Semua Bab My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian : Bab 321 - Bab 330

IrinaThe soap was gray and threw off no smell of its own, which was the entire point of buying it. I'd ordered it up from the laundress's stores under the excuse of a skin complaint, and I kept the bar wrapped in plain cloth at the back of the cabinet where no maid would think to ask why the Queen needed something so ugly.I worked it into my throat first, where his hand had been, then down to my collarbone, then my chest. My nails were short and I scrubbed with them anyway, hard enough to leave thin pink trails. Between my thighs I used my fingers and the cold water both. Twice. Once was never enough, and twice was barely enough either. A man's nose forgets. A wolf's doesn't. It didn't matter that the man himself was already three turns gone over the wall and halfway back to whatever hole he slept in. What he left behind stayed exactly where he'd put it until something stronger scrubbed it out, and the only thing in this palace stronger than Kark was the husband I was about to sit a

SeraThree weeks I'd been in the North, and three weeks the South had stayed quiet, and the last thing I'd do was to call it winning.I sat at the vanity with my hair wet down my back as I watched my own face in the glass and turned the silence over, the same as I'd been turning it since I crossed into this country. No rider had come up the mountain with my father's seal since Irina left.No letter. Irina had gone home carrying the worst news a returning Queen could carry, how the rogues taken Torin and the men with him on the eastern road, and my father has been silent since then. Not a question, or even a summon to understand why one of his deligates was mutilated by Norther wolves. Three weeks of nothing. By every measure I had, Aldric was too quiet, and it was uncomfortable. I didn't trust the quiet. Not from him. A quiet board only ever meant I couldn't see the hand that was moving.The comb caught a knot and I worked it loose without looking down. I'd learned the ways of the

SeraThe door hadn't finished closing behind Mina's laugh when it opened again, and this time it was Fenris filling the frame, wrapped throat to knee in fur so heavy it turned him into something closer to a shape than a man.Mina's mouth fell open. "Gods." Her eyes went over him once, slow, delighted. "You look like you're about to eat someone. I hope for their sake it's quick." She was already moving for the door, backing toward it, grinning at me over his shoulder. "He's yours. I mean it, tonight, all of him, I won't see him again for months and neither will you if this goes the way it's supposed to. Use the time.""Get out," I said, without any heat in it."Going, going." She caught his forearm on her way past, one quick squeeze, and gone before he could do anything but grunt at her, and then the door shut and it was only the two of us and the fire and the fur he was still wearing, a skin he hadn't decided to shed yet.He let a long breath go, and with it the fur, dropping in a h

Sera"You're taking Jace?""I am.""Into a fight. Against the thing that killed your brother." I pulled my hands back out from under his, slow, so it wouldn't read as anything. "Fenris. That's Mina's mate.”“They’re not official yet.”“Do you want to argue that now?”He exhaled and went quiet.“She fucking dragged him up North to see you, and she's not been this close to happy since I’ve known her. And now you just want to take him away from her to war?”“I have my reason—”“No.” I said. “If he dies out there, she will never forgive you. She'll never forgive me for standing here and letting you."That landed. I saw the moment it clicked behind his eyes. Whatever else he was, he was Mina's brother first"She'll be angry," he said."Angry is an understatement. It would ruin her.""She's tougher than you're giving her." He didn't say it unkindly. He rubbed the back of his neck, the leather at his shoulder creaking with it, and for a second he weighed it, instead of standing there alrea

Sera"Why?" He asked.I didn't answer. I'd had the whole evening to build a reason and I'd built three, and standing there with my hands on his chest my reasons were starting to feel scrambled. He watched me as I saw the gears move behind his eyes."The child," he said. "You want the man to know about the child."That genuinely surprised me.“What? No."It came out fast and flat and truer than I meant it to. It wasn't about Kane knowing. Kane could go his whole life not knowing and I'd lose no sleep. The thing sitting low in me, the thing I hadn't let myself hold in daylight, had nothing to do with wanting Kane to have any part of it. If anything it was the opposite, and I wasn't ready to look at that in front of anyone, least of all a man in war leather with twenty riders waiting on him.He took it in. He didn't push. That was the thing about him that still undid me when I let it. He heard the no and set the question down, no second try at it from another angle, no watching to see