My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 248

Ten Years Ago

Jace

"Stop pulling at your hem, Mina. You’re going to tear the stitches out, and your mother is already going to have a fit when she sees you’re missing a shoe."

I didn’t look back at her while I walked. I kept my eyes on the stretch of road ahead, my boots crunching over the frozen grit of the market lane. I could hear her behind me—that uneven, skip-hop-dragging sound she made because one foot was bare and the other was still in a silk slipper. She sounded small. Pathetic, even. I had a heavy iron bar gripped in my right hand, the weight of it making my shoulder ache, and the front of my tunic was still warm and wet from where the dog’s blood had sprayed me.

"I lost the shoe," she whispered. Her voice was thin, vibrating with that leftover tremor from the crying. "She begged Alpha for months for those. She worked extra shifts in the infirmary. She’s going to be worried sick."

I stopped. I didn’t turn around immediately. I just stood there, breathing in the cold air, trying to get the smell of that rabid beast out of my nose. It had smelled like a damp cellar full of rotting potatoes. Souring fruit. I could still see the way the white foam had bubbled out of its jaw onto the cobblestones before I’d caved its skull in.

I turned and looked at her. She was staring at her bare foot, her toes turning a dark, angry shade of pink from the frost. She looked up at me with those wide, innocent eyes, and I felt a sharp, annoying pull in my chest. She was just a child, and an omega. I was twenty, and I already knew exactly how wolves treated things they considered less. They used them until they broke, and then they threw them in a hole.

"The shoe doesn't matter, kid," I told her. I tried to make my voice sound harder than it was. I needed her to stop the whimpering. "The guard station is two streets over. Anyone who loses a child in this market goes there first. If your mother has a lick of sense, she’s already standing in the reporting room, annoying the sentries."

I reached out and grabbed her shoulder, steer-walking her forward. We navigated the edge of the border market, dodging the heavy supply wagons and the merchants shouting about iron prices. This was the neutral zone—the only place where the South and North traded without reaching for their blades. I saw a group of Northern "mastiff" guards standing near the station entrance. They were huge, blocky men in purple-grey leather, leaning on thick wooden clubs. They didn't see a little girl who’d been chased by a dog. They saw an Omega who didn't belong on their stones.

I pulled her behind a stack of empty grain crates, keeping us in the shadows. I scanned the yard of the station.

"There she is," Mina gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.

I saw the woman. She was moving in frantic, jagged circles near the iron gates, her hair coming loose from its pins. She looked distressed. Drained. She was looking for a child who hadn't been eaten, and she was currently failing to find her.

I smiled, just a tiny bit. I’d done something good today. But looking at Mina—looking at the way she stared at her mother with that raw, desperate hope—made the reality of my own life hit me. I was leaving tomorrow. My father was sending me to the human cities to handle the imports. I didn't know when I’d be back. I didn't know if I’d ever see this little bird again before the North finally managed to corrupt the good in her.

I reached into the inner lining of my coat. I felt the cold, smooth plastic of the device.

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