My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 448

Sera

The hall was a cacophony of shouting and scraping benches and thumping feet. The stench of blood and sweat hung heavy in the heat. I sat at the high table with my back straight, keeping my breathing even.

The fight on the cleared floor had ended and the crowd was breaking up around it. I took a slice of pork off my plate and bit into it and did not once take my eyes off the churning mass below me. Most of them had stayed to argue over the spilled ale and settle their bets.

Then I saw Mina walking away from Vane's table.

My stomach twisted watching her go. Something was wrong. Her shoulders were up and her head was down and her steps were too fast. She looked like a woman trying not to run.

I swallowed the food down a tight throat.

A few minutes later I caught her again, at the edge of the cleared floor, turning away from a young man.

I had seen him before. Standing at the edge of a crowd somewhere near Taya, once, while she laughed at something with somebody else. I could not have said whose son he was or what house he belonged to. Just a face that had been in the corner of my eye a few times without ever becoming anything.

I could not hear a word of any of it. But I could read the shape of it well enough.

The plan had failed. Mina had been caught.

I had known the odds of that from the start. Vane was no fool. He saw too much and always had.

Worrying about it was pointless now. What mattered was that it went no further than it already had. Vane needed to believe Mina had simply been drunk and overcurious. A small thing. Not worth his notice.

Which meant I had to be perfectly calm, and give nothing away, whatever came next.

I glanced toward Vane.

My heart jolted. He was already looking directly at me, those old eyes fixed on me with the whole of his attention. A slow smile spread across his face.

I felt a bead of sweat go down my spine. I kept my face exactly where it was, polite and mildly interested, and I smiled back at him.

He raised his cup to me. I raised mine to him.

Then he rose from his seat and started toward me.

I read the look on his face at once. He knew. I have seen that look on other men in other rooms and it never means anything else. It said he was perfectly aware of what I had been doing and there was no use in either of us pretending otherwise.

I braced. I was not afraid. I had known going in that the odds of Vane working it out were high. He was too perceptive and too experienced and he always had been.

But it would have been far worse if I had gone to him myself. That was the whole reason I had not. I had taken the risk with Mina instead, and Mina had failed, and now he was coming.

He wove through the crowd with the ease of a much younger man, stopping twice to answer somebody, never once losing the line he was walking toward me.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify