The Warrior Luna's New Bond After Divorce

Chapter 5

Tyler’s POV

The howl threads the trees; three short, a pause, two long. Not a pack code, but field from someone trained. Urgent.

I toss our answer into the wind, lower and shorter so it carries without exposing our position.

I lift a hand, and the team stops. Duke slides to my shoulder; four runners take the ridge and the low ground.

The next call rises thin and snaps off. We trade quiet for speed. Branch tips slap my sleeves. Cold air burns my throat. I open my stride until my calves bite.

Spruce breaks and the ground drops. The lip is shale and frost-hardened soil. The shelf below is no wider than my boot, slick with rubble. Farther down, the ravine opens, and the river grinds below.

Ten feet below the drop, on a narrow shelf of rock, a woman slides toward a cracked ledge. Above her, a man with claws out and coin-bright eyes tears fresh lines across a back that’s already ruined.

I know that face. Jake. Travis’s favorite drinking partner and council laugh. I watched him grinning at tables while my brother took shots at my back.

Something hot and wrong flashes through me, and I move. Adrenaline hits clean and electric. Vision narrows, and my hands steady.

I drop from the lip to the shelf, weight forward to keep between her and the fall. Jake lunges to snatch her ankle and haul her up, but I’m faster. My fingers lock around her forearm, blood-slick, and my other clamps her wrist.

“Mine,” he snarls.

“Doesn’t look it,” I say without looking at him.

He finally focuses on me and his mouth crooks. “Tyler,” he says, slow and pleased with himself. “Travis said the mistake was still playing captain out in the trees.” He tips his chin toward the woman like she is a possession. “Mind your business. Pack matter.”

The contempt in his voice lights the fuel already pooling in me. He clawed his own Luna and left her bleeding. My grip steadies more.

I slide an arm under the woman’s knees and lift. She’s too light. I fold her against my chest and keep the torn skin off the rock. There is grit on her cheekbone and a clean track where one tear slid through. Her breath lands against my collarbone in short bursts.

Jake crouches at the rim. “She’s my Luna. You will not take her.”

His shoulders bunch. His claws flex at the soil. His eyes shine hard and bright.

“You clawed your own Luna and left her bleeding,” I say. “In what world do you keep her?”

His mouth twitches. “Pack matter, Tyler. Stand down. Go fetch your little rogues. Leave the men’s work to someone who can handle it.”

“Save it for someone who cares,” I tell him, and I mean it.

The woman’s lips move. The sound is shredded, but the words are steady. “I… am not his Luna.”

The woman’s fingers curl weakly into my jacket. She only hooks two fingers and keeps them there. Her mouth moves. “Witness,” she breathes.

I lock my stance and brace her weight. She nods weakly once, then forces the words through pain and breath. “I am Ruby, once Luna to Jake. I reject you as my mate. I reject your bond and pack. By my blood and my name, I go rogue of my own will.” Her lips shape a single word: please.

The air pulls tight, then slacks. Ruby. I know the stories, the warrior who stopped three border raids with a broken spear. I never pictured her bleeding on a cliff with a man’s shadow over her. The sound she makes brings me back. Her body bows, then goes slack.

I hook my knee over the lip and press, lifting Ruby clear in one smooth surge. I step back from the drop.

Jake comes over the rim, claws set. “You will not take her,” he says, voice flat.

I stand with Ruby in my arms. “She just took herself,” I say. “We all heard.”

He bares his teeth. “You will regret this.”

“Maybe,” I retort. “Later.”

I don’t give him time to close the ground. I move fast through the trees, choosing smooth earth so running won’t bounce her wounds open. The team folds around me without a word.

Duke ranges to my right flank and mirrors my pace. He looks once at me; peel? I nod. He ghosts two runners wider to set a screen and falls back in without breaking stride.

Her head rests under my chin. She smells like iron, cold, and bitter tonic. Every time her body shudders, I adjust and push faster toward camp.

We change direction twice to trick the wind, two runners wide watching the rear.

Our camp sits where three old pines grow close. Tarp lines break the drafts and vanish in the dark.

Lily meets me at the infirmary flap, sleeves shoved to her elbows, hands already reaching.

“Inside,” she orders. “On her side. Back clear.”

I shoulder through, kneel, and lower Ruby to the cot. Cold bites, and she tenses, then loosens. Lily’s eyes sweep over me once and cut past the pallet, then pin me where I stand.

“Out,” she says to everyone. Then to me in a tone that would stop a charging boar: “You too.”

“I’m staying,” I hear myself say.

She motions around us. “This is my house. Out.”

I should argue, but I don’t. Instead, I back into the cold, and the flap falls louder than it should.

Time thins. Cold climbs my sleeves; I square my shoulders and push it down.

The flap lifts, and Lily steps out, forearms wet to the elbow, a smear of paste on her wrist. Her blonde hair is matted from sweat, and sorrow sits in her eyes. Not a good sign.

“Come,” she says. I follow.

Ruby lies on her side on the pallet, back wrapped in clean lines already shadowing through with blood. A warm stone rests at her feet, another by her ribs. Steam mists from a mug near her. Her lashes lie against skin the color of paper.

Lily keeps her voice low. “She’s alive. She’s in a coma. Her body shut down what it could to survive. The wounds are deep, but they’re clean. No silver. They should heal more easily than expected.” She pauses. “But there’s more.”

“Within days, she miscarried,” she says. “That’s part of the weakness and blood loss you saw. Whoever did this pushed a body already to its limit.”

I don’t feel my hands until I see them. They’re fists, nails stabbing into my palms. A tin cup sits on the shelf by my elbow; my thumb finds the rim and the metal buckles with a soft pop. Lily’s head snaps up.

“Don’t,” she says. I set the cup down and make myself breathe.

Heat climbs behind my eyes, not tears but anger. A gravestone flashes. My father’s voice calling me the cost. I shove it away. This isn’t about me. I fix my eyes on the rise and fall of Ruby’s ribs and count until the red drains from the edges of my sight.

“Tell me what she needs,” I say at last. “I’ll see the rest handled.”

Lily looks at Ruby and sighs. “She needs warmth, fluids, rest, and quiet. No shifting, even if she can. If fever comes, I’ll be here to break it. If her breathing changes, I need to be called.”

I look at Ruby and see the cost in the hollows under her eyes and the shallow lift of her ribs. The words land heavy. I nod once.

Lily tips her chin at the far corner. “You can stand there. Do not hover, do not touch the bandages. If you must touch anything, tuck the blanket at her shoulder when she chills.”

I move to the corner she chose and plant my boots there. Outside the camp hushes into a kind of silence that moves.

Duke slips in long enough to set a strip of marked bark by the pole. “Decoys are out,” he murmurs. “False trails laid on the north deer run and the old road. Scent drags in three directions.”

He straightens, and Lily meets his eyes. He brushes a thumb along her cheekbone once. “You good?” he murmurs.

“Now that you’re back,” she says, squeezing his fingers before letting go. Then they both look to Ruby.

“Good,” Lily says, gentler now. “She stays here and rests in peace for now.”

My gaze won’t leave Ruby. The pull I felt earlier hasn’t gone. It’s quieter now, maybe only recognition between fighters.

The blanket by her shoulder loosens with her slow breathing. I tuck it back in, careful of the bandage. Up close, she is younger than the stories made her out to be and older than twenty-four in all the ways that count.

“We’ve got you,” I tell her, even if she can’t hear it.