My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 153

Moments before

Torin

Nothing makes you feel like a piece of shit quite like the taste of your own blood mixing with the smell of horse piss.

The blow from Yvara didn't just hurt; it was a revelation. I had spent my entire life around Southern men who threw slaps like children or fought with the polite precision of a fencing match. A Northern punch is different. It’s heavy, blunt, and it carries the weight of a woman who spends her mornings breaking granite with her bare hands.

My left eye was already swelling shut, a hot, throbbing lump of meat that felt like it was going to burst out of my skull. I hit the dirt hard, my breath leaving me in a pathetic, wet wheeze. The stables were dark, lit only by a single flickering lantern that cast long, predatory shadows against the wooden stalls.

"Get up, Lord Torin," Yvara rasped.

She wasn't even breathing hard. She stood over me, looking down at my rumpled velvet doublet with the kind of bored expression a farmer gives a piece of rotting fruit.

"I... I can't," I choked out, my fingers scraping against the frozen dirt.

"Get up, or I’ll drag you through the courtyard by your ankles," she said. Her voice was like gravel being ground into a wound. "And believe me, those Southern boots aren't built for Northern stone. You'll be down to the bone before we reach the keep."

I struggled to my knees, the world tilting violently. My mind was a frantic mess. I shouldn't have tried it. I knew I shouldn't have. Fenris had told us to leave after the ceremony, but I knew Irina. I knew that look in her eyes when she walked out of my room. She was done with me. She was going to hide behind Sera, carve out a little nest for herself in this abattoir, and leave me to face Aldric’s iron spikes alone.

I had to get to the eastern ports. My cousin was there. He had ships. If I could just reach the coast, I could disappear. But now, here I was, kneeling in the straw while a scarred Northern Beta polished a knife and looked at me like I was her next meal.

"You can't do this," I wheezed, trying to find some remnant of my pride. "I am a high-ranking Lord of the Valdris court. I am the King’s top advisor. If Aldric finds out you've laid a hand on me... he will rain hell on this keep. He will march the entire Southern army north and level this mountain to the ground."

Yvara didn't even flinch. She stared at me for a long, quiet second, her dark eyes unblinking.

Then she started to laugh.

It wasn't a normal laugh. It was a dry, hacking cackle that seemed to rattle around in her chest like loose teeth. She laughed so hard she had to lean against the stable door, her shoulders shaking.

"Oh, gods," she gasped between cackles. "You really are a funny little man, aren't you?"

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