My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 115

Irina

"Are you going to keep staring out that frosted glass, or are you going to tell me how you're holding up?"

I asked the question to his back. I didn't wait for an answer before I pushed the heavy iron latch on the door. It slid into place with a sharp, definitive click that echoed in the quiet room.

Torin didn't turn around. He kept his hands braced flat against the stone sill, his broad shoulders locked in a rigid line under his linen shirt. He was looking out at the snow-choked courtyard of the Ironmaw keep, but I knew he wasn’t seeing the guards or the drifting flakes. He was just breathing. Short, shallow pulls of air through his mouth that made his back rise and fall unevenly.

"I'm fine, Irina," he said.

His voice was entirely hollow. It lacked that insufferable, polished southern arrogance he usually carried around Valdris like a shield.

"You don't look fine," I said, stepping away from the door and moving slowly toward the center of the room.

The guest quarters smelled like stale woodsmoke, old leather, and the heavy, musky, sharp residue of the seven times we had already fucked since dawn. It was a suffocating scent, but right now, it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. It was stoking the fire in my blood. I walked past the heavy oak table and sat down on the edge of the large, fur-draped bed.

I didn't sit with the straight-backed posture expected of the Queen of Valdris. I let my knees fall open slightly, the thin silk of my dress riding up my thighs. The air in the room was freezing, biting at my exposed skin, but a low, relentless vibration was already buzzing right under my skin. It was that familiar, gnawing ache. It settled deep in my pelvis, a heavy weight that demanded friction.

I needed him inside me again. Not because I loved him. Not because he was even particularly skilled at this point. Simply because he was here. He was a body. A heavy weight to press me down into the mattress and quiet the relentless, buzzing noise in my head for a few minutes.

Torin knew exactly why I had locked the door. He was a wolf. He could smell the sudden spike in my arousal, the slick, metallic tang of it cutting right through the smell of the smoke. But he didn't move. He kept his back to me, stubbornly, deliberately ignoring the invitation.

"Your face looks perfect," I noted, letting a faint edge of boredom bleed into my tone.

His shoulders flinched. He finally turned around to look at me.

His face was entirely smooth. The werewolf healing factor had done its job hours ago. Whatever brutal damage Sera had done down in the Great Hall—the shattered cartilage, the bruised orbital bones, the split skin—it was all gone. Not even a faint pink line remained on his nose. He looked exactly like the handsome, meticulously groomed Lord he was back in the south.

But his eyes were humiliated. They were completely defeated.

"My face," Torin said softly, his jaw tightening until the thick muscle ticked visibly under his skin, "is not the issue."

"No?"

"I'm not doing this right now, Irina." He set the iron cup down with a sharp clang that rang in the quiet room. "Do you have any idea how much danger we are in? Do you even comprehend what happened today?"

"I wasn't there, Torin, but I can smell the blood you had to wash out of your hair," I said smoothly. "Sera hit you. You bled. You healed. Now you're sulking because a girl put you in the dirt in front of a bunch of northern barbarians. It's an ego bruise. Get over it."

"She didn't just hit me!"

His voice cracked like a whip, the volume suddenly filling the room. The trigger had finally been pulled. The humiliation he had been swallowing for hours boiled over, turning his face a dark, mottled red.

"She humiliated the entire Valdris delegation!" Torin yelled, taking a step toward the center of the room. "She assaulted me, a ranking southern Lord, in front of the entire Ironmaw leadership, and Fenris did absolutely nothing. Instead he supported her!"

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