My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 452

Lyra

Aldous's face dropped as he understood what he had done.

"Forgive me." He bowed slightly, to her, not to me. "I had assumed. I had assumed you would have told them. I did not mean to overstep."

"Oh, no." Nadia waved a hand. "It's quite all right. You didn't do anything wrong."

Her voice came out light and easy and there was something underneath it pulled tight as wire.

"Nadia." I stepped closer to her. "What is it?"

She shook her head, forcing a smile, and I looked at her properly, really looked at her for the first time all night.

Her eyes were glassy and shining. Her face was pale under what was left of her makeup. Her shoulders were hunched and she was holding herself tight, arms in close, like she might come apart if she let go of her own body.

And all around her, it was there, this heavy, obvious grief that I had not seen, that I had overlooked all day.

I went back through it. The way she had come through my front door that morning with her face drawn and grey. The way she had sat at breakfast and pushed food around a plate. The way she had been the one to suggest we start drinking, before noon, which she had never once done in all the time I had known her.

I had known something was wrong. I had known it from the moment she walked in. And I had been too far gone to look at her properly, too far gone to ask her a single real question about it, too far gone to do anything at all except pour her another one and let her drink it.

The cold went through my skin and into my bones, and the world sharpened around her like a lens turning. The haze came off me all at once. My breath caught somewhere in my throat and stayed there.

I stepped toward her and reached for her arm. "What's wrong? What did he mean?"

Nadia stepped back. She laughed, and the sound came out brittle and hard. "Nothing. I told you. It's nothing."

Her eyes went to mine and away again before I could catch anything in them.

I frowned and let my hand fall. I did not ask Aldous what he had meant. I already knew, and she was not going to give it to me, and asking him in front of her would have been a thing done to her rather than for her.

Aldous cleared his throat. His eyes went across the grounds like he was looking for a way out of his own mouth.

"I went back to the house," he said. "To check. I did not believe you when you told me, you see. I am ashamed of that now."

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