My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 396

Taya

The paper was good. Thick, pale and expensive, the kind of stock you use when you want the man on the other end to know what you can afford. Nothing like the scratch paper my father kept in the top drawer for household accounts.

I didn't recognize the hand at all. It was nothing like my father's cramped, angry scrawl, but upright and even with every letter finished, the writing of a man who had never once been in a hurry when he sat down to write.

I read to the bottom of the first page before I found out who he was.

Vidar Sarn.

Uncle Vidar. My father's brother.

I sat back. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had said that name out loud in this house. There was a summer when I was small and a man's hand had come down toward me, and a laugh I couldn't put a face to anymore, and then nothing after that. He'd gone out of our lives at some point and nobody had ever explained it, and I'd stopped asking somewhere around the age I stopped asking my father for anything.

There were nearly two dozen of them. I checked the dates and started again from the oldest, months back, and read them in order.

Brother,

I've had three separate accounts of your council now and I don't like any of them. The girl is a disaster and I can't understand why you're allowing it. The Butcher has handed himself over to her completely, and your own chiefs are saying so out loud where servants can hear them. If this isn't stopped it won't only be Ironmaw that pays for it. See to it.

I read that one twice. My father had never in his life taken that tone from anyone.

Brother,

You say he won't listen to you. Then stop talking to him and start counting who'd stand behind you if he weren't there to talk to.

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