My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 289

Sera

I'd decided I would say it the second I walked in, before I lost the nerve, but Fenris was at the window with his back to me and the words went to nothing in my mouth.

He had a map unrolled across the table, weighted at the corners with whatever was nearest, a knife, a cup, a stone the size of a fist. He wasn't reading it. He had his eyes on the dark below the keep where the torches marked the training yard, and his shoulders had the set they got when he was somewhere else, somewhere I couldn't follow him into. I'd come up here full of the thing I had to tell him and now I stood in the doorway watching the back of a man who already seemed to be carrying too much, and I thought, not now, do it later, there's never going to be a good time and this is a worse one than most.

But Mina's voice was in my head. He should know. That's all I'm saying. He should know.

"Fenris."

"Mm." He didn't turn.

"I need to talk to you."

That turned him. Something in how I'd said it. His eyes came to me across the room and his attention narrowed onto me, slow and careful, the grey going still, and for one cowardly second I almost reached for a lie. A pack matter. A thing about the chambers. Anything but the true thing.

"Come here," he said.

"I'd rather stand."

He let go of the window and came around the table instead, and that was worse, him crossing the room toward me with that quiet in him, because it meant I had his whole attention and there was nowhere left to put my eyes.

"Say it," he said. Not unkind. He'd learned that about me, that I did better when someone took the long way out of my hands.

So I said it. I'd built a hundred versions of this on the way up and none of them came. What came was the bare thing, flat, fast, before I could dress it.

"I'm pregnant."

He didn't move.

"And it isn't yours. It can't be. The timing's wrong, it's too early, and I shouldn't even be able to, I was barren, Kane threw me out because I was barren, and now I'm—" My voice climbed and I hauled it down. "It's Kane's. The child is Kane's. I've known and I didn't tell you and I should have told you and I didn't, because I was afraid of exactly this, of standing here saying it to your face."

The floor wasn't where I'd left it. I put a hand on the back of the nearest chair.

"Before." I was working it backward, the days, the order of things. "You knew before we took the vows. You stood in front of the whole pack and you took the Blood Vow with me, and you already knew I was carrying Kane's..." I stopped. "You knew, and you did it anyway."

"Yes."

"Why."

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke it came slow, the way the heavy things came out of him.

"The bond carries more than scent. I’m sure you already know that by now." He moved his hand, a small thing, and took it back. "I knew from the moment it became real. I knew it wasn’t mine" He held my eyes. "I had time to decide what to do about it. So I decided."

"You decided." I heard the crack in it. "You decided to marry me anyway. To tie yourself to a woman pregnant with the heir of the man who..." The whole thing was too big to get around. "Why would you do that. Why would anyone do that."

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