My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 345

Elara

Kane leaned back against the sink, a dish towel in his hand, smiling lazily as he watched me scrub the last of the breakfast dishes. I was making a production of it, humming to the radio and putting on a show. The water was too hot, and my hands were pink, but he was happy, and if he was happy, I was supposed to look happy. That was how this worked. I could put on the right face for him. I'd gotten good at it.

"Morning, beautiful," he said when I shut off the faucet and reached for the dish rack. "What do you say we hit up the nursery today? Pick up a few more things?" He came up behind me and kissed the back of my neck. I felt him inhale at my skin, his nose at my throat, drinking me in. "I've got a meeting with some of the chiefs this afternoon, but we could stop in on the way, huh?"

I turned to him, my face already arranged in a smile. "I don't know if you should spoil me too much. What will everyone say?"

"You're the Luna." He reached out and pushed my hair back behind my ear. I let my face do the small pleased thing his touch was supposed to earn, and some cold flicker under it noted, the way it always noted, that I'd gotten good at the small pleased thing. "You're supposed to be spoiled."

"Can you?"

He nodded.

"You have no idea," I said, meeting his eyes, "how excited I am for this child." The line placed itself, smooth, the way all my lines placed themselves now. "And I have you to thank for it."

"Sounds like a date." He pulled me in and I went, my arms around his waist, his around my shoulders. The scent-blocker in my arm pulsed its steady beat, keeping my gut still, even with his reek wrapped all around me. I'd grown used to it over time, but it never disappeared entirely.

"How did you sleep?" I asked.

He kissed me, light. "Good. Better than I have in a while." His eyes were easy, the lines in his face relaxed, the corners of his mouth uncreased. The contentment in him was something I couldn't quite touch. It felt foreign. Wrong. I didn't understand a Kane this happy.

"I'm glad." I smiled and kissed him back. "You deserve it." I pulled away before it could go on too long, turning back to the sink. "Now you better run, or you'll be late to that meeting."

"I know," he said, "I know." But he lingered, his hands still on my waist, his face close to mine. I could see him trying to decide what to do, whether to push his luck and kiss me again, or whether that was enough, whether it would keep me happy until he got back. In the end he settled on a kiss to my hair and a pat to my bottom, and then he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him.

I breathed. I stared out the kitchen window, at the sky that was turning pale and clear in the morning. I had been working at the thing in my mind, the splinter of unease that I'd carried since the nursery. The boy. The boy that didn't exist.

The boy he and the shaman both knew about, somehow, for some reason I couldn't explain. I turned from the window and dried my hands, watching the way the sunlight caught the water droplets on my skin. My mind was going over and over it, but I couldn't find my way around it. I couldn't get under it. So I did what I always did, which was to shove it to the side and move on.

I finished putting up the last of the dishes and headed out to the front porch. It was still cool this time of morning, the breeze carrying the smell of the valley and the distant tang of pine. I breathed it in deep, feeling my chest rise and fall under my shirt, feeling my body wake up.

I liked the mornings. The mornings were still, a moment of quiet between the dark of the night and the business of the day. Sometimes, if I tried hard enough, I could almost forget I didn't belong here.

I took a seat on the top step and pulled my knees up to my chest, resting my chin on them and closing my eyes. I didn't need to see. I could hear it all — the sound of the wind rustling in the trees, the distant lowing of cattle, the creak of the porch floorboards under my feet. The house was still, quiet, the only sound coming from upstairs where the maid was working through the bedrooms.

I was still when Kane returned, later than he'd said he'd be, my eyes still closed against the sun. I could smell him on the breeze, the sharp, musky scent of the pack, of the alpha. I heard him on the stairs and felt his hands on my shoulders.

"Sorry," he said. "I lost track of time."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify