My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 8

Sera

Night fell fast, and with it, the temperature plummeted. We had three fires going, but the heat didn't seem to travel more than six inches past the flames. I sat on a log by the middle fire, pulling the wagon fur around my shoulders, shivering so hard my teeth were literally clicking together.

A shadow fell over me. A second fur, heavier and smelling strongly of woodsmoke, dropped onto my shoulders.

I looked up, expecting Fenris. It was the two-fingered warrior again.

"Alpha says you're cold," he muttered.

I looked across the camp. Fenris was at the far fire, his back to me. He was hunched over, talking to a group of his men, gesturing toward a map spread out on a crate. He hadn't even looked my way.

"Tell your Alpha," I said, my voice shaking with cold and sudden, sharp irritation, "that if he's so concerned about my temperature, he could try talking to me himself."

The warrior stared at me for a long beat. He looked like he was weighing whether or not I was worth the effort of an explanation.

"I wouldn't tell him that," he said quietly.

"Why not?"

"Because he'd probably come over here." The warrior shook his head, a grim set to his mouth. "And whatever you're imagining that conversation looks like? It doesn't look like that."

He left me there. I pulled the second fur tight. It was warm—unnaturally warm—and it carried that same scent from the cabin. Him.

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was he going to beat me? Fuck me? I stared at the fire, trying to reconcile the man who was "gentle" with horses with the "barbarian" my father had sold me to.

Later, the camp went quiet. The warriors rolled into their bedrolls, the only sound the popping of the dying embers. I was drifting, caught in that hazy space between awake and asleep, when I heard it.

A voice. Low. Rumbling.

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