My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 125

Sera

That wasn't true, I thought immediately. I remembered the brutal training sessions in the dirt. I remembered Yvara breaking my nose and telling me to force the blood to clot. You just have to force it. It hurts, but you have the power.

"Fenris got the healer to set my arm," Mina continued. "And right after that, he carried me to my room. I fought him the entire way. I hit him again and again, even with the bad arm. But the one thing Fenris didn't do was let me go. He held me tight against his chest until we got to my bed."

She looked down at her hands. "In my entire life, I never would have thought Fenris would be the one doing that. Dimitri was the social one. It could have been him. But it was the Butcher. The one who looked exactly like the Luna."

"He was barely ever around," she explained softly. "He was always away on border raids. So I barely knew him. I only feared him. But that day, he seemed entirely different."

"He bathed me that night," Mina said, her voice trembling. "Even though I fought him like a wild animal. He washed the blood off my clothes and put me in bed. He actually tied me to the heavy bedposts with leather straps." Mina let out a wet laugh. "He tied me down to keep me in place so I wouldn't thrash and break my arm again. And while he sat there in the dark, all he kept saying was that he was sorry. He kept telling me I didn't have to go through this. That he understood."

Mina paused. She looked at me, a fresh tear rolling down her cheek and dropping onto her bare breast.

"He kept saying it until the words finally stuck in my head," she whispered. "I am sorry, Mina. You didn't have to go through this. I understand."

"He said those exact words for days. I eventually couldn't cry anymore. My body just ran out of tears. He bathed me every single night for close to a week. He stopped talking after I finally calmed down. He just took care of me like I was made of glass and was going to shatter."

Mina offered a weak, watery smile. "So, yes. Last night wasn't the first time Fenris had seen me naked or bathed me. If anything, the hot spring just reminded me of exactly how my brother and I became close."

She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "But soon after that, Fenris left again on the Alpha's orders. Back to the war."

"And I was alone again," she stated. "Dimitri came to check on me occasionally, but he never stayed long because King Viktor needed him at the throne. So it was really just Fenris who anchored me."

She looked back at the stone wall. "When Fenris left, it made it incredibly difficult to hate him. I wanted to hate him because he looked exactly like his mother."

"The same mother that killed my mother," Mina said flatly.

I froze completely. The air stalled in my lungs. "Mina... that can't be true."

Mina looked up at me. The smile on her face was so profoundly sad it physically hurt my chest to look at it.

She exhaled a long, deep breath and slapped her thighs, finalizing the conversation.

"Anyway," Mina said, her voice suddenly bright and completely detached. "Today's your day, Sera. Let's get you ready for the Blood Vows."

I sat there, paralyzed, watching her stand up from the bed. This was the saddest, most brutal thing I had ever heard in my entire life, and she was just walking away from it.

"Mina..." I called out, my voice cracking.

Mina didn't answer me. She didn't look back. She just walked naked across the cold floor and disappeared into the bathing chamber.

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