My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 282

Mina

I came back with the door shut behind me before I'd worked out what my face was doing.

The sack of foodstuff hit the floor by the entry harder than I meant. A turnip rolled out of the top of it and went under the bench and I let it go. My other hand had the bundle of clean clothes pressed up against my chest, against the side that didn't hurt, because the side that did hurt had been screaming at me the whole walk back and I'd been holding the bundle on the good side without deciding to.

Jace was at the low table with a cup in front of him and a flat wooden box open beside it, some human thing he tinkered with when he was bored, small metal pieces laid out in a row. He raised his eyes when the door went. Then he held them on me a second longer than a man holds them on someone who's only been gone two hours.

"That was quick."

"They didn't have the salted kind. I got the other." I kept my eyes off him while I said it.

He didn't say anything to that. He set the cup down. He had a way of going still that I'd come to know, where the easy thing dropped off him and something underneath took a look at you.

"Mina."

"What."

"Put the clothes down."

I didn't want to put the clothes down. Putting the clothes down meant using the arm, and using the arm meant he'd see, and I wasn't ready for him to see, because if he saw he'd ask, and if he asked I'd have to decide right there in the doorway how much of it I was going to lie about.

I put the clothes down anyway. I used the bad arm. It came up about halfway to the bench before the shoulder caught, a hot white snag of it that went straight up the side of my neck, and the breath I took to cover it was too sharp and gave the whole thing away.

He was up before the bundle landed.

"What happened to your arm."

"It's not the arm. It's the shoulder. It's nothing."

"Sit down."

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