Semua Bab TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING: Bab 181 - Bab 190

EMBER’S POVThere is something exquisitely wrong.My body registers the details before my mind catches up — the luxurious texture of a dress I don’t remember wearing, the pull of my hair swept up off my neck in a way I never style it, the cool press of metal around my wrists.I blink, and the world assembles itself in pieces: a long dining table draped in fine linen, crystal glasses catching the light of a hundred candles, silver cutlery laid out with the kind of precision that belongs in a Michelin restaurant, and flowers — dark red roses, cascading from centre-pieces down the length of the table.I am seated at one end of the table.My wrists are bound to the arms of the chair with silk — cream-coloured and soft and tightly secured yet woven with such careful attention to aesthetics that the restraint are almost beautiful.My ankles are free. My shoes are gone. And the dress I’m wearing — fitted, floor-length, the colour of arterial blood — is not mine. Has never been mine.Someone

EMBER’S POV“Because the last time they were free, you tried to take my eyes out.” A smile, wry, almost self-deprecating. “I adore your fire, querida. But I’d like to keep my vision.”“What if I promise to behave?”The words hang between us and I watch what it does to him — his pupils dilate, his breath catch, the careful composure wavers just enough for something vulnerable to show through.He wants this. Goddess, he wants this so badly — the willing version, the choosing version, the Ember who sits across from him at dinner and smiles and touches him because she wants to and not because her wrists are bound.“I want to try the wine,” I say softly. “I want to eat dinner with you without these on my wrists. I want to have one evening where someone treats me like a person and not a child.” I hold his gaze. “Can you give me that?”He searches my face for the lie and I give him nothing to find because I have spent years under Gale Crawford’s roof learning how to make my face say things my

EMBER’S POVThe hand behind my head grips my hair and tilts my chin upward and I’m thrashing, kicking, biting at the fingers that pry at my jaw, but there are four of them and one of me and they are strong, unbelievably strong.Rafael steps forward and cups my face with one hand — gentle, impossibly gentle, the way a lover would — and pours the liquid past my lips with the other.It burns. Goddess, it BURNS — like swallowing liquid fire, like the inside of my throat is being scoured with acid, and I gag and choke and try to spit but his hand clamps over my mouth and his gray eyes hold mine with such steady, certain gaze.“Swallow,” he says softly. “It’ll pass.”I swallow because I can’t breathe otherwise and the fire slides down my throat and into my chest and spreads through my bloodstream like wildfire, wild poison.The first thing I feel is pain, like my organs are being rearranged from the inside, like every cell in my body is being rewritten without my permission.I double over i

EMBER’S POVThe staff-guests are screaming, diving under the table, trampling each other toward exits.I don’t understand what she did and I don’t have time to ask because the path to the door is clear and adrenaline is shooting up my spine and my wolf is screaming: RUN.I run.Barefoot, bleeding from where the guards’ nails bit into my arms, the red dress but I hold on desperately to it like a towel, even as it flows behind like a cape.I hit the lodge doors at full speed and the cold slams into me and I don’t feel it because Sapphire is in my veins now, lending me her heat, her speed, her ancient and furious refusal to be caged.The compound grounds blur past me — the cabins, the hot springs steaming in the dark, the tree line approaching with agonising slowness.Behind me the lodge is a chaos of shouting and gunfire and broken glass, and somewhere in the middle of it Rafael’s voice rises above the rest, raw and commanding, bellowing orders