Guarded last of booty after battle (4)
I believe the answer is:
wary
'guarded' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'last of booty after battle' is the wordplay.
'last of' says to take the final letters.
'after' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'battle' becomes 'war' (I've seen this before).
The last letter of 'booty' is 'y'.
'y' after 'war' is 'WARY'.
(Other definitions for wary that I've seen before include "Careful - cautious" , "Distrustful" , "Guarded" , "Cautious, suspicious" , "Displaying caution" .)