My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 194

Sera

Council Chambers

The stone corridor felt like a vacuum. I had just walked out on Mina, and the silence she left behind was loud. I could still feel the phantom weight of her hands in my hair, the way she’d tightened the last braid of the "crown" she’d built for me.

She didn’t even look at me when I left. She hadn't said a word. The vacuum wasn't just in the air; it was in my chest. To save Fenris, to keep this mountain from collapsing into a pile of blood. I’d successfully butchered the only thing that made me feel like a person instead of a convenient piece.

I took a breath, and immediately cought Fenris’s scent. Amidst the scent of the other wolves, I could his own distinct scent.

It smelled like raw iron and that spicy, dark musk that always made my pussy pulse. It was my only armor. I reached up, my fingers grazing the fresh, stinging mark on my neck. Fenris had marked me, sealing our bond. I wasn't just Sera anymore. I was the Volkov Luna.

The heavy oak doors of the Alpha’s den loomed ahead. Two guards stood there, their armor caked in the grey slush of the yard. When they saw me, they pounded their fists against their breastplates and stepped aside.

That was new. In the past it was just a nod. Now I was getting a full Luna treatment. In the past, as Kane’s side piece, all I dreamt of was finally being something that mattered to him. But for the first time, this mattered to me.

I stepped into the chamber.

The room was thick with heat and the smell of old leather and burning mountain-peat. Fenris was behind the desk, his massive frame dwarfing the high-backed chair. He looked up, his grey eyes locking onto mine with a look that felt like a physical touch. He looked exhausted, the black ash still smeared across his jaw, but the hunger in his pupils was wide and dark.

Chief Vane sat to his left, his scarred face looking like a piece of dried meat. And then there was Bram, sitting in Kael’s seat.

I felt a sharp spike of adrenaline. I immediately looked at Bram’s neck. The scent-blocker paste—that foul mixture of ash, blood, and rendered fat—was holding. From two feet away, he smelled like Kael. He looked like Kael. But the fact that I knew he wasn’t Kael, that was a problem.

I saw Vane’s eyes flick down to Bram’s legs, then back up to his face. The old wolf’s nostrils flared. And then he looked away.

Chief Vane and Elder Thorne stood up.

Vane’s eyes narrowed. "You usually complain about the draft in this room for twenty minutes before we even sit down, Kael. You suddenly like the wind?"

"I'm tired, Vane," Bram snapped, a hint of the guard’s irritation bleeding through. "Don't poke at me."

I leaned forward. "He’s tired because he spent the morning ensuring the Valdris gold was moved to the blacksmiths to be melted for arrowheads," I said, using the rejection of my father's dowry as a shield. "It’s heavy work, even for an elder."

Vane looked at me. The disdain in his eyes was a physical weight. "The southern gold you threw away. A bold move for a girl who arrived here with frozen feet."

I could only wonder how that news got out.

"I arrived here with nothing," I corrected him, looking him dead in the eye. "And I’m currently sitting at the High Table while the men who brought that gold are bleeding in the infirmary. Do you want to discuss my feet, or do you want to sign the papers?"

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