The Warrior Luna's New Bond After Divorce

Chapter 6

Ruby’s POV

I’m running, but my legs are smaller than they should be. My brothers are ahead, laughing.

A silver trophy sits on a stump. I reach it first and wrap my fingers around the cool metal.

I spin around to show them, but Rex already wears a winner’s smirk. Ryan stands beside him with narrowed eyes. Roger bounces on his toes with an open, hopeful grin. They match Father. I never have.

Father steps in, lifts my wrist as if my grip is flawed, and turns toward the boys. “Winner,” he says, and does not look at me. Instead, he looks past me to Rex. “To the eldest.”

The trophy leaves my fingers as if it was never there. Heat floods my chest. “I won!” I shout. My brothers go quiet, but Father still doesn’t turn.

The roar thins to a rasp and the click of glass replaces it. The stump becomes a desk, and the shine from the trophy turns into a glass vial.

Ava glides closer, concern arranged perfectly on her face. Her hand hovers over the vial, then over me, and she tucks a strand of hair behind my ear like she has the right. Alice stands behind her with a tray, steam curling with lavender and boiled roots.

“Drink,” Ava says, like a friend nursing me back to health. “It will help.”

I tip the cup away with the back of my hand. “Keep your brew,” I say. “You don’t order me in my own house.” The air tightens, and Ava’s smile doesn’t move, but her eyes do.

The room tilts; the chair becomes a cot, the cot becomes a slab, and leather straps hold my wrists. Buckles bite at my ankles. “Stand down,” I command, voice low and sharp. Ava only leans in and coos, “Shh,” pinching my nose until my mouth opens. Then she tips the vial in.

Bitter syrup floods my tongue. I cough and try to spit, but Alice’s hand clamps under my jaw, holding it shut. I twist until the straps burn my skin, but they hold.

“Jake!” I force out, raw. “Jake–”

I look for Jake because he is supposed to be the person who looks back. He stands in the doorway with his jaw set. He looks at me like I’m just a stain on his existence and turns away.

The world slides again. I’m in a forest under moonlight. Frost bites the air. The ridge is narrow, loose rocks whispering under my boots. In my hands, I hold a spear splinted straight with leather. A gray wolf the size of a horse unfolds from the treeline, moonlight glistening off its spine. Its breath ghosts white.

I set my stance, point kept between us, and count its breaths. One… two… On three, I cut across. The spear nicks fur at the shoulder. It pivots faster than any story says it should. I feint back, then drive for the ribs. The tip finds meat.

It snarls and comes in instead of away, shoulder crashing the shaft. Wood screams. The splints hold for a heartbeat, then slide. The shaft tears from my grip. My heel skates against loose stone, and the sky sways.

I go for the knife at my thigh, my fingers close on an empty strap.

The wolf’s pads make almost no sound, only pebbles ticking down the slope. Its breath washes hot across my face, and I reach inward for the door that has always been open, but meet a lock. I push, and nothing happens.

The wolf tilts its head. Its eyes are gold-veined and familiar in a way I refuse to name. Then it comes for my throat.

I wake with my hand at my neck, fingers pressed to my pulse, heart racing hard enough to bruise. I suck air fast, and it hitches in my chest. The canvas above me moves with the wind, and the shadow of a branch drifts over the ceiling.

“Breathe,” a soft voice says, steady and low. “In for four. Out for four. Stay with me.”

I take the numbers like a rope and pull. One, two, three, four. The air comes easier. I blink, and the room becomes a room again. A tent, a pallet, shelves made from crates. Light comes in soft. Pine sap, boiled water, willow bark, smoke clinging to wool. Heat gathers at my feet and under my ribs. Warm stones wrapped in cloth press against me.

A woman kneels beside me. Blond hair braided, brown eyes clear and kind. Her sleeves are rolled, and a smear of green stains her wrist.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Lily. You’re safe.”

My throat works, but making the words come out feels like war. “Where?”

“Our camp,” she says. “You’re in the infirmary tent. You’ve been out for a while.”

“How long?” I ask.

“A week,” she answers. “Your body needed the time.”

A week. The time opens like a canyon.

Memory comes in bursts. Stone under my palms. Air, moonlight, then a roar. Fingers on my arm, steady and strong. A voice that said I’ve got you. A voice that wasn’t Jake’s.

I try to turn, and pain shoots across my back, locking me to the pallet and making my breath speed up again.

“Easy,” Lily murmurs. “Don’t lift yet. Your back is wrapped, and I’d rather not make more work. Water?”

I nod. She slides an arm behind my shoulders and raises me enough to drink. The cup is metal, the rim is cool. The first swallow hurts, then it helps. I drink until the ache in my throat dulls and my hands stop shaking. When she eases me back, the warm stone at my ribs presses comfort.

“Tyler brought you in,” Lily says. “Duke and the runners covered the tracks on the way back.”

My mouth forms a thank you that does not quite come out. I am not used to the line of need running straight from my chest to another person’s hands.

The bandage along my back tightens with my breath. I test my strength the way I would test a bridge, slow and a little at a time. My fingers find the edge of the blanket.

I reach for my wolf on instinct because that is what I have always done when I need more than bones and stubbornness. I press inward where she should be, but find silence.

Not the shocked silence after a blast. Just an emptied room.

Panic climbs my spine. “No,” I say. I reach again, harder. Nothing answers. I push until sweat beads along my hairline.

Lily’s hand finds my forearm and stays there, just weight and warmth. “Don’t force it,” she says. “Your wolf isn’t gone, she’s hurt. Whatever they gave you weakened you over months. Your body has been running on emptier stores than you ever knew. That harms the wolf, but she isn’t gone. Do you hear me?”

I close my eyes and nod because I need to believe it. “Jake’s command,” I whisper. I can still feel where it sank in, hot then cold. “He sealed me.”

“He did,” Lily says, anger threading under her steadiness. “The command lingers. It will fade with distance and your choice to sever the bond, but not overnight. Between that and the potions and blood loss, your wolf is choosing not to spend anything she doesn’t have.”

A tear finds the path along my temple to my hair. I let it go. “I keep reaching for a door that isn’t supposed to open yet,” I say.

“Exactly,” Lily says. “If you keep yanking the handle, you’ll tire yourself out for nothing.” She tips her chin to the warm stone near my ribs. “Let the heat do the work. Let your body heal. Until then, you’re still a fighter, just without the change.”

The word fighter should lift me, but it sits heavy for one breath. “How bad?” I ask because details are all I have at the moment.

She doesn’t hesitate. “Deep lacerations cross your back. No silver, which is a mercy. I cleaned and packed what needed it. The rest needs air and time. Your palms are scraped raw from the rocks. Bruising at your shoulder and ribs. You’ll hurt when you breathe for a bit.”

“Thank you,” I say after a while.

She squeezes my wrist. “Always.” She stands, checks the kettle, and tips herbs into a cup, and the air fills with a cleaner, crisper note. “Willow, yarrow, and a little mint. You’ll sip slowly, or I’ll take it away.” The corner of her mouth tilts. “I can be mean about tea.”

“I believe you,” I say, and my voice almost sounds like mine again.

She helps me drink. Warmth slides down and finds cold places I didn’t know were there. My muscles loosen a fraction, and it’s welcomed.

“Try to sleep some more,” she says to me. “Even if it’s just half asleep. Your body does most of its fixing when you aren’t watching.”