My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 509

Sera

Mina cringed and dug her fingers into my arm. "I can't watch this. It's too much," she muttered. "Taya's face out there, beaten and broken... I keep seeing her on that bloody floor."

I had to make her stand fast. "Many eyes are on us today, for this," I said, as evenly as I could. "We must be seen at this pyre."

"I know. It just ..." Mina shuddered, her free hand pressed to her stomach.

Amara stirred at my back. I reached for her hand and felt her fingers squeeze mine.

The yard was filling with faces, all turned toward the pyre. Fire would send Taya to the Moon Goddess in a few moments now.

"Quite the turnout," Vidar Sarn said, coming up on my right side. "My niece was well known here."

"She was known," I said.

"Alpha." His son who happened to be his beta appeared at his shoulder. "Kael's absence..."

"Quiet, boy," Vidar said sharply.

Gunnar fell silent, but his glare at me was venomous. I turned my face away from it.

The crowd hushed as Taya was carried out. Vane walked beside the bier, his eyes never leaving her. They laid her on the pyre, her body wrapped from head to foot in linen, her face hidden.

Vane came to stand beside me. I felt the eyes of the crowd on us both.

"The first time I saw her, she could barely walk," Vane said in his low, plain voice. "She caught a stick in her fist and tried to hit me with it."

I nodded, once. "She never backed down."

Vane grunted. "That's true. She'd swing her fists at any fool who crossed her."

I was one of her fools she'd always swing at.

A man stepped forward, holding aloft a burning torch. He brought it to Vidar. The torch flames danced in the gloom of the yard.

"It falls to you, as her blood," the man said.

Vidar held it a moment, then crossed the yard to Rurik. I heard him when he reached the younger man. "It should be you, boy."

Rurik gave a strangled sound. "Can't. You know I can't."

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