My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 146

Torin

The heavy oak door clicked shut, and the sound echoed in the freezing room like the drop of an executioner's blade.

I stood completely frozen in the center of the guest quarters. I stared at the dark wood of the door, waiting for it to open again. I waited for Irina to walk back in, to tell me she was just punishing me, to tell me she actually had a plan to get us out of this frozen hell alive.

The iron latch didn't move. She was gone.

The silence inside the room pressed against my eardrums, but it couldn't drown out the low, violent vibration coming through the floorboards. The Ironmaw drums. They thumped with a relentless, heavy rhythm that made the acid in my stomach push straight up into the back of my throat.

I dropped to my knees on the cold stone floor. My hands shook so violently I couldn't even press my palms flat against the ground. I dry-heaved, coughing up nothing but bitter saliva.

She left me. The Queen of Valdris, the woman I had risked my entire life to bed, had just looked me dead in the eyes and called me dead weight.

I forced myself to stand up. My legs felt like they were made of water. I stumbled over to the heavy wooden wardrobe and threw the doors open. I needed to pack. I needed to leave right now.

Aldric was going to kill me. The King would eventually find out about the affair. Sera already knew, and she would tell him just to watch me hang. Fenris would kill me the second he remembered I was still breathing his air. I was surrounded by feral beasts who wanted to rip my throat out, and the only person holding any leverage had just walked out the door.

I grabbed my leather satchel from the bottom of the wardrobe. My fingers were slick with cold sweat. I fumbled with the brass buckles, my nails scraping uselessly against the stiff leather. I finally ripped the flap open and started throwing things inside.

I wasn't thinking straight. I grabbed my heavy velvet doublet. I shoved three silk tunics into the bag. I bypassed the thick, coarse northern wool entirely. I didn't care about the cold right then. I just wanted my own things. I wanted things that smelled like the South, things that smelled civilized.

I grabbed my heavy leather coin purse from the vanity table. My hands were shaking too much. The drawstrings slipped right through my fingers. The pouch hit the stone floor. Heavy gold coins spilled everywhere, rolling under the bed and clinking loudly against the washbasin.

"Fuck! No, no, no," I choked out, dropping to my knees again.

I frantically scraped my hands over the rough stone, gathering the gold pieces. One of my fingernails caught on a jagged crack in the floor, tearing the nail back into the quick. A sharp, hot pain shot up my arm, and a thick drop of blood welled up on my fingertip. I sucked in a sharp breath, shoved the handful of coins into the satchel, and ignored the rest.

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