My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 61

Fenris

The embers in the hearth were bleeding out, turning from angry orange to a dull, dying red.

The den was freezing again, but the cold didn't register. I just sat in the heavy oak chair in the corner of the room, perfectly still, watching the dark bear pelt rise and fall over her chest.

Sera’s breathing was ragged. That forced healing was a brutal tax on the body. It hollowed out the muscles, cannibalizing fat and energy just to stitch the skin back together. Every time she inhaled, a faint, wet wheeze rattled in the back of her throat.

The smells in the room were a mess. Mina had slathered her bruised ribs in some sharp, southern camphor salve that stung the back of my nose. Beneath that was the heavy, metallic stench of Taya’s blood still crusted under my fingernails. But cutting through all of it—thick and suffocating—was Sera. Citrus, vanilla, and the dark, heavy musk of pure, unspent arousal. It coated the back of my tongue. It made my fangs throb against my lower lip.

Two hours ago, I had stripped the ruined clothes off her body. My hands had literally shaken when I ran that hot cloth over her bare stomach. She had looked at me with those wide, dark eyes, smelling like sex and blood, and demanded I touch her. Fenris, she had whispered. Just my name. Completely unfiltered. Completely raw.

Walking away from the edge of that bed took more strength than I had ever used in a fight.

My fingers dug into the wooden armrests of the chair until the oak groaned in the quiet room. The mate bond wasn't a metaphor. It was a physical, violent tether anchored directly in my sternum, dragging me toward that mattress. It screamed at me to cross the floorboards, rip that pelt off her, and bury myself so deep inside her that she forgot she ever belonged to anyone else.

But she did belong to someone else.

The blood drying on my knuckles flaked off, falling into the dark fur of the chair. In the dim light, it looked completely black. It looked exactly like the dark smears sinking into the ice three years ago.

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