My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 175

Kane

"I still wonder why you let her go."

He didn't look at me. He was staring at the red flag in the weeds.

I felt like he’d just shoved a needle into my ear. "What the hell has that got to do with the subject on the ground?"

"If Sera were to be—"

"I already told you never to bring her name up!" I shouted, my voice cracking. "What is wrong with you?"

Jace shook his head, his red hair catching the light. He continued anyway, his voice flat and hard. "If you hadn't been an idiot to think you could keep a woman like that while you got another one pregnant, Blackwater would not be at the mercy of a pack that wants to run us into the ground."

I went quiet. I couldn't breathe. Jace was putting salt in the wound, just like he always did. He didn't care that I was the Alpha. He didn't care that I was bleeding internally. He just wanted me to see the mistake I’d made.

Because the truth was, everything was falling apart.

While I was playing "Duty" and "Alpha" in the office, the world had moved on. Sera was gone. She was likely dead. No Omega could survive a rejection like that with nothing but the clothes on her back. I was the reason she’d had a good life, without me, she was just a stray. Yet she left me.

And while I was moping, the Eastern border was rotting.

I’d been trying to handle a treaty with a pack down East—the Mistwood Pack. They were massive. Way bigger than Blackwater. We needed them because of the "black beasts"—rogue, feral wolves that were pouring in from the deep forests on their end. They were strong, too strong for our younger warriors to handle alone. We’d had to close the trade points, even the schools, just to seal off the area.

I thought I could negotiate. I thought I could fix it.

Jace had come back a week after Sera left.

"She doomed us all," Jace said.

He turned and started walking toward the bag of clubs, his shadow long and dark against the grass.

I stood in the center of the field, the ball lost in the weeds, the red flag mocking me in the wind. I was the Alpha. I had made the "right" choice for the pack. I had chosen the heir over the mate. I had chosen stability over the girl who started it all with me.

And in the silence of my own head, I realized that I had just handed the keys of my kingdom to a woman who had sold the door.

Sera was gone. She was probably a memory in a shallow grave somewhere. And I was standing in a damp field, holding an iron club, while my pack began to bleed.

"I got you," I whispered to the empty air, mimicking the words I should have said to her.

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