All Chapters of My Second Chance Mate is a Barbarian : Chapter 451 - Chapter 460

MinaThey circled, heads low, measuring. The silver wolf's tail lashed behind him. The brindled one's chest vibrated like a bellows and the growl of it rattled my bones."Silver's got it." The man behind me, close to my ear, easy about it. "Lean, rangy, quick. You can see it in the way he moves. Brindle's lumbering. Been eating too well."The silver wolf feinted. The brindled one flinched and bared his teeth at him, and the silver wolf came down sharp on the stone, claws scraping sparks, and struck. His foreclaw caught the brindled one's shoulder and opened a red track through brown fur as easily as tearing parchment.The brindled wolf shrieked and drove his skull into the silver's chest. The silver wolf's paws scrabbled on the floor and his back legs folded under him. The brindled one lunged and got his teeth into his throat."He's got him," someone screamed behind me. "Kill him!""Wait," the man said. "Not yet."The silver wolf got the brindled one's jaw in his mouth and forced it o

SeraVane's eyes met mine, calm and level. "If it had been anyone else she was asking, Luna, you would have been handed exactly what you were after."I did not flinch. Not a flicker of an eyelid or a twitch of a lip. I gave him nothing at all.He went on, his tone measured, a little dry. "You could have come to me yourself and asked. If you wanted to know so badly, I would have told you what you needed."I nodded. "Right."But that had never been the problem.The problem was that I might have been asking a man who stood in league with the very thing I was digging at. A man who might be part of a plot to bring down my own mate. If I had walked up to him and asked, I would have handed him the fact that I knew, and there is no undoing that once it is done. The risk had been too high.He knew anyway now. And I still could not tell him a single thing.So I said the only words that cost me nothing. "I'm sorry. I was only curious."Vane inclined his head and accepted it. He gave me a small w

LyraWe stumbled along the edge of the palace grounds as dusk fell, the sky gone pink and orange over the rooftops. Odile had her arms spread wide to take in the breeze."I can't believe I've never seen the sun go down before," she breathed. "It's like the whole sky is on fire.""Welcome to the great outdoors." I swayed and caught myself. "Just be glad it isn't raining."Nadia was clinging to my arm for support, her hair wild and tangled. She smiled vaguely at me but said nothing. She had been quiet all evening, which was not like her at all. I patted her hand and kept us both moving.Odile skipped ahead on the gravel, her thin dress fluttering around her legs, then whirled back to face us with an enormous grin."I'm drunk," she confessed. "Is that what the fresh air does?""No, that's the brandy."She laughed and came back and slipped her arm through Nadia's other one. "Tell me stories about when you were small. I want to hear about you and your sister."I opened my mouth to say somet

LyraI stepped forward with my hands out. "Nadia. Let's just go home."She stumbled back from me, a tight frown on her face."We have plenty waiting at home," I said carefully. "You can drink as much as you want once we're there."Nadia shook her head. "No, no. There's a place, it's not far, we could..."I cut her off. "The ones at home are better.""No, that one's closer." She pointed off down the path, wide and wild. "We could get some and come right back. Nobody would even notice we'd gone. And the walk would do us good, it's nice out." The words were coming faster now, falling over each other. "It's five minutes. Ten, maybe. We'd be back before you knew it, and then we could sit like Odile said, we could sit as long as you want.""Nadia." I tried again but she went straight over the top of me."And we could get some for Odile as well, she'd like that. And something for Lord Aldous too, after he's come all this way looking for me. That's only decent, isn't it? It's the sensible thi

VidarI took a breath and looked around the hall. These were the wolves of the North, bred as weapons, forged to fight the enemy of our blood. Now they were broken. Now they were refugees eating my winter stores.And I did the sum again and the answer was the same as it had always been.The only thing that worked was the Butcher. The only thing that had ever worked.And it sat in Ironmaw.For years I wrote to Kael. Twenty-three letters, by my count. In them I argued that the boy holding Ironmaw's seat was unfit to bear its weight and that it had never been intended for him. That House Kael has standing on that council and ought to use it. That he should move with me.Every raven came back empty.Kael never answered. Not once, in all those years.Toward the end my letters had got shorter. I noticed it happening while I wrote them. Asking for less and less until I was barely asking for anything, until I was only writing to a man who did not write back, and then I stopped that too.I unc