My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 409

Nadia

A long, vertical callus ran up my palm, the skin raised and thickened from holding a pen for hours on end. I stared at it, tracing the lines with my thumb, marveling at the way the crescent moon of my cuticle had grown out to meet it. It was an old habit, this fixation on minute details, and not the first time I'd lost myself in it. Mama called it distraction, Daddy called it a coping mechanism. I called it my sanity.

"You should have gone with them," he said.

I glanced up reflexively, the sound of his voice cracking the spell. He stood as he ever did, rigid and straight, his hands clasped loosely in front of him. A thin line of blood had dried at the corner of his mouth. He didn't seem to notice it was still there.

I sighed and turned to face him fully, taking in the haggard lines on his face, the tightness in his shoulders. He fell silent under my gaze, his eyes betraying none of what swirled beneath that impassive surface. I knew better than to take his lack of reaction for indifference, but still.

"I can't leave you alone," I said eventually, my voice barely above a whisper. When he didn't respond, I shrugged and looked away.

Father's face fell into solemn lines, his lips flattening. He let out a slow breath and shook his head. "You should have gone with them. You should have listened and let me sort things out here."

I tilted my head, studying him. "Sort things... how?" I asked, genuinely baffled. "What does my presence have to do with anything?"

The sigh that left him was long and heavy, his shoulders slumping under the weight of it. "It's just easier without anyone hovering," he said gruffly.

I watched him for a long moment, listening to the frustration that seeped into his voice like a cold draft, seeing it pull at the corners of his mouth, the way it pinched his eyes. It was the kind of thing that would normally have me biting my lip, blinking back tears, wanting to wrap him in my arms and apologize profusely for everything. The kind of thing that would sting a wife to her very core.

But I wasn't his wife.

So I made a conscious choice to push aside the instinct to react emotionally to his words, and instead looked at the man in front of me with clear eyes. A completely broken man, his shoulders slumped and his face lined with the weight of the world. A man whose marriage was disintegrating, whose household was under deliberate attack, whose wife had just left him, taking his child. A man whose life had fallen apart because his daughter couldn't keep her nose out of the King's affairs, couldn't mind her own damn business.

I shook my head slowly and walked closer to him. "I'm not Mama," I said quietly. "You can actually talk to me, you know."

He cut me off before I could say anything else. "Nadia..." He sighed again, the sound torn from him. "You shouldn't be doing this to yourself. This isn't something you get to worry about, not yet. You're too young."

I cut him off in turn, unable to keep the frustration from my voice. "Why does everyone keep saying that? I'm not a child. I'm the same age as Sera, who's married and a Luna and lives far to the north. Why does everyone treat me like I'm a fragile little thing who would shatter under the weight of information?"

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