My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 426

Sera

Mina froze. I frowned. She sighed. "Jace."

I stared at her, my mind grasping for purchase. "What do you mean, Jace?"

Mina swallowed. "I can still reach him on that thing sometimes. Even out there. It's weak and it comes and goes, but it works enough."

"How long have you had it?"

"He gave it to me," she blurted, the words out before she could stop them. "Years ago. We were kids."

My brow knit. "When you were little?" I said slowly. "I thought you two met at the border market a year ago."

"We did." She was already talking over herself, hands moving. "We did meet there, Sera, that part is true, I'm not lying about that, it was the market, it was the same market, I just meant that before that we, it isn't..."

She ran out.

I held her gaze. "But as a kid?"

Mina opened her mouth. Closed it again. Her shoulders came down.

"Please don't tell my brother," she whispered. "I beg you."

I stared at her. Jace had known Mina when she was a small child. And he had stood in front of Fenris and me both and lied about it to our faces.

"How long ago was this?" My voice went stern.

Mina's throat bobbed. "Ten years."

I froze.

"Fenris would never allow it." She was filling the silence fast now, both hands twisting in her lap. "If he knew it had been that long, my brother would never let me be with Jace. Not ever. You know he wouldn't."

"Of course he wouldn't!" It came out of me harder than I meant it. "Mina, listen to what you're telling me. If Fenris found out, he'd be right to react. That's not him being unfair. That's him being sane."

She flinched.

I got air into my lungs. "Mina. Is he taking advantage of you?"

She went still. Then her eyes came up, and there was nothing soft in them at all.

"What kind of question is that?"

"It's the only question."

"You really think that." Her voice was climbing. "You really think he would do that to me."

"I don't know."

"Well I do." She was on her feet now, moving, three steps one way and three steps back. "I know him. And you know me, don't you? What makes you think I would ever let someone do that to me?"

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