The Warrior Luna's New Bond After Divorce

Ruby’s POV I count my breaths down the corridor to the infirmary. Four in, four out. The walls wear the same soft yellow meant to soothe; tonight, it looks spoiled, like cream left out too long. My palms are damp. I press my hand to my stomach and refuse to name the emptiness. Two losses in two years. Alice, my pack doctor, called me “delicate,” said rest, tonics, and patience. I did all of it. The pack whispers anyway: wrong Luna, wrong heir. I’ve bled enough for their stories. Tonight, I stop guessing. I go to the person who mixed every vial. The infirmary door is almost closed as I approach. A sliver of light cuts the dark hall, and voices drift muffled through the cracked door. I didn’t come to eavesdrop, but something in my chest sank and urged me to be as quiet as a mouse. “I won’t let her have a baby.” The words are soft, hissed into a phone, but they hit me like a blade. The breath goes out of me, and I lean closer without meaning to, my shoulder brushing against the frame. Alice’s voice. My breath catches harder, like a lump has formed in my throat. The woman who held my hand when I lost both babies, who looked me in the eye and promised me next time would be different. Every vial she pressed to my lips, every time she told me to trust her, all of it folds in on itself. She’s been lying to me, all along. The silence on the other side of the door stretches so thin that my ears ring. Then, lower, meant to be secret, “Yes. I know what I’m doing. No, he doesn’t suspect.” My heartbeat skips, almost as if it’s tripping. And for a second, just a second, I wonder if I misheard. Maybe it’s nothing, just some minor treatment, or perhaps it’s some other woman. But the name he hooks inside me like a thorn. My wolf stirs; my training answers first. I push the door open. Alice jumps up, sees it’s me, and drops her phone. She frantically picks it up trying to hang up. Her face drains to a ghostly white, and her eyes dart to the phone, then to me. I don’t move. I just stand in the doorway, the cold edge of the frame pressed against my shoulder, watching her. Alice slides the phone face down on the desk and forces a smile that tries to mask the panic in her eyes. “Luna,” she says, her tone is that of one she uses for the fevered or the young. “You frightened me.” I look at her, really look at her, and I see the tiny tremor in her wrist, the way her pulse flutters beneath the skin. Her eyes usually a calm gray, which made patients believe anything she said, look clouded tonight, like a glass fogged by breath. I see the half-empty glass vial beside her elbow, a smear of dark liquid clinging to the lip. I remember the same vial in her hand once, pressed to my mouth while she whispered that it would help me rest. My stomach tightens, and I don’t blink. “I hear you. You’re talking about me.” My voice is even. I surprise even myself with it. The warrior in me knows how to sheath a blade so gently you never hear it leave the scabbard. Alice smiles the way people smile at wild animals, all teeth and trembling kindness masking fear. “Luna,” she says softly, a slight quiver evident in her voice, “you misheard. I was speaking about another patient. One of the young she-wolves struggling to conceive. You know how gossip twists everything. I’d never speak of you that way.” As if to strengthen her case, “I’m sorry you had to hear it out of context.” “Context?” The word scrapes against my throat. I stare at her, at the familiar face that delivered my bad news, softened my fear with medicinal words. Alice has always been gentle, precise, and present. She was the one who held my hand in the first hour of bleeding. She was the one who pressed the vial to my lips the second time and said we’ll get this right, Luna. I taste metal now. “What context makes ’I won’t let her have a baby’ anything but what it is?” I ask, barely above a whisper. She tries again. “Ruby, I—” I don’t let her finish. “Look at me! I command you to tell me the truth,” I say. Each syllable lands steady, ensuring that my Luna’s voice cuts deep. “Tell me who you were speaking to and what you meant.” Her lips tremble, and her throat moves like she’s swallowing a pebble. Her eyes meet mine once more, and she again tries to look away but quickly finds that my command won’t let her. I feel the pull of my own command, I hate it, that this is necessary, that I have to use what I never wanted to use against a woman who wrapped gauze around my wrists and rubbed warmth into my fingers when I shook. “Ava,” she says. The name is a small, raw sound. She blinks hard, tears clinging without falling. “I was speaking to Ava.” Everything inside me goes very quiet. Ava. My friend. Someone who laughed with me in the kitchens when the pack gossiped, who slipped extra bread into my hand when I forgot to eat, who brushed my hair when the nights felt too long and empty. I see her face in flashes: her easy smile, the kindness that always came a heartbeat before mine, the way she knew Jake’s moods better than I did. My mouth is dry when I speak. “Say it again.” The words barely leave my lips, but they shake the air in an unintentional use of my Luna voice. “Who were you talking to?” Alice swallows hard. “Ava,” she whispers again, smaller this time as if saying it twice might break her. A pulse of heat rises between my ribs, spreading through my chest until it burns. I can feel my heartbeat everywhere: neck, wrists, fingertips. Alice presses the heel of her hand to her chest and looks as if she’s counting something. Her mouth opens and closes, then words come in a rush that has nothing to do with courage. “I didn’t want to do it, I swear. But she said she would ruin me if I refused. She said that she would tell Jake that I was negligent. That I was the reason you lost the first one. I.. I couldn’t lose my post. I have a brother who needs my wage. I meant to tell you—” “How long?” I ask. “Since the second time. She came the day after you bled. Sat right where you are and told me she couldn’t watch you suffer again. That if the pack saw you lose another, they would call for you to step down, and that it would break Jake. The first time was you, I mean, these things happen. But the second—” “And Jake?” I ask, because there is the last sliver of light in me, and I feel it breaking. “I don’t know what he knows,” Alice’s eyes flick to the phone and back. “Sometimes I think he knows everything. Sometimes nothing.” My knees feel weak, and I grab the edge of the desk to keep from falling. I draw a breath, but it isn’t good enough. My body shakes once, small and sharp. Names loop in my head: Ava, Jake, but training cuts through the noise. I don’t break here. I move. I need to see him. The room tilts when I turn for the door. My hand finds the wall and slides along the cold plaster until the dizziness fades. I push myself into the corridor, walking faster than I should, every step fueled by disbelief. By the time I reach the stairwell, my breath is ragged. My thoughts are a blur of broken images. I reach his door, but it’s slightly open. I hear a low sound, not words at first, and I push the door. It opens on a squeak of hinges; too soft for what I feel. Jake has Ava bent over his desk, his palms braced on either side of her, his mouth on hers like he’s starving. The map under her fingers wrinkles where she grips it, and her eyes are closed. For a moment, everything in the room is sharp and very far away. I step forward into the light, and the floor creaks under my weight. Ava hears me first. She opens her eyes and sees me, and for a heartbeat, something like satisfaction flickers over her face before she smooths it to shock. Jake turns slow and then fast, his mouth wet, his eyes wide like a boy caught raiding the stores and already building a lie that will make it right.