My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 113

Taya

"You're going to wear a hole in your face if you keep rubbing it," Rurik said.

He sat across from me, picking at a piece of dried venison. Rurik’s family had served my household since before I was born. We had grown up under the same roof, fetching firewood and skinning hares together. He wasn’t a soldier under my command; he was just Rurik. The closest thing I had to a brother, and the only person in this entire keep who actually knew how much it gutted me to see Fenris looking at someone else.

"I'm feeling the weather," I lied, dropping my hand to the table.

Rurik took a slow drink from his clay mug. "The cold isn't what's bothering you."

"They're loud," I said, tipping my head toward the frosted window. A massive cheer went up from the keep, bleeding through the log walls.

"They're drunk," Rurik corrected, setting his mug down. "Half the camp is down there. You should have gone, Taya. Hiding up here just makes people talk. Makes you look like you're pouting."

"I am pouting," I snapped.

"Well, stop it," he said plainly. "It doesn't change anything. She laid out the Valdris envoy this morning."

My jaw ticked. "I heard."

"Just walked up to him in the corridor and smashed his nose in," Rurik said, shaking his head. "Didn't even blink. The older wolves are eating it up. They’re saying she’s got a northern spine."

"Torin is a powdered Valdris snob," I sneered, picking at the splinters on the table. "He probably cries when it snows. Any girl in this keep could have broken his nose. It doesn't make her a wolf."

"Maybe," Rurik said. "But Fenris liked it. He backed her completely."

I closed my eyes. The image of Fenris standing behind her, claiming her, burned the back of my eyelids. I pushed the thought away before it could make me sick.

"Where's my father?" I asked, opening my eyes.

Rurik looked at the fire. "At the feast. Up on the dais near the Alpha."

I frowned, genuinely confused. "He didn't come to drag me down there? He hates it when I sulk. I figured he'd be up here kicking my door in, telling me to stop acting like a whipped dog."

"Exactly," Rurik nodded. "He said, 'Thank you, Rurik.' Just like that. His voice was flat. He didn't even look at me. And he was sitting with his left leg crossed over his right."

I squinted. "So?"

"He has a bad right knee, Taya," Rurik reminded me. "He caught that southern arrow ten winters ago. He never crosses his left leg over it because the pressure makes the joint lock up. I've washed his laundry for ten years. I know how the man sits."

A cold, uneasy feeling started to creep into the edges of my stomach.

"He's getting old," I said, trying to brush it off. "Maybe he forgot."

"You don't forget chronic pain," Rurik said softly. "He just felt... hollowed out. Distracted. Like his mind was a hundred miles away. And then today, he went into the den and signed the final marriage contracts."

"He did what?" My voice cracked. I sat up straight, the chair legs scraping loudly against the floor.

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