PROMISED TO YOU 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️ (A SONS OF ASH MC SAGA-HEIRS OF ASH BOOK 9 KNUCKLES AND LUNA)

The garage smelled of gasoline, grease, and the particular warmth of an engine that had been running hot for hours. Luna pressed her palm against the hood of Tank's latest restoration, a '72 Shovelhead that had arrived as a carcass and was slowly becoming a heartbeat, and felt the heat radiate through her fingers like a secret.

"Feel that?" Tank's voice rumbled from somewhere beneath the frame. "That's the third cylinder. Timing's off by two degrees."

"How can you tell?"

"Same way you know when your mother's in a room. You just know."

Luna smiled, small and private. Her father was a mountain of few words, but when he spoke about engines, he became almost conversational. It was the only time he strung more than three sentences together.

She wiped her hands on the rag tucked into her overalls, her mother's old pair, taken in at the waist, still too long in the leg, and crouched beside him. "Teach me."

"You already know."

"Teach me more."

Tank slid out from under the bike. His face was streaked with oil, his greying temples damp with sweat. At forty-six, he was still built like the soldier he'd never officially been, broad and solid and immovable. The scar across his jaw caught the garage light as he studied her.

"You're different this summer," he said.

"I'm twelve."

"That's not what I meant."

Luna shrugged, a gesture she'd perfected in Switzerland, careless and continental and a little French. She had her mother's auburn hair and her father's grey eyes, a combination that made people pause. "Boarding school changes people."

"Does it?"

"It changes accents, at least. My French is excellent now."

Tank made a sound that might have been a laugh or might have been an engine misfiring. With Tank, it was often hard to tell.

They worked in silence for another hour. Tank showed her how to adjust the timing chain. How to read the spark plugs. How to listen to the engine the way a doctor listened to a heartbeat. Luna absorbed everything. She always had. It was the one thing everyone agreed on about Luna Castellano, she was a sponge. Languages, mechanics, mathematics, people. She watched and she learned and she filed everything away in the cathedral of her mind, a place no one else could enter.

She thought in sentences too old for her, a side effect of growing up around adults who'd never talked down to her.

"You're quiet," Tank said as they packed up the tools.

"You're quiet."

"I'm always quiet. You're not."

Luna closed the toolbox with a click. "Maybe I'm becoming more like you."

Tank looked at her for a long moment. His grey eyes, her grey eyes, the same storm-cloud color, searched her face. "Don't."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm quiet because I don't know how to say things. You're quiet because you're choosing not to." He wiped his hands on a rag. "There's a difference."

Before she could answer, the garage door swung open and Xander barrelled through like a small, dark-haired hurricane. At nine, he was all limbs and enthusiasm and volume, his hair the same deep brown as Tank's, his smile pure Rose.

"LUNA! You're gonna miss dinner! Mom made the thing with the cheese and Uncle Hound already ate half of it and Aunt Tara threw a breadstick at him and Uncle Sydney threw one back and now there's a breadstick war and Aunt Cray is keeping score!"

Luna blinked. "The thing with the cheese?"

"THE THING WITH THE CHEESE!"

Xander worshipped Luna with the absolute devotion of a younger sibling who'd never been given a reason to do otherwise. He was the reason she came home every summer instead of staying in Switzerland for the additional language immersion programs. The reason she checked her phone during lunch period. The reason her dorm room had a framed photograph of a gap-toothed boy holding a frog on his palm like an offering.

"Tell Mom I'm coming," Luna said. "I need to wash my hands."

"Dad says you don't need to wash your hands because grease is basically soap!"

"Dad is wrong."

"Dad is never wrong!"

Tank ruffled Xander's hair as he passed. "Your sister's right. Go."

Xander sprinted back toward the clubhouse, his footsteps echoing through the compound like gunshots. Tank paused at the door, turning back to look at Luna.

"You okay?"

It was a question. It was also a test. Tank had a way of asking things that were both.

"I'm fine, Dad."

He nodded. He didn't believe her. But he also trusted her enough not to push. That was the thing about Tank, he gave you space to have your secrets, as long as you didn't let them destroy you.

Luna washed her hands in the industrial sink, scrubbing the grease from under her nails with the wire brush her father had given her when she was six. She changed out of the overalls and into a sundress, lavender with small white flowers, something her mother had picked out. Rose had excellent taste. Rose had rebuilt herself from the ashes of a Castellano empire and a broken heart, and she'd done it with a baby on her hip and a knife in her boot. Luna admired her mother more than anyone else in the world.

She just didn't know how to tell her that.

---

The clubhouse was chaos.

