My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 381

Sera

The knock came before any of us had touched the bread.

Not the servants' knock, quick and apologetic. This one was heavier, more certain of itself, and Mina's head came up at the same second mine did.

"Enter," I said.

It was one of the guards from the corridor, not one I recognised, young enough that he kept his eyes down out of habit rather than fear. "Luna. It's Kael, he says he needs to see you now, that he already tried yesterday and you weren't able to."

I felt Mina go still beside me. The rogue, curled against my side with her face still half in the furs, didn't stir, but I noticed the guard's eyes catch on her for half a second before he remembered himself and looked away.

"Send him in," I said.

Mina didn't move to leave. I watched her, wondering how she'd hold up. She'd known for weeks it wasn't really Kael. But she hadn't stood this close to him since I told her, and I didn't know what that would do to her.

Bram came in alone, and shut the door himself behind him without being asked, which told me more than anything he said for the first minute. He looked, for a moment, at the three of us, the fire, the tray, the woman wrapped in furs against my side, and didn't ask about her. Whatever he made of it, he kept it to himself.

"You turned me away yesterday," he said. Not an accusation. Just a fact, laid down between us so we both knew where we stood.

"I know."

"I understand why. But I can't be turned away again, Luna. Not on this."

I straightened, and the rogue's head lifted with me, some faint mirrored motion, and settled again when I put a hand back in her hair. "Say it, then."

Bram's jaw worked once before he spoke. Even in Kael's face, even with Irina's magic holding every line of him steady, I'd learned to read the places where the mask thinned. "The whole keep knows Taya challenged you and you accepted. Three days from now, in the ring."

"That's not news."

"No. But every soul in this keep who heard it is also asking the same question, and they're asking it about me." He said it flat, no drama in it, and the flatness was worse than shouting would have been. "Taya's stubborn. She always has been. And she's not going to stop pushing until she catches up on everything happening right under her nose."

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