The Warrior Luna's New Bond After Divorce

Chapter 2

Ruby POV



For a moment, I forget how to breathe. The sound that leaves me isn’t even a gasp; it's more like air escaping my throat. My fingers twitch at my sides, caught between reaching for him and shielding myself.

Training cuts in. Breathe low. Plant your feet. Name the threat. The ache that hits isn’t just jealousy; it’s the clean, cold fact that he didn’t choose me; he chose the story I could give him.

His brown hair is mussed, the neat Alpha composure gone, light catches on the darker stubble along his jaw, and for the first time, I notice how cold his brown eyes look when they aren’t softened by whatever charm he’s trying to put on. His chest still rises and falls too quickly, the faint tremor of exertion betraying him. My gaze drifts to the wrinkle in his shirt where her hands were, proof pressed into fabric.

Ava stays bent against the desk for a second longer, smoothing her skirt, pretending to be small and wounded. She looks ridiculously like a crisp new toy: chestnut hair tumbling over her shoulders, honey-brown eyes misted by tears. Her pale skin flushes prettily, the same way it did when she used to laugh beside Jake at the long table. Her beauty has always been her weapon, and I realize now that I was standing unarmed beside her this whole time.

All the “small” things line up fast: she was at his side at dinners, always somehow between us; his palm on the back of her chair while he talked; 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.”

The sound of it breaks whatever spell I was under. 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 again, voice steady, although my body trembles beneath it. “How long have you been-”

His jaw tightens. “Watch your tone.”

He doesn’t move closer, but 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, blood on his hands and sunlight breaking behind him. The Alpha who lifted me out of the mud and called me his equal. I remember the night he realized I was his mate, the way his voice shook when he asked me to stand beside him. I was a warrior then, proud of every scar. I gave it all up because I believed love was worth more than victory. I believed him when he said we’d build something together.

That we were in love.

My lips part, but no words come. For a heartbeat, I almost reach for him, habit over reason, then my hand curls back into a fist.

And now I’m standing in the ruins of that belief, looking at the stranger who stands before me now.

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, the sound low and dangerous. His eyes narrow, his jaw twitching, and the hard click of Alpha instinct sliding into place. “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, her timing too perfect to be instinct. She slips between us, her delicate hands lifted, palms open in the universal gesture of peace. She looks the part with her eyes still shining with tears. Her lower lip trembles; her voice is silk woven with pity.

“She’s not well,” Ava mutters, voice pitched just for him to hear. She doesn’t even look at me. “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?”

I take a step closer, and I can feel the anger radiating off his body. “You heard me. Alice confessed. She said it was your Ava who told her what to do. Who made sure I lost at least the last one?”

“That’s a lie!” Ava shrieks, her voice breaks perfectly, and she turns to Jake, 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 flinches at the sound, then tumbles backward, right into Jake's chest. His hands go to her shoulders automatically, steadying her. She doesn't waste the chance; she turns to him, hiding her face against his chest, trembling just enough to make her show 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.

I take a step forward before I know I’m moving, my boots scuffing against the floor. “What proof?” I ask, voice raw.

Ava moves too quickly for someone so fragile. She 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 from the mark on his neck back to her eyes and let the silence cut first. 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. It looks like blindness. 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 rolling through the room pressing against my chest like a heavy 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. I straighten my voice so it’s steady now, 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. The air tightens, heat pressing on my skin like a storm about to break. "You think you can leave me? You think you can defy Alpha command?"

Before I can move, his power crashes through me like a wave. My wolf howls inside, thrashing, clawing, but the command sears into my bones. The world tilts and my knees hit the floor with a sickening thud. My muscles seize, fire racing through my veins before turning to ice. My heartbeat stutters, the sound too loud in my ears. 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. His thumb digs into my jaw, forcing my head up. 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. The bond between us flickers, then tightens until I can’t feel the edges of myself. 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.”

Her words dig deeper than the command.

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. The guards’ grips burn against my skin. My boots drag over the floor, the scrape echoing through the hall like chains. I keep my head high until the darkness swallows me whole.