This was not unusual. The Sons of Ash clubhouse had been chaos since before Luna was born, since before her parents had found their way back to each other, since before the Five Women and the Bratva alliance and the children who now filled every corner with noise and motion and life. The industrial bones of the place still showed through, exposed brick and steel beams, the heavy bag swinging in the corner, the wall of motorcycles in various states of repair, but it had softened over the years. A playpen sat where crates of ammunition used to be stacked. The bar still served top-shelf whiskey, but the fridge was now stocked with juice boxes and string cheese. The phoenix mural still rose from ash on the main wall, but someone, probably Cray, had added glitter to the flames.

It was an MC turned home. A fortress turned family compound. The middle of something that had started in blood and was growing into something else entirely.

The long table in the common room had been extended twice over the years, and it still wasn't big enough. Tonight, the brothers and their families were packed shoulder to shoulder, passing dishes and insults with equal enthusiasm. Old Harley parts had been repurposed as candle holders. A Prospect's old kutte hung framed on the wall, the first one ever earned, preserved like a relic. The smell of leather and motor oil still lived in the walls, but it mingled now with garlic bread and baby powder.

At the head of the table, Axle Kane presided with the quiet authority of a man who'd been president for nearly two decades. His dark hair was streaked with grey now, pulled back in the same leather cord he'd worn since his thirties, and the phoenix on his chest had faded slightly around the edges. But his eyes, those dark and depthless eyes, were as sharp as ever. Scarlett sat beside him at thirty-five, her hand resting on his forearm, her wedding ring catching the light. She was still beautiful in a way that made people underestimate her, which was exactly how she liked it. Their daughter Monica, six years old, all dark curls and imperious commands, was currently trying to negotiate a later bedtime with the precision of a hostage negotiator.

"I'll do my French flashcards," Monica said. "Voluntarily."

"No," Axle said.

"I'll eat broccoli for a week."

"No."

"I'll stop calling Uncle Sydney 'Glitter Thunder.'"

Sydney looked up from his breadstick. "Hey! I like that name!"

"I'll stop calling him Glitter Thunder *to his face*."

Axle's mouth twitched. "Still no."

Monica slumped back in her chair with the theatrical despair of a child who'd been thwarted. Andre, sixteen now, all quiet composure and watchful eyes, hid a smile behind his glass. He'd been nine when Axle and Scarlett adopted him, a quiet boy from a situation no one talked about, and he'd grown into the kind of older brother who noticed things. Who remembered. Who cared. He was the only one at the table who could calm Monica down when she got like this, a skill he'd developed over years of patient big-brotherhood. Luna caught his eye and he raised an eyebrow. *She's been like this all day.* Luna raised one back. *When isn't she?*

On the other side of the table, Grimm sat with his arm draped over the back of Rain's chair. His face was still a monument to violence, the scar from temple to jaw, the dead grey eyes that made men cross the street, but there was something softer in him now. Something that had grown slowly, over years of marriage and fatherhood. Rain, thirty-five like Scarlett, leaned into his shoulder with the ease of a woman who'd spent years learning she was safe. Their son Rhys, five, red-haired like his father, with Grimm's unsettling stillness, was methodically dissecting his dinner roll. Their daughter Lila, four, a whirlwind of copper curls and questions, was not.

"Papa, why does Uncle Hound eat so much?"

"Because he's hollow inside," Grimm said.

"Like a chocolate bunny?"

"Exactly like a chocolate bunny."

Hound paused mid-bite, his fork hovering. "I'm not hollow. I'm calorically efficient."

Tara snorted beside him. At thirty-five, she was still the most beautiful woman in any room, and she knew it. She'd built a restaurant empire out of nothing but trauma and talent, and she'd done it with her son on her hip and her husband's enormous hand in hers. Paxton, four, built like his father, with his mother's fox-like eyes, was currently seeing how many peas he could balance on his spoon.

"Seven," he announced.

"Those are chickpeas," Tara said.

"Seven chickpeas!"

"The record is twelve."

Paxton's face set with determination. "I can beat twelve."

Voss, at the far end of the table, was not eating. He was scrolling through something on his tablet, his ice-blue eyes flickering across data streams no one else could parse. At forty-two, he was still the coldest, most precise man Luna had ever met, and he was her favorite uncle, because he never talked down to her. Cray sat beside him at thirty-two, her fire-engine hair now streaked with a single platinum stripe, her body still a bombshell. Their son Caleb, four, born the same year as Paxton, sat perfectly still beside his father, watching the chaos with the same detached calculation. He looked like Cray, dark skin and enormous eyes and a dimple in his left cheek. But his mannerisms were pure Voss, the stillness, the silence, the way he catalogued everything without commenting. It was unnerving and adorable in equal measure.

