My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 354

Sera

I couldn't keep up with what Mina was saying. I was locked on the woman. The way she was staring at me. The way she sniffed and then turned around, I even got a flash of her ass, and she turned back to me looking eagerly.

She looked purely happy to see me, and I couldn't look away.

The bond swelled in my head, a strange pressure against my temples. A pull, magnetic and relentless, like I was a compass and the thing in the cage the lodestone.

I felt it everywhere, and I felt it nowhere. It was intimate and invasive, the way the bond with Fenris was intimate and invasive. It was also obscene – not in its force, because that I understood, but in its aim. It wanted it. It needed. It hungered, and it hungered for me, and the thought made me sick. I recoiled and I shoved the feeling down.

I pushed it to a corner of my mind and walled it off, because otherwise I would have gone mad. I told myself I was sane. I was Luna of Ironmaw, and I would not let a monster make me its lunatic.

The bond swelled in my head, a strange pressure against my temples. A pull, magnetic and relentless, like I was a compass and the thing in the cage the lodestone.

I felt it everywhere and I felt it nowhere. It was intimate, invasive, the way the bond with Fenris was intimate and invasive. It was also obscene - not in its force, because that I understood, but in its aim. It wanted. It needed. It hungered, and it hungered for me, and the thought made me sick. I recoiled and I shoved the feeling down.

I pushed it to a corner of my mind and walled it off, because otherwise I would have gone mad. I told myself I was sane. I was Luna of Ironmaw and I would not let a monster make me its lunatic.

"I'm talking to you," Mina said, snapping at me.

I pulled back, startled. I'd forgotten Mina was still standing beside me. The storeroom smelled like blood, and my eyes were fixed on the woman in the cage.

It took me a moment to remember what Mina had said. "What do you want me to say?" I said finally, looking at her. "I already told you what it is."

"What it is," Mina repeated. Then sighed. "Let's assume I don't believe you. Tell me what it is."

"It's looking at you because it's looking at a person." She crossed her arms. "I don't know what to make of this story, but you're asking me to believe a lot without any proof."

I shook my head, helpless. "I know how it sounds," I said. "Mina, look at it."

She looked. The way it behaved – the way an adult woman was moving around on all fours. I saw the look in Mina's eyes. She could see the truth, but it was just more convenient to see me as a lunatic.

"Does that look normal to you?"

Mina didn't say anything else, and the silence stretched between us. We both stared at the cage and the woman inside it. She was still now, staring at me, waiting for me to come close.

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