The Warrior Luna's New Bond After Divorce

Ruby 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 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 stop with my fingers just above the handle, not touching, not ready to announce myself yet. 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. Those words don’t belong to the woman in my memories; they belong to someone else. Someone who has been lying to me all along. There is a pause. The silence on the other side of the door stretches so thin that my ears ring. I hear a soft click of a nail against glass, the wet sound of a mouth swallowing. Then, lower, meant to be secret, “Yes. I know what I’m doing. No, he doesn’t suspect.” The words slide through the crack once more, but this time it's like a thick smoke that settles in my lungs, making it hard to breathe. 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. When a hunt ends, the strike begins. I push the door open. The door slams open on squeaky hinges, causing Alice to jerk upright from her chair. The phone slips from her ear and clatters against the desk before she snatches it up again, fumbling to end the call. Her face drains to a ghostly white, and her eyes dart to the phone, then to me. For a heartbeat, it’s almost like she forgets how to breathe. The room itself seems to flinch. Papers rustle against the sudden stillness, a kettle hums somewhere in the back corner. I don’t move. I just stand in the doorway, the cold edge of the frame pressed against my shoulder, watching her. Alice recovers fast; too fast. She slides the phone face down on the desk as if the wood itself could erase any evidence and forces a smile that tries to mask the panic in her eyes. She steadies herself with a hand on her desk, then smooths the front of her pale uniform, forcing her composure back into place. “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 face is sharp in the lamplight, fine boned but worn down by sleepless nights and secrets. The soft blonde of her hair is pulled into a loose braid, a few strands sticking to her temple with sweat. Her eyes usually a calm gray, which made patients believe anything she said, look clouded tonight, like a glass fogged by breath. There's powder on her cuffs from crushed herbs, a faint green stain at the base of her fingers, and the scent of tonic clings to her. 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. She steps in front of the phone as if she can shield it from sight. “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.” The words are neat. Practiced. But her pulse jumps in her throat, and the scent of panic rolls off her like antiseptic in a doctor's office. 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. There is a part of me that wants to beg. To ask her to tell me I have my assumptions wrong. That I am not hearing my life reduced to some soap opera that humans enjoy over the phone. But there is another part of me that knows when a hunt ends and a kill begins. “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, the way it leaves me like a calm tide, and for a heartbeat, 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. The name hangs between us. It shouldn’t hurt this much to hear it. 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 could not lose my post. I have a brother who needs my wage. I meant to tell you-” “You said those words into a phone. They were not the words of a woman defending her post. Those were the words of a woman making a promise,” I seethe. Alice sways like she has been cuffed. She covers her mouth with both hands, and when she speaks again, her voice is small. “I’m sorry.” “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.” The words hang there. 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 don’t remember deciding to run. I just know that if I stop, I'll collapse. The echo of my footsteps follows me down the hall like a thudding heartbeat. 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. The way Jake’s shoulders move when he breathes her in, the way he always breathed in me. 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.