My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 247

Mina

I took the back stairs. The stone was damp, the air smelling of old earth and the wet moss that grew in the crevices where the sunlight never reached. I moved fast, my boots making a dull clack-clack-clack against the masonry. I bypassed the main courtyards, weaving through the narrow servant tunnels that ran like veins through the keep's lower levels.

I reached the small iron door near the laundry chutes and slipped outside.

The air was sharp. It bit at my face, the freezing mountain wind cutting through my tunic. I stayed in the shadows of the outer wall, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I pulled the phone from my pocket. My thumb hovered over the glass.

I hit the contact.

It rang once. Twice.

"Hey," he said.

The sound of his voice hit me like a physical blow to the stomach. It wasn't the boy from the border market. It was a man. The rasp was heavier now, a slow, textured rumble that I felt in the soles of my feet.

"Jace," I whispered. My throat felt like it was full of dry sand. "I'm outside. I’m coming down the mountain pass toward the lower market."

"I see you," he said.

I stopped walking. I looked around the empty, snow-dusted trail. There was nobody there. Just the jagged black rocks and the stunted pines.

"Where? I don't see you."

"Keep walking, Mina. Don't stop. The guards on the north tower are watching the path."

I started moving again, my legs shaking. I kept the phone pressed tight to my ear, the heat from the device warming my cold palm.

"It's been so long," I said. A sob caught in my chest, a hot, heavy thing I couldn't swallow. "Jace, I... I miss you so much. I thought you forgot. I thought you found someone else in those human cities."

"Hey, hey," Jace said. His voice softened, turning into a low, grounding murmur. "You can't cry yet, little bird. We aren't even in the same room. You're going to waste all that emotion over a piece of plastic."

I sniffled, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. "Okay. Okay, I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said.

A silence stretched between us, filled only by the sound of our breathing and the distant, muffled thumping of the drums from the keep.

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