"Dad," Caleb said quietly.

Voss didn't look up. "Yes."

"Uncle Paxton is going to drop the chickpeas in approximately four seconds."

Three seconds later, chickpeas scattered across the floor. Paxton looked at Caleb with something between admiration and betrayal. "How did you know?"

"Probability."

"What's proba... probabil..."

"It means I counted."

Cray high-fived her son. "That's my little weirdo."

At the center of the table, Sydney was orchestrating the breadstick war with the strategic brilliance of a general. At thirty-five, he was still the club's shit-stirrer, still the fry-thrower, still the chaos engine who'd somehow convinced Natasha Ross to marry him. Natasha sat beside him, regal and unbothered, her bronze skin luminous in the clubhouse lamplight. At thirty-seven, she was CEO of Ross Industries and the undisputed queen of everything she surveyed. Her son Elijah, twelve, home from his first year at a gifted academy, was sitting beside Andre, the two of them locked in some quiet conversation about motorcycles or philosophy or whatever it was twelve and sixteen-year-old boys talked about when they thought no one was listening.

Julian and Sebastian were at the other end of the table, their adopted daughter Maggie, twelve like Elijah and Luna, sharp as a blade and already debating her fathers about Supreme Court precedents. She was engaged in what looked like a heated argument with Elijah about something Luna couldn't hear. Maggie gestured emphatically. Elijah grinned. Julian watched them both with the satisfaction of a man who'd mentored the next generation into exactly the kind of sharks he wanted them to be.

Doc and Val were the last to arrive, as always. Doc, at thirty-seven, had a few silver strands threading through his dark hair now, but his hands were still steady, his hazel eyes still warm. Val, the Valkyrie, the woman who'd cut off twelve people's hands for her husband's honor, carried their twin daughters with the casual strength of someone who could still kill a man with her bare hands but chose not to. Ellie and Bella, three years old, were identical in the way that made people do double-takes, dark hair and dark eyes and their father's gentle smile on their mother's fierce face.

"Sorry we're late," Doc said, sliding into his seat. "Bella couldn't find her left shoe."

"It was in the refrigerator," Val added.

"Why was it in the refrigerator?"

"She wanted cold feet."

Bella beamed. "Cold feet are funny."

Luna, from her seat between Xander and Andre, watched all of this like a naturalist observing a particularly chaotic ecosystem. This was her family. These were her people. She'd grown up surrounded by outlaws and CEOs, dominants and submissives, killers and healers and everyone in between. She'd learned to read financial statements from Voss before she'd learned to ride a bike. She'd learned to throw a punch from Val before she'd learned to braid her own hair. She was the product of a thousand impossible loves, and she carried all of them in her bones.

But tonight, something felt different.

The air was charged. The laughter was too loud. The brothers kept exchanging glances, quick and meaningful, the kind of glances that preceded announcements.

Luna set down her fork.

The room was still chaos. Monica was now trying to negotiate with Scarlett about dessert before dinner. Paxton had abandoned the chickpeas and was building a fortress out of breadsticks. Lila was singing a song about chocolate bunnies. Caleb was watching everything with his unsettling stillness. Xander was telling Luna about a frog he'd found that morning, his hands animated, his eyes bright.

"...and it was THIS big, Luna, like the size of my FACE, and Dad said it was probably just a regular frog but I think it was a PRINCE frog, like the ones in the stories, and I tried to kiss it but it jumped into the pond and Aunt Tara said that's probably for the best because kissing amphibians is unsanitary..."

"Xander," Luna said gently. "I think someone's about to make a speech."

"...but what does unsanitary mean? Mom says it means germs but I washed my mouth after so I don't think there were any germs left..."

"Xander." She touched his wrist. "Look."

Knuckles had stood up.

The table went quiet by degrees, Monica first, because she hated missing anything important, then Scarlett, who'd learned to read a room decades ago, then the brothers, one by one, their laughter fading, their eyes turning toward the man who'd been a prospect longer than anyone could remember, who'd earned his patch in blood and silence when Luna was three, who was now thirty-one years old and standing at the family table like he was about to face a firing squad. He was still the youngest full patch member, but Andre would take that title soon enough. That was how the club worked. Patches passed down, generation after generation, from ash they rose.

Knuckles, his real name was Marcus, but no one called him that except his mother and the IRS, cleared his throat. His light brown hair was neater than it used to be. The patchy stubble of his prospect days had finally filled in. He'd grown into himself over the years, become solid and steady, the kind of man who showed up early and stayed late and never asked for credit.

The kind of man Luna had been in love with since she was three years old.

