The Warrior Luna's New Bond After Divorce

Chapter 2

Ruby’s POV

For a moment, I forget how to breathe.

Jake’s brown hair is mussed, the neat Alpha composure gone. For the first time, I notice how cold his brown eyes look when they aren’t softened by charm. His chest still rises too quickly.

Ava stays bent against the desk for a second longer, smoothing her skirt, pretending to be small and wounded. Chestnut hair tumbles over her shoulders, honey-brown eyes misted by tears.

Her beauty has always been her weapon, and I realize now that I was standing unarmed beside her.

All the “small” things line up fast: she was at his side at dinners, always somehow between us; in the kitchen, she took my tasks, and he thanked her; at night she brought me tea and the pills Alice said would help. I called it kindness. It was a pattern.

Jake says my name like it’s a reprimand. “Ruby.”

I take a step forward, my palms burning as I dig my nails in. “How long?”

He blinks, caught off guard. “What?”

“How long has it been her?” I ask, voice steady despite the tremor in me. “How long have you been-”

His jaw tightens. “Watch your tone.”

His shoulders square, his chin lifting in the quiet threat every wolf understands. I force myself not to step back.

“My tone?” A bitter laugh catches in my throat. “I caught you on top of her, Jake. What tone would you like me to use?”

For a moment, I see him as he used to be, the man who found me on the battlefield and called me his equal. I gave it all up because I believed we were building something together.

That we were in love.

And now I’m standing in the ruins of that belief, looking at a stranger.

Ava straightens, turning toward me with a practiced flinch, tears already pooling down her pale cheeks. “Ruby, please,” she whispers, voice cracking like she’s rehearsed it. “It isn’t what it looks like. I was just-”

“Don’t,” I cut in, my voice sharp enough to make her freeze. “Don’t call me by my name. Not after this.”

Jake exhales through his nose, low and dangerous. “You’ve been on edge for months, Ruby. Paranoid. Maybe if you’d focused on your duties instead of finding someone to blame-”

“Finding someone to blame?” My voice shakes. “You mean for the children who never had a chance to live?”

He doesn’t flinch. The muscle in his jaw jumps, and he leans into anger like it’s a stance.

Ava moves quickly and slips between us, hands lifted in the universal gesture of peace. Her lower lip trembles; her voice is silk woven with pity.

“She’s not well,” Ava mutters, voice pitched just for him to hear. “Alice told me she’s been struggling. I—I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Ruby. I thought you were just tired.”

“Tired?” I repeat slowly, almost like I’m testing if I heard her correctly. “Is that what you’re calling it now? Was that before or after you told her to make sure I couldn’t have a baby?”

Jake’s head snaps toward me. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me. Alice confessed. She said Ava told her what to do. Who made sure I lost at least the last one?”

“That’s a lie!” Ava shrieks, her her voice breaking perfectly, turning to Jake with tears streaming down her face. “She’s twisting things! I only ever wanted to protect her. I gave Alice medicine to help, not to hurt. Ruby’s the one who told me to hide it!”

Jake rounds on me, eyes dark with fury. “Why would you tell her to hide anything?”

“I didn’t!” My voice rises. “She’s lying!”

Ava stumbles back into Jake’s chest. His hands go to her shoulders automatically, steadying her. She hides her face against him, trembling just enough to make it convincing.

The sight knocks the air out of me. My body leans forward before I realize it, heat surging up my neck, an instinct older than reason screaming to tear them apart.

Jake’s arm tightens around her. “Then why does she have proof?” he snarls.

“What proof?” I ask, voice raw.

Ava turns in his hold, still clutching his shirt, and reaches for the drawer at Jake’s desk. She pulls out a small bottle of pills and a folded formula sheet, holding them out with shaking hands. “She gave them to me,” she whispers, her voice muffled against his chest. “Said that Jake couldn’t find out because it would ruin her.”

I stare at the bottle. The same white tablets I’ve swallowed night after night, believing they would help me prepare for a child. I remember Alice’s quiet instructions. Take two with food, one before bed.

I take another step closer, close enough to see the faint red mark on Jake’s neck where her lips had been.

I drag my gaze back to her eyes. My voice lowers, steady and dangerous. “You’re a good actress, Ava.”

Jake’s lip curls. “Enough.” He grabs the bottle from her, turning it over in his palm before slamming it down onto the desk. “I should have known you’d try to twist this. Always so ready to see yourself as the victim. Do you know what this looks like, Ruby? It looks like guilt.”

I shake my head, tears stinging my eyes, but refusing to let them fall. “No, Jake. You just don’t want to see what’s right in front of you. You trust her but not me.”

He steps closer, his Alpha power pressing against my chest like a weight. “I trusted you. But look what you did?” he says, flat as a verdict, “What’s in front of me, is a Luna who failed her purpose.”

The words hit harder than claws, and my stomach lurches.

He continues, voice deepening with that cruel calm. “I accepted you because of your bloodline. You were supposed to give me an heir worthy of the Alpha seat. But you disappointed me.”

Something inside me snaps. My voice goes cold and final. “Then I’ll make it simple for you.”

He narrows his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m ending it. The bond. The title. All of it.”

His expression fractures, shock quickly replaced by fury. “You can’t.”

“I can,” I whisper. I lift my chin. My hands uncurl at my sides, fingers shaking but open.

A growl tears from his throat, vibrating the air. "You think you can leave me? You think you can defy Alpha command?"

Before I can move, his power crashes through me. My wolf howls inside, thrashing, clawing, but the command sears into my bones. The world tilts and my knees hit the floor. My muscles seize, fire racing through my veins before turning to ice. I claw at the floor, nails scraping stone, but the strength drains from my fingers.

“Jake,” I manage, but the rest dies in my throat.

His eyes darken to something unrecognizable, that warm brown swallowed by black. Ava reaches for him again, whispering something I can’t hear, but he jerks away from her.

“Enough.” He pushes her aside, not hard enough to throw her, but just enough that she stumbles against the desk with a startled gasp.

Then he turns to me.

Jake crosses the space between us in two strides and grabs my chin, his fingers iron at the hinge of my jaw, forcing me to meet his eyes. My teeth clench until I taste blood, but I refuse to look away.

“You belong to me, Ruby,” he says, voice low but threaded with that Alpha weight that bends everything around it. “Until you’ve fulfilled your duty, you’ll stay exactly where I put you.”

The command slams into me like an invisible force and locks tight around my chest. I reach for the part of me that can shift, the part that used to feel like freedom, and find only silence. My power, the thing that made me me, is gone.

The room sways, and Jake’s voice sounds far away and distorted, like it’s coming from underwater. “Maybe some time below will remind you who you serve.”

Ava’s scent reaches me before her face does. She’s still pretending to cry, her tears pattering softly onto my arm. But when she leans closer, the tears stop. Her lips brush my ear, her voice small and cruel. “I told you, Luna,” she whispers, “some of us were born to serve, and some of us were born to be chosen.”

I try to lift my head to speak, but my body doesn’t listen. All I can do is watch as Jake straightens, adjusting his collar like nothing happened. His expression is unreadable, no guilt, no love, just the cold satisfaction of an Alpha restoring order.

“Take her to the dungeon,” he says. “She stays below until she remembers her duty,” he adds, voice flat.

Two guards appear from the shadows, wolves loyal to him. Rough hands grab my arms, dragging me upright. My legs barely remember how to move. The stone floor bites into my knees as I’m hauled toward the door.