My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 332

Sera

“Yeah…I see that.” But I didn't dare take my eyes off it for one second.

I did remember. A week ago, more. The day he and Yvara had shown the Northern rogues. Moments before I had planned the rogue attack on my mother and Torin. The rogues were the reason Torin was floating in liquid half his body already gone.

I slowly walked towards it, my hand out in front of me, palm down, low, so it could see the whole of it coming and decide for itself what to do about it.

It pushed its head up into my palm before I'd finished reaching, and the fear went out of me all at once, replaced by something I liked even less because I understood it even less.

Warmth. Recognition, running both directions. I ran my hand back over the ridge of its skull, down the thick fur at the neck, and it made a low sound with no threat anywhere in it.

"Sit," I said.

It looked up at me, I counted three seconds, and it went down its butt hitting the ground.

"She's bonded to you." Fenris had come up behind me.

"Bonded."

"From the kennel. That day." To him this needed no explaining at all, and it showed in how flatly he said it. "It's not small. She won't wander from you. Won't turn on you either."

"It’s still a rogue, Fenris. Look at her."

"Put her in a room with a hundred armed men and tell her to hold the door. She holds it till she's dead or they are." His voice stayed even, unimpressed with his own fact. "There's no version where she picks herself over you. That's what bonded means."

"I can't keep a wolf at my side, Fenris." I was still moving my hand over its head. It leaned into me. "People would talk. I can't take a rogue to a chamber meeting."

“Since when do you care what people think about you? It's a she."

"What?"

"You keep saying it. She's a she." He crouched, the leather creaking, bringing his eyes level with mine over the animal's back. "And that's what the last part's for."

He turned to Yvara. Yvara stepped in and held out her hand, in it was a small glass vial, stoppered, the liquid inside a pale clouded blue that caught the torchlight and held it.

"What is that?"

"For her," Fenris said. "You feed it to her."

"Hell no."

He laughed, genuinely amused. "It won't hurt her, neither would it hurt you. Take it."

“I’m more worried about myself here.”

“Seraphina.”

“Fuck.” How dare he.

I took it. Lighter than its size promised, cool in my palm. I knelt in the straw in front of the rogue, who tracked me with an attention that did not blink, and I worked the little stopper out with my thumb.

I could see a naked woman lying in the straw where the rogue had been chained a minute before, and I stood there not sure how to react, not sure it was even real. I could be dreaming.

"What —" My voice came out with nothing behind it. "This is not happening."

Fenris crouched and pulled a horse blanket down off the stall rail and laid it over the woman's shoulders, easy, unbothered, a man who had plainly done this exact thing before.

“How is this possible?"

He didn’t answer that.

"Now she stays at your side and no one blinks at it," he said, standing. "She goes where you go and she guards you the same as Yvara guards me."

At first it didn’t make any sense.

I turned to Yvara.

She was watching me. Steady. Waiting for it, I think, the wait of a person who has known a thing was coming a long time.

"You're a rogue," I said. "You. You're a rogue."

Yvara held my eyes, and said nothing.

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