My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 259

Jace

The light in her face dropped. She caught it dropping. She leaned in fast to fix it.

"No, no. It's fine. Don't do that. You're here now. That's the part that counts, right? You're here."

"I'm here."

"So eat."

I took another bite to give her the moment back. She watched me take it, and the worry went out of her by degrees, and she settled. I let myself look at her properly for the first time since the foyer, now that her guard had something else to do.

"You grew up so much," I said. "I look at you and I can't find the kid. I keep trying and she's not in there."

"I'm still me." She did a small shrug with one shoulder. "Only bigger."

That got a laugh out of me. A real one.

"Ahh. Ahh, no. Come on. You're not bigger. You're still tiny. Look at you. You're a small woman."

The shrug stopped. Her brows came down.

"What's that supposed to mean."

"It means what I said. You're small. You're a small woman."

"And what's wrong with being a small woman."

I had a forkful halfway up and the smell of it hit me again and I lost the thread entirely.

"Fuck."

When I came back from it she was staring at me, flat, both brows down, waiting.

"Nothing," I said. "There's nothing wrong with it. I only mean — the women up here, the ones I've seen, they tend to carry more on them. More weight to them than your average woman down South. That's all I meant. It's a Northern thing."

"Hm." She turned her chin a few degrees off me. "Well. I'm not like them."

I set the fork down for that one.

"That doesn't make you less of a Northerner, Mina."

She didn't answer. She'd heard it, though. Something at the corner of her eye gave it away, the small loosening there, and she put her hands in her lap and turned partway back toward me, and I picked the fork up and kept eating, because there's a thing you learn about people, which is that they tell you the most when you stop facing them.

She watched me eat. I let her. I could hear her breathing slow back down, and under it the soft sound of her heel coming up off the floor and tapping back down, a small restless rhythm she didn't know she was making, and I ate and let the quiet do the work the words couldn't.

Then it came back to me.

"Oh." I set the fork against the plate. "I got you something."

She came forward off the arm of the couch.

"You did?"

"Stay there."

I reached over the side for my bag and dragged it up onto the cushion. Behind me I could hear her gone fully eager, the heel going faster now, both feet, a little bounce in her where she sat, and I dug through the bag past the wrapped thing meant for her brother and his Luna and found the small one I'd picked up for her at the border market and pulled it out.

It was wrapped. I'd had the trader at the stall wrap it. I turned around and put it in Mina's hands and went straight back to the plate, because I didn't want to watch her open it. I'm not sure why. I wanted to hear it instead.

The paper came off with a soft pop. Then her breath went in sharp.

"Oh my—" Her voice climbed. "This is beautiful."

I smiled down at the food and didn't look up.

"No, it's not that—"

"And I did get something for him. For him and the new Luna both. I just hope they'd want it." I turned a piece over on the plate. "But if you're not comfortable with it, that's fine. Honestly. I'd never want to make you uncomfortable."

She didn't fill the silence this time either.

"I only thought," I said, "since I'm back now, it'd be a nice thing. To know your family a little. Make it real that we're back together. Official."

She looked up at me then. Straight up.

"Back together," she said. "You say it like you're in love with me."

I started something — oh, Mina — and let it go, because the line that came after it was cleaner.

"If I didn't love you, I wouldn't be sitting here with you. Would I."

She didn't answer. She held my eyes and I held hers and I went back to my food, because a man who can keep eating through a thing like that is a man telling the truth, and I knew that, and I kept eating.

"Jace."

"Hm."

"Please don't say what you don't mean."

I had a bite halfway to my mouth.

I held it there. I held it long enough that the fork stopped meaning anything. Then I brought my head up, slow, all the way, and I set the food back down on the plate, and I looked at her looking at me, at the small new scar at the corner of that mouth, at the green flecks in the dark of her eyes that were the only thing left of the kid in the alley, and I let the warm thing sit out front where she could see it and kept the cold thing down where she couldn't.

"Why," I said, "would I ever lie about loving you?"

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