My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 434

Fenris

I sat beside Jace at the fire, both of us wrapped in furs against the cold. The flames crackled and spat embers into the dark. I felt the heat on my cheeks and my back stayed cold, exposed to the night air. The smell of burning wood filled my nose, sharp and acrid.

Jace huddled deeper into his furs, his shoulders nearly drawn up to his ears. My men were scattered about the yard, their laughter and muffled voices carrying on the breeze.

At the entrance to the Alpha keep, Halvard stood talking with another man. Their words were too low to hear, lost beneath the crackle of the fire and the noise of my own men. They did not look like they were planning something. I watched them anyway.

We had been back for hours. Corwin had given us nothing. No word, no name, no direction.

And Halvard had not come to ask. Not once. A man sends you out to fetch a thing, he wants to know what you brought him. This one had let the whole evening go by and had not put the question to me, and here he stood in the open at last, talking to somebody who was not me.

"I don't think I like Halvard," Jace said beside me, his voice pitched just over the fire. "There is something about him. It makes my back tingle."

He glanced at me then, his eyes lit by the flames. "He reminds me of something."

I turned and looked at him properly for the first time. In the firelight his profile was a small man's. Thin nose, sharp chin, the bones of his face close under the skin.

Bringing him out here, I had half expected to carry his weight for him, to watch him struggle in hard country. Southerners were soft. That was the word on them.

It would be too much to say Jace never wavered. But he never complained, not once out loud, and he kept up. There was a strength in that small frame. He would not break easily.

Mina must have seen this, having chosen him as a mate

"What does Halvard remind you of?" I asked.

Jace was quiet a while. Then he nodded slowly.

"A merchant."

I frowned. It was a strange thing to say. "How do you mean?"

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