My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 455

Vidar

I took a breath and looked around the hall. These were the wolves of the North, bred as weapons, forged to fight the enemy of our blood. Now they were broken. Now they were refugees eating my winter stores.

And I did the sum again and the answer was the same as it had always been.

The only thing that worked was the Butcher. The only thing that had ever worked.

And it sat in Ironmaw.

For years I wrote to Kael. Twenty-three letters, by my count. In them I argued that the boy holding Ironmaw's seat was unfit to bear its weight and that it had never been intended for him. That House Kael has standing on that council and ought to use it. That he should move with me.

Every raven came back empty.

Kael never answered. Not once, in all those years.

Toward the end my letters had got shorter. I noticed it happening while I wrote them. Asking for less and less until I was barely asking for anything, until I was only writing to a man who did not write back, and then I stopped that too.

I unclenched my hands and let the fire warm them and pushed it all back down where it lived.

Force was the obvious answer and I had thrown it out years ago. Nobody fights the Butcher and wins. And even if a man could, he would be breaking the only thing in the world that works. You do not put a hammer through the one blade that cuts.

So I would not take the weapon.

I would take the ground it stood on.

I would go to Ironmaw as family. Kael's own brother, arriving at his own brother's house. House Kael owned the iron trade and the eastern hunting rights. The elders of Ironmaw followed that money, and when House Kael signed something, the others fell in line. If House Kael fell, the spine of the pack snapped.

And I am Kael's older brother. I have a claim on that house.

I sent for Gunnar and he came in from the yard with his hair wind-whipped and his cheeks raw from the cold.

"Shut the door," I said. He did, and waited.

"Gather a party. Twenty men. No more."

His eyebrows climbed. "Twenty?" He shook his head. "If you mean to ride into Ironmaw you'll want a full war band at your back."

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