My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 309

Sera

"What?"

"Do you think your brother would hurt you on purpose? Knowing it would get to you." I held her eyes. "Hurting Jace is hurting you. He knows that. He's not a stupid man and he loves you. So. Do you think he'd do that to you on purpose?"

She was quiet for a while. Long enough that I let it sit.

"No," she said finally. "No. He wouldn't."

"Then stop chewing your own hand off."

She almost laughed. It came out broken, but it came out. Her shoulders dropped a finger's width. After a moment she reached into the bowl and took a berry, then another, and I let myself feel the small clean satisfaction of having talked one person I loved down off a ledge today. It was more than I'd managed for myself.

My eyes went back to the doorway. I couldn't help it. Whatever Fenris was saying to him in there, I couldn't touch it from here, and I made myself not care. There was nothing Jace could tell my husband that would cost me anything. I'd handed Fenris the worst of it with my own mouth three days ago. Jace had nothing on me that Fenris didn't already hold.

The only thing I couldn't account for was the man himself. Why Jace? Why here? A man from the South, Mina's, turning up at the top of the world after all this time. It didn't sit right. I glanced at Mina, she was happy again over a bowl of berries, and I let it go, because some threads you don't pull at a feast.

A shadow came down over the board in front of me.

My eyes came up into a smile, and the smile belonged to the one face in this keep I'd have paid not to see across my own table tonight.

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