My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian (Sera and Fenris) novel Chapter 357

Sera

My eyes felt gritty behind their lids as I walked the corridor beside Mina, her hand locked tight around my elbow.

It was early, before the sun was up, and the keep was quiet except for the low murmur of voices in the kitchens ahead. I'd been up most of the night, stomach roiling, and the smell of the kitchens hit my throat and made it worse. I'd had this same sickness every morning for days now, and I'd given up wondering if the cause was the baby or the North.

I didn't say any of that to Mina, who kept looking at me as though I might crack open and bleed on the floor any minute. "Eat something," she ordered when I slowed.

I shook my head, swallowing down the bile, and she tightened her grip and kept pulling me toward the kitchens. I'd slept badly for five nights running, but I had not slept at all last night, and now my mind was slow and my eyes felt like two hot stones behind my lids.

The bond with Fenris was still and warm in my chest, telling me only that he was alive, but it wasn't enough. I needed the words to be sure. He'd been gone for five days now, and it felt like twenty; I was beginning to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.

I stepped out of the storeroom into a cold stone corridor and closed the door.

For the past two days I've been going back there every morning since we retreated from it, feeding the rogue with my own hands, and telling no one. I don't know why I keep going. Maybe it's just the strangeness of that moment when it first spoke - "Luna" - or the fact that it spoke to me at all.

In three days it's never spoken since, but I keep kneeling in the dark and holding out a piece of raw meat and I whispered the truth to her.

"I don't know how Fenris is doing," I admitted, the words raw in my throat. "He's been gone for five days now, and it's driving me mad not knowing what's going on." I swallowed hard, trying to push down the fear that threatened to overwhelm me.

"I can't feel anything aside from the fact that he's breathing, and I'm beginning to believe I'm imagining the whole thing."

She tilted her head, studying me with an unblinking gaze. "You're not sure?"

Of course she had not said anything like that, but that was exactly how it felt if she'd actually spoken.

"No." I murmured, the ache in my chest growing more unbearable by the second. "He's my mate and my husband and—I don't, I don't know."

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