My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 127

Sera

I looked at the old woman. I hadn't even married the Alpha yet, and I had already killed for him. I had stood in a freezing, damp cellar, my hands covered in an elder's blood, covering up a murder to protect Fenris's political standing.

Was this old woman aware of that? Was she aware of the fact that if it came down to it, I was fully willing to pile up more bodies to make sure this man stayed alive and on his throne?

I let out a short, sharp scoff. I shook my head.

The woman looked at me, her eyes narrowing as she tried to read my face. Then, she looked over at Mina, who was still complaining about the cargo wagon.

"She's right," I said to Mina.

Mina started to argue again, her face flushing red. "Don’t listen to—"

"But she's right, Mina," I interrupted. My voice was completely steady. The nausea was entirely gone.

I reached down, grabbed the heavy, midnight fabric of my skirt, and pulled it aside, completely exposing my bare thighs. I walked over to a small wooden stool near the hearth and sat down, crossing my long legs.

I looked up at the old woman.

"I don't know if you are aware," I told her, my tone flat and direct, "but my father desperately needs this marriage to work. If it fails, he loses his northern alliance."

I let out a dry laugh. "Running away from this keep isn't going to help my case. Because King Aldric would find me wherever I go on this earth. And he wouldn't bring me back nicely. My father is a very, very bad wolf."

I shook my head, dismissing the entire idea of the cargo wagon. "So, I can't run. Let's be done with this and leave, please."

Mina looked at the woman, her chest heaving. "See? I told you. You shouldn't listen to whatever she says, Sera. No one is going to hunt you here."

I looked at Mina. She was standing there, her chin jutted out, trying to sound brave. At the end of the day, Mina was just a child. Her brutal experience with her mother's death had forced her to mature much faster than she should have, but she was still naive.

After everything she had told me this morning, sitting on the bed and crying about the Luna's betrayal, I felt a sudden, fierce urge to protect her. If I ran away on that cargo wagon, who would protect Mina? Taya? The elders? Fenris wouldn’t always be there. She would be completely alone.

The sound of the courtyard hit me in a wave. It wasn't cheering. It was the sound of five thousand wolves breathing in the freezing air. The low, collective hum of their bodies, the shifting of boots in the deep snow.

I walked forward, blindly following the guard's pace. The snow crunched loudly beneath my boots. The freezing wind whipped across the courtyard, catching the massive slits of my dress and blowing the fabric entirely back, exposing my bare legs to the hips for the entire pack to see. I didn't try to cover myself. I kept my head high, looking straight through the dark veil at the blurry, massive shape standing in the center of the yard.

I reached the stone altar. The guards stopped and stepped away.

I stood completely still.

Large, calloused hands reached out and gripped the edges of the dark veil. With a slow, deliberate pull, Fenris lifted the mesh off my head and tossed it onto the snow.

The harsh, flat grey light of the northern morning blinded me for a second. When my eyes adjusted, my breath caught in my throat.

Fenris was standing directly in front of me, completely shirtless in the freezing cold. His broad, heavily scarred chest radiated an insane amount of heat. Black ash was smeared aggressively across his jawline and his collarbones, making his pale grey eyes look completely feral. He didn't look like a political leader. He looked like a predator that had just been let off a chain.

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