My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 297

Taya

"You used to tell me to make the trouble worth it." I turned to face him. "You used to say a Vint woman doesn't ask permission to be a problem. Mama said it first. You always said Mama said it first."

That was where the floor dropped.

Because my father held on me for a half-second too long. A blank half-second, the smallest hitch, the look of a man reaching into a pocket he knows should have a thing in it and finding the pocket empty. Anyone else would have missed it. I have watched my father my whole life. I know the difference between him thinking and him not having the thought at all.

"Your mother said a great many things," he said.

That was all. Your mother said a great many things.

My mother had said that one thing, that exact thing, over my cradle and over my scraped knees and over my first ruined fight, and after she went into the ground my father had said it to me at every hard moment of my life since, word for word. He didn't fumble it. He never fumbled it. It was the thing he reached for to steady me, the thing that was hers and then was ours. He'd stood here in my room a breath ago and waved it off into the air, nothing, a draft under the door.

The cold came up the back of my neck.

"Right," I said slowly. "A great many things."

"Taya—"

"Did she do this." It came out of me before I'd shaped it, low and ugly. "Did that stupid southerner do this to you? Did she threaten you? Is that what this is? You've been acting weird for weeks, you fold on every fight, you won't even—" My voice cracked and I hated it. "Did she get to you? Just tell me. Whatever she has, whatever she's holding over you, tell me and I'll—"

"Enough." My father's voice came down hard, and that was almost worse, because the anger was real even when nothing else was. "I am tired, Taya, of your war with that woman. It is finished. She is the Luna. She bled on the stone and the pack accepted her, all of them, the warriors, the elders, the children in the lower rings. You are the only one still picking the scab."

I stared at him. "You wanted that seat for me."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify