The Warrior Luna's New Bond After Divorce

Chapter 6

Ruby’s POV

I am running, but my legs are smaller than they should be. They thud against the ground that used to be our courtyard, and my brothers are ahead, laughing. A silver trophy sits on a stump. I reach it first, eagerly grabbing it and wrapping my fingers around the cool metal.

I spin around to show them, but Rex is already wearing a winner’s smirk, Father’s black hair slicked back; Ryan beside him with the same dark hair parted neat and eyes narrowed; and Roger with his hair sticking up in cowlicks, bouncing on his toes with an open, hopeful grin. They match him, while I never have.

Father steps in and lifts my wrist, examining my grip like it's a flawed thing, 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 were never there. Heat floods my chest, quick and scalding. “I won!” I shout, anger taking over my body. I scream so loudly that my brothers go quiet, but my 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 arrives at the edge of the desk first, then she glides closer, skirts whispering, 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. She smiles like something out of a picture book. Alice stands behind her with a tray, steam curling, filling the room with lavender and a dark bitterness of roots boiled too long.

“Drink,” Ava says, like a friend who's 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, but I pull against them anyway. “Stand down,” I command, voice low and sharp, the way that used to clear rooms. But Ava only leans in and coos, “Shh,” as she pinches my nose until my mouth opens. When it does, she tips the vial in.

Bitter syrup floods my tongue. I cough and try to spit, but Alice’s hand comes gently and unmovably under my jaw, holding it shut. I twist under the leather until it burns my skin, but the straps 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 and the moon shines through the trees; frost bites the air. The ridge is narrow; the loose rocks whisper under my boots. In my hands, I hold a spear that's splinted straight with leather. A shape unfolds from the treeline: a gray wolf the size of a horse, shoulders rolling, moonlight glistening off its spine like armor. Its breath ghosts white; it smells of iron, wet fur, and cold water.

I set my stance; left foot angled, knee soft, point kept between us. I show my right side, give it what looks like an opening, and count its breaths. One… two.. On three, I cut across. The spear knicks fur at the shoulder: a warning. It pivots faster than any story says it should. I feint back, then drive the ribs where the soft moves beneath the cage. The tip finds meat.

It snarls and comes in instead of away, shoulder crashing the shaft. Wood screams. My hands burn; the splints hold for a heartbeat, then slide. It wrenches the spear clockwise and shoves. 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 hard enough to spark stars, 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 own hand at my neck, fingers pressed to the pulse, heart racing hard enough ot bruise. I suck air fast, and it hitches and scrapes in my chest. Coldness sticks to my skin. Everything is too bright and too dim at the same time. The canvas above me moves with the wind, and a shadow of a branch and leaf moves like slow water 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 and not just another woven dream. A tent, wide enough for a pallet and shelves made from crates. Light comes in soft and there is a clean, sharp mix of scents: pine sap, boiled water, willow bark, and smoke that's clung to wool. Heat gathers at my feet and under my ribs. I realize there are warm stones wrapped in cloth against me.

A woman kneels beside me. Blond hair braided, the shortest hairs wisping free. Brown eyes clear and kind, in a face that doesn’t pretend. Her sleeves are rolled, and her forearms are clean. A small smear of green at her wrist where some salve has stained the skin.

“Hi,” she says. “I’m Lily. You’re safe.” She says safe like it’s a promise.

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

“Our camp,” she says. “We keep it quiet. You’re in the infirmary tent.” Her voice gentles. “You’ve been out for a while.”

“How long?” I ask.

“A week,” she answers. She watches my face as if the answer might be a blade. “Your body needed the time.”

A week. That amount of time is like a canyon.

Memory comes in bursts. Stone under my palms, biting skin from my hands. Air, moonlight, and 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, a sheet of heat that burns and goes cold at the edges. It locks me to the pallet in a way that makes my breath speed up again and my stomach turn.

“Easy,” Lily murmurs. “Don’t lift yet. Your back is wrapped, and I’d rather not make more work.” The smile is small; something so honest it’s refreshing. “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 quite so much. When she eases me back, the warm stone at my ribs presses comfort.

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

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 and loosens with my breath. Heat gathers, then settles. 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, and I breathe, count, breathe.

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 a silence in a room with all its furniture taken out. Panic climbs my spine faster than pain. “No,” I say. I reach again, harder. Nothing answers. I push until sweat beads along my hairline and the corners of my vision pulse.

Lily’s hand finds mt forearm and stays there, just weight and warmth. “Don’t force it,” she says. “Listen to me. Your wolf isn’t gone, she’s hurt.” Her voice does not leave room for argument, but it leaves room for breath. “Whatever they gave you, they 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 the place where it sank in, hot then cold, a weight that dragged like a chain. “He sealed me.”

“He did,” Lily states with anger, clean thread under the steadiness. “The command lingers, but it will fade with distance and with your choice to sever the bond, but it will not vanish overnight. Between that and the potions and the blood you lost… 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 answers. “If you keep yanking the handle, you'll just 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. When you're strong enough to shift again, we'll know, but 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 or attempt to make it pretty. “Deep lacerations cross your back. No silver in the wounds, which is a mercy. I cleaned and packed what needed to be packed. 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.”