My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 213

Sera

"Yes you did.”

"It was — Fenris, the guards were fine. The guards were the ones I already made my peace with. They were the cost. Six men. Five guards and Torin's driver. I said the names. I sat with the names. I did not eat for a day."

"I know."

"Torin was not on the list."

"I know."

"He was supposed to come back. He was supposed to come back and sit in a back room until we were done with Bram, and then we were going to send him south on a wagon with his teeth pulled and a story he could not remember the parts of. A story nobody would chase. He was supposed to live. He was —" I had to stop. "He was supposed to be useful."

"Sera,” Fenris called.

I put my forehead against his shoulder.

He let me. He laid his hand on the back of my neck and he did not move it. He did not pat. He did not stroke. He left it where it was and he let it be heavy.

"Take me out of here," I said into his coat.

"Yes."

He turned me toward the door. We made it three steps before Yvara's voice came from behind us.

"Luna."

I stopped. I turned.

Yvara was still holding Torin upright. Her wrist was still steady. Torin's eye was still moving.

"What."

"Kark made the southern border last night. He's at the south crossing now. He'll be in Valdris in two days."

I had asked for that. I had asked for it days ago, when the plan was being put together, when I had told Yvara I needed someone in the south who could keep an eye on my mother and quietly move on my mother if my mother decided to be clever. Kark had been the obvious choice. Kark had a hold my mother could not shake. Kark would walk into that keep and my mother would let him into the bed she shared with her husband.

"Good."

"Mhm." Yvara's mouth moved into something that was almost a smile. "Your queen mother will have her boyfriend to keep her company."

"Yvara."

"What. The girl is upset. I am giving her something to look forward to."

I did not answer. I did not have the energy to answer. Yvara was getting on my nerves, but Yvara was the reason any of this was working, and those two facts had to live in the same room. Yvara could have her dig.

I let it sit.

The corridor opened onto a stone landing in front of a heavy iron gate. Cattle-pen iron, four bars wide, set into the masonry. Beyond the bars was dark. The grease lamps were only on our side.

Yvara stopped at the gate.

"Stand back from it."

I stood back.

She put a hand through the bars and made a sound in her throat I had never heard her make. Half a click, half a rasp, on a count.

Something in the dark moved.

I did not see what at first. I saw the dark shift. I saw the air in front of the gate change density. There was a wet, heavy sound — a body redistributing its weight on stone. A breath I could hear from twelve feet back. And then the shape came forward into the lamplight.

It was a wolf.

That was what made it hard. It was a wolf. The shape was a wolf shape. The head was a wolf head. The teeth were where teeth went. The eyes were where eyes went. The fur was thick at the ruff and shorter down the spine. A wolf.

But the wolf was bigger than a wolf had any right to be.

The head was wider than my chest. The jaw was longer than my forearm — knuckles to elbow. When it stepped fully into the lamplight, the shoulder was higher than my chin. I had to tilt my head to see the eye. I had grown up watching the great northern stock my father imported every winter for his hunting parties, the ones that took six men to dress out and a long table to lay flat. Those wolves would have stood under this one's belly without having to duck.

* * *