My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 443

Mina

The hall was a circus. A sweaty, noisy, fucked up circus. Crowd every senior wolf in Ironmaw into one room, put a fire at both ends of it, and call it hospitality. I knew exactly whose idea that had been, and I hoped she was choking on it up there.

I'd had a few drinks, which was just about enough to dull the edge of my loathing for the place.

I had to wear a dress tonight, because apparently real ladies wore dresses to real ladies' dinners. That was what one of the senior servant women told me while she laced me into it this afternoon. I told her I'd rather stab my eyes out with a spoon, and she just smiled and patted my shoulder and kept right on lacing.

Her eyes had been kind enough, but still. You get tired of people being kind to you after a while. Especially when they think you don't notice how much they feel sorry for you.

Somebody near the hearth laughed like a door coming off its hinges. The smell in here was cooked meat and spilled ale and too many wolves in too little air, and under it the sharp green smell of the rushes going soft underfoot where people had been treading on them for hours.

I scanned the room and found Sera up at the high table, doing the thing she does where she looks like she is enjoying herself.

Right. Fine.

I pushed through the crush towards the other end of the hall, avoiding eye contact, because there is nothing worse than catching the eye of a drunk wolf who has decided he wants to tell you something.

Vane was where he'd been all night, at the long table on the left, listening to one of the old men from the eastern holdings say something that clearly wasn't worth the breath. He looked up when I stopped beside him.

"Ah, Mina." He put down his cup. His eyes creased at the corners. "It is good to see you. Are you enjoying it?"

"It's all right, I suppose. Not my favourite."

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