My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 316

Jace

Sera scoffed. "That's the wife he picked. He chose her over me in front of everyone." She looked at me. "So what is it you think I'm going to do about any of this?"

"You used to run that place. Properly. The ledgers Kane can't read now, you kept them clean. The pack had a spine when you were Luna and it's gone soft without one." I took a step closer, careful, aware of the men around us.

"Blackwater needs a new government. You've got influence Kane will never have, and you've got a husband whose name makes packs wet themselves from here to the southern water. Kane is killing that pack slowly. Elara's helping. Mistwood is carving it up. Give it a year and there are children in Blackwater going to bed hungry, and you of all people know that pack was never supposed to come to that."

She was quiet for a while, then…

"It's not my pack anymore." She said it without any give at all. "I can't help you. Go home, Jace."

She turned to go.

I caught her wrist.

It was a stupid thing to do and I knew it the second my hand closed on her, the cold of her skin and the weight of what I'd done arriving together.

All around the yard, men who'd been watching two women beat each other bloody a few minutes ago went still where they stood. A hand somewhere drifted toward a blade and stopped, because nobody was sure yet what they were looking at.

I wasn't sure either. My heart hammered worse than it did in that chamber with her husband, because I'd put my hand on the Luna of the North in front of her own soldiers, and there was no version of the next breath that ended well for me if I'd misjudged this.

Her eyes went down to my hand. Then back up to mine. I let go before she made me.

"Why do you care," she said. She didn't move away. "What is it you actually want out of a pack that you barely live in? Why does it matter to you if Blackwater lives or dies."

"That pack's my home. I grew up—"

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