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 and from someone trained. Urgent. The kind you only use when blood’s already on the ground.

I toss our answer into the wind with a sense of urgency, but lowering my voice and shortening the length of my response. This way, the message travels swiftly, to ensure it carries without exposing our position.

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

The next call rises thin and raw and quickly 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, counting breaths only to keep from redlining.

Spruce breaks and the ground drops. The lip is a crumbly mix of 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 at the rock like a slow saw.

Ten feet below the drop, on a narrow shelf of rock, a woman slides as the rock peels under her toward a cracked ledge that might catch her. Above her crouched at the rim with claws out and coin-bright eyes, a man rakes down and 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. Under my foot, there are the small ridges you only get from years on a practice yard. Her pulse flutters fast, but her arm tries to brace anyway. A fighter's body remembers even when their mind goes white.

“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, the kind that comes from long weeks of being told to wait and be good. Her shoulder blades jut like handles under the torn shirt. Heat leaks fast when the wind touches the sweat on her neck. 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, counted bursts.

Jake crouches at the rim, claws chewing the soil. “She's my Luna. You will not take her.”

His shoulders bunch like a cat about to spring. His claws flex, raking at the soil as if it could help him hold the ground he’s already lost. His eyes shine hard and bright, with no room for doubt that he sees her as a possession.

“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 does not clutch; she just hooks two fingers and keeps them there, like a climber saving what little grip they have left. Even half gone, she will not take more than she needs. Her mouth moves. “Witness,” she breathes.

I lock my stance and brace her weight. She meets my eyes like we are equals on a line. 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, silent as breath: please.

The air seems to pull tight, then slacks like a bowstring loosened. Ruby. The name hits like a match to dry grass. 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 that she makes brings me instantly back. It’s not so much a cry but more as if she’s breaking. Her body bows, then goes slack.

I hook my knee over the lip and press, lifting Ruby clear in one smooth surge. I turn my body to keep her between me and the sky and 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 the time to close the ground. I move fast and even through the trees, choosing smooth earth because running would bounce her wounds further open. The team folds around me without a word.

Duke ranges to my right flank, mirrors my pace, and calls spacing with touch signs against bark as we pass. He looks once at me; peel? And I nod. He ghosts two runners wider to set a screen and falls back in without breaking stride.

Her head rests under my chin now. She smells like iron, cold, and a bitter tonic I have tasted once and never trusted. Every time her body shudders, I adjust, make myself steadier, and push faster toward our camp.

We change direction twice to trick the wind, and two runners wide to watch the rear. Ferns stick to my knees and leave a cold stain in their wake.

Our camp sits where three old pines grow close, roots making something that almost resembles a cup. Protection from all sides. Tarp lines break the drafts and vanish in the dark.

Lily meets me at the infirmary flap sleeves shoved to her elbows, chin set like iron. Her hands are clean and already reaching.

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

I shoulder through, kneel, and lower Ruby to the cot. Her shoulders first, then hips, so that her torn skin doesn't drag. 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 to the surrounding area. “This is my house,” she replies sternly. “Out.”

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

Time thins; could be minutes, could be an hour. Cold climbs my sleeves; I square my shoulders and push it down.

The flap lifts, and Lily steps out, her forearms wet to the elbow, a smear of paste on her wrist. Her face is clean and her blonde hair matted from sweat; her eyes hold something I can only describe as sorrow. Not a good sign.

“Come,” she says. I follow.

Ruby lies on her side on the pallet, back wrapped in clean, neat lines that are already shadowing through with blood. A warm stone wrapped in cloth rests at her feet; another by her ribs. Steam mists from a mug set near but not too close to 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 at least, so they should heal more easily than expected.” She pauses. “But there’s more.”

“Within days, she miscarried,” she says, voice flat but her hands trembling just once before she folds them behind her back. “That’s part of the weakness and the blood loss you saw. Whoever did this pushed a body already to its limit.”

I do not 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, quiet but edged. I set the cup down and make myself breathe.

Heat climbs behind my eyes; not tears but a red-hot anger. A memory hits fast and mean: a gravestone and my father’s voice calling me the cost. I shove it away. This isn’t about me. This is about a woman bled to the edge by a man who calls himself Alpha, and mate.

I roll my shoulders once, slow, because if I don’t, I’ll put my fist through the tent pole. The pine fire outside pops like a bone in a bad break. I fix my eyes on the rise and fall of Ruby’s ribs and count it 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 lets out a deep sigh. “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 don’t smile. I simply 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. The hard set of her mouth softens, and he brushes a thumb along her cheekbone, once. “You good?” he murmurs.

“Now that you’re back,” she says, and squeezes his fingers before letting go. Then they both look to Ruby. Lily draws one quiet breath and lets it out, composure sliding back into place.

“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 when I first saw her hasn’t gone. It’s quieter now, like a whisper. Maybe it's only recognition; the kind that passes between fighters who've carried too much for too long.

The blanket by her shoulder loosens with her slow breathing. I tuck it back in, careful of the bandage, and step back to my corner. 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.