"I, uh." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I have an announcement."

"Finally proposing to me?" Sydney called.

"Shut up, Sydney," Axle said, but he was smiling.

Knuckles took a breath. "Some of you know Marissa. She's been around for a couple years now. We've been... we've been seeing each other."

Marissa. Luna remembered her vaguely, the woman Val had beaten senseless years ago for sleeping with her cousin's husband, back when Val was still the Valkyrie and not yet Doc's wife. Luna had been seven. Marissa had been twenty-four or twenty-five, young and reckless and tangled up in something that had nearly gotten her killed. She'd apologized to Val. She'd changed, apparently. Gotten sober. Gotten therapy. Gotten religion or something close to it. Luna didn't know the details, and she didn't particularly care to.

"We're getting married," Knuckles said. "She wanted to tell her family in person first. Said she'd been putting it off for years, and now that she was sober, she needed to make amends before she could move forward."

The table erupted.

Hound whooped so loud the windows rattled. Sydney launched a breadstick into the air like a celebratory missile. Tara clapped, her restaurant-owner composure cracking into genuine delight. Natasha smiled her boardroom smile. Scarlett was already asking about the date, the venue, the cake.

"Finally!" Hound bellowed. "I thought you were gonna be a bachelor forever!"

"Married!" Sydney shouted. "Our little prospect is getting married! Wait, does this mean I have to stop calling you a prospect?"

"You stopped calling him a prospect five years ago," Natasha said.

"But now it's official!"

Knuckles was laughing, his face flushed, his shoulders finally relaxing. His relief was palpable. He'd been carrying this secret, this joy, and now he was sharing it with the people who mattered most.

Luna watched all of this from her seat.

She watched Hound lift Knuckles in a bear hug. She watched Scarlett pull out her phone to start a wedding Pinterest board. She watched Rain, who understood what it meant to hide a secret self, smile at Knuckles with genuine warmth.

She watched and she felt something crack open in her chest.

It wasn't a clean break. It was a fissure, a fault line, the kind of crack that started small and spread outward until the whole structure collapsed. She'd known this was coming. She'd seen the way Knuckles looked at Marissa. She'd heard the way he talked about her, *she's different now, she's changed, she understands me*, and she'd told herself she was fine with it. She'd told herself it didn't matter. She'd told herself she'd outgrown her childhood crush, that she was twelve now, practically a teenager, too old for fairy tales and Sparkle Knights and the foolish, persistent hope that someday he'd see her the way she saw him.

She'd lied.

"Congratulations," she heard herself say. Her voice was steady. It didn't waver. "That's wonderful news, Sparkle Knight."

Knuckles looked at her, his green eyes warm. "Thanks, Princess. That means a lot coming from you."

*Princess.* He still called her Princess. He'd called her Princess since she was three years old and she'd named him Sparkle Knight and put a glitter sticker on his knee. He'd called her Princess when he taught her to ride a bike. When he drove her to her first day of kindergarten. When she came home from Switzerland for holidays and he asked about her classes and her languages and all the things she was becoming.

He'd called her Princess and she'd built an entire future around that word.

"I'm really happy for you," she said.

And she was. That was the worst part. She was happy for him, because he deserved happiness. He deserved someone who saw him, someone who loved him, someone who could give him everything he wanted.

She just wished it could have been her.

"Excuse me," she said. "I need to use the bathroom."

Normally, someone would have noticed. Scarlett, who'd spent years learning to read the cracks in people's composure. Rain, who understood what it meant to disappear inside yourself. Tara, who'd built a new life from the ashes of the old one. Val, who saw threats before they materialized. Rose, who was Luna's mother and who noticed everything.

But tonight, the table was chaos. Hound was giving a toast. Scarlett was discussing color schemes. Xander was trying to teach Bella how to throw breadsticks with the proper wrist technique. Even Tank, who noticed everything, was focused on Knuckles, his mountain-face creased with something that might have been approval.

So no one saw Luna leave.

No one except Andre.

Luna walked through the clubhouse hallway. Past the mural of the phoenix rising from ash, glitter catching the lamplight. Past the wall of photographs, generations of brothers, weddings and patch ceremonies and the children who'd been born into this impossible family. Past the Prospect kutte in its frame. Past the door to the chapel, where she'd sat on her father's lap during informal briefings. It was technically against the rules, but no one had ever told Tank his daughter couldn't sit on his lap, and no one was going to start now.

She walked into the bathroom and locked the door and sat on the cold tile floor with her back against the tub.

She'd been sitting there for ten minutes when the knock came.

She didn't cry.

