My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 117

Irina

"Irina."

Torin's voice snapped me back to the physical room. The smell of the cellar vanished, replaced by the stale sweat and woodsmoke. He was staring at me, his expression a mix of irritation and exhaustion.

I blinked, slowly pulling myself back to the present. "Are you going down for the feast?" I asked him, keeping my voice perfectly level.

Torin scoffed, a bitter, ugly sound. "No. I told you. I'm not going. Fenris made his threats very clear."

I stared at him for a long moment. Then, I looked away. I shook my head slowly.

"Since you aren't going down, I don't really want to either," I said simply. "I am absolutely sure my daughter wouldn't want me there anyway. And they are all just a bunch of animals down there regardless."

Torin inhaled deeply, then exhaled, his chest rising and falling heavily. He looked completely broken. Defeated.

I shifted my weight again. The heat in my pelvis wasn't going away. It was getting worse. A demanding, aggressive itch radiated outward, making my skin feel entirely too tight for my body. I looked at Torin standing by the table. For some reason, the sight of him wasn't doing a single thing for me anymore. He was too familiar. Too careful. Too easily broken.

I wanted something violent. My mind wandered unbidden to the Ironmaw guards I had seen in the courtyard earlier that day. Huge, towering men. Thick necks, heavy, calloused hands, and broad, brutal shoulders. Men who smelled like pine and raw aggression. Men who looked like they could easily pin me to the floor and fuck me until I was too exhausted to even remember my own name. I needed that weight. I needed that sheer, unbridled, animal force driving into me, splitting me open.

Aldric didn't have the time to be with me. To him, I was just a placeholder. The "Queen." A political fixture to sit next to him and smile for the southern courts. He never looked at me like I mattered, like he wanted to consume me. But Aldric never fucked outside our marriage bed either. If he did, the mating bond would have told me. I would have felt the empathic bleed of another woman.

But I did. I fucked outside the marriage constantly. I took guards, lords, servants—anyone who could scratch the itch for a few hours. And Aldric would never find out. The bond would never betray me, because I was a witch. I could mask my scent, sever the empathic bleed, and hide my filthy betrayals in plain sight.

Torin was just a tool I could manage. But now... thinking about the cellar, thinking about the dark magic that now tied me to my daughter. Whether or not Sera had caught me with Torin, Sera owed me. I had provided the magic to save their lives. Sera's power was growing rapidly here in the North. If I played this right, I could get actual protection from these barbarians through my daughter.

And maybe, just maybe, I could get a clean one. A massive northern warrior who would scratch this crazy itch exactly the way I wanted, as hard as I wanted.

"Irina." Torin called my name again, his voice pulling me out of the dark fantasy.

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