My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 179

Elara

The steam in the shower was thick enough to choke on, but I leaned into it, letting the hot needles of water hit the back of my neck. I could feel Kane’s chest pressed against my spine, his heart thudding a heavy, predictable rhythm that I’d learned to mimic with my own breathing. His hands were on my hips, fingers digging in with that desperate, possessive edge he’d had ever since the Omega walked out the door.

He thought he was drowning in me. He thought the scent of my skin—carefully curated with expensive oils and heavy chemical blockers—was his anchor. He didn't know that every time I looked at him, I was calculating the remaining shelf life of this particular lie. He didn't know that while I was moaning against his mouth, I was thinking about the gold Aldric still owed me for the "drops in the tea" that had turned his fated mate into a barren pariah1.

I closed my eyes, the heat of the water blurring into a different kind of heat. A memory I couldn't shake, no matter how much soap I used to scrub the South off my skin.

Being around wolves was a constant exercise in not gagging. To most humans, they probably just smelled like people, but I had a nose that worked a little too well. To me, wolves smelled like rot. Like wet fur left in a basement to mold, mixed with a sharp, acidic tang that reminded me of a butcher’s bin in the height of summer. It was a heavy, oppressive stinking cloud that followed them everywhere.

I survived because of the blockers. Heavy, chemical-grade scent blockers that Aldric provided. They didn't just hide my human scent; they dulled my senses enough that I could stand to let a wolf touch me without losing my lunch.

As I held Kane, my mind drifted back to the first time I smelled that rot. The real rot.

I wasn't born in a palace. I was born in a village so small it didn't even have a name on the maps of the "Civilized South." We were humans, plain and simple. We farmed, we traded, and we stayed the hell away from the woods. I was seventeen, just a few months shy of eighteen, when the world ended.

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