered counsel — and you will appear before the pack in three moons with your declaration. Until then, no blade will touch you.”

It should have felt like mercy. Instead it felt like more chains. Sanctuary under watch meant captivity of a kind, a gilded cell where every move would be measured.

But in the back of my throat, beneath the burn of humiliation and fury, another fear tooth-edged its way up: three moons to decide. Three moons for Carlos to try to win me. Three moons for my sisters to be hunted. Three moons for truth — and sabotage.

Maria inclined her head once, satisfied. “Then let the record show: the Codex was applied. Let the pack remember it is law that holds us together, not the tempests of grief.”

Ricardo’s hand squeezed Maria’s fingers. For a heartbeat he looked at me like an ally, then like a chess piece. I didn’t know which I was.

Carlos’s eyes found mine across the chamber. There was pleading there, and a challenge. “Three moons,” he said, voice tight. “Prove it to me.”

I swallowed around the taste of iron. The Mark on my neck flared like a warning bell. I had been given time — not freedom and not forgiveness, only the dangerous, fragile gift of delay.

When the doors closed behind Maria and Ricardo, the council settled like a storm that hadn’t yet rained. I had been spared execution by law — but the sentence had only become more complex.

Three moons to decide everything. Three moons to either seal a dynasty or burn it to ash.