She wanted to. She could feel the tears building behind her eyes, pressure like a storm front. But she'd learned a long time ago that crying didn't help. Crying was for people who had someone to comfort them, and Luna had learned to comfort herself.

Instead, she sat very still and very quiet and let the crack in her chest widen.

She was twelve years old. He was thirty-one. She knew, logically and mathematically and with the precision Voss had taught her, that this was impossible. That she was a child and he was a man and her feelings were exactly what everyone assumed they were: a crush. A phase. Something she'd grow out of.

But no one had ever asked her how she felt. No one had ever said, *Luna, do you love him? Luna, is this real?* They'd all decided, silently and unanimously, that her feelings didn't count. That she was too young to know what love was. That her devotion was cute, adorable, something to be smiled at and dismissed.

She'd named him when she was three. She'd claimed him. And everyone had laughed.

They were still laughing.

A knock on the door.

"Luna?" Andre's voice. Quiet. Steady. "You've been in there a while."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're never fine when you say you're fine."

She didn't answer.

The door opened, she'd forgotten to lock it properly, and Andre slipped inside. He was sixteen, tall and lean, with Axle's dark hair and Scarlett's perceptive eyes. Not by blood, but by something deeper. He'd spent years in therapy after his adoption. He had the vocabulary for feelings that Luna had never learned, because Luna had never needed it. Until now.

He sat down beside her on the cold tile floor. His shoulder pressed against hers.

"You knew," she said.

"I suspected."

"He's getting married."

"I heard."

She turned to look at him. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry. "No one takes me seriously. I've loved him since I was three years old and no one, no one, thinks it's real. They think it's a childhood crush. They think I'll grow out of it."

Andre was quiet for a moment. "Maybe you will."

"I won't."

"Then wait." He met her eyes. "You're twelve. He's thirty-one. Right now, you're a child and he's a man, and if he looked at you the way you want him to, he'd be a monster. You don't want him to be a monster."

Luna's jaw tightened.

"So let him get married," Andre said. "Let him be happy. And when you're eighteen, if you still feel the same way, tell him. But right now, the best thing you can do for him is let him make his own choices. Even if they hurt you."

"That's the stupidest, most logical thing anyone's ever said to me."

"I learned from Dad."

Luna stared at the tile. Axle. Of course. Axle, who'd waited for Scarlett. Axle, who'd built her a room with a red velvet sofa and a suspension rig. Axle, who'd learned to tie the knots himself because she needed someone to catch her when she flew.

"Did he ever tell you about Mom?" Andre asked. "How they met?"

"She returned a bag. She walked into the clubhouse and didn't flinch."

"Yeah. But do you know what Dad did while he was waiting for her?"

Luna shook her head.

"He stole her panties and shoved them in his pocket. He was obsessed. He was possessive. And she was still married to someone else." Andre's voice was soft. "It took them months to get together. And during those months, Dad was... a lot. Grimm said he was insufferable. Hound said he nearly killed three people for looking at her wrong. He was thirty-four years old and he fell in love with a woman who wasn't his, and he had to wait."

"But he got her."

"Eventually. But he had to be patient first. He had to let her choose." Andre bumped her shoulder. "Knuckles isn't going anywhere. He'll always be in the club. He'll always be family. So let him get married. Let him be happy. And if you still love him when you're eighteen, tell him. But don't let it destroy you in the meantime."

Luna leaned her head on his shoulder. "I hate being twelve."

"Being sixteen isn't much better."

"At least you can drive."

"At least I can drive," he agreed.

They sat together in silence. Outside, the party continued, laughter and music and the chaos of a family that had been built from nothing. Luna could hear Xander shrieking about something, Monica demanding another negotiation, Hound's booming laugh.

She closed her eyes.

"I'll wait," she said quietly. "I'll wait until I'm eighteen. And if he still doesn't see me then..."

"Then you'll know," Andre said.

"Then I'll know."

She didn't cry. But when she finally stood up and splashed cold water on her face and walked back to the party, she felt the crack in her chest seal over into something harder. Something sharper. Something that looked a lot like resolve.

---

The next morning, Luna found Val in the training yard before dawn.

She'd been thinking about it for months, ever since she'd watched Val spar with Grimm, their bodies moving like blades, lethal and precise and beautiful. She'd just never had the courage to ask.

Val was stretching on the mats, her grey eyes catching the first light. She looked up when Luna approached.

"You're twelve," Val said.

"I know."

"It'll hurt."

"I know."

Val studied her for a long moment. "Why?"

"Because I'm tired of waiting for someone to protect me."

Val smiled. It was a terrible, beautiful, approving smile. "Six AM. Don't be late."

Luna wasn't late. She was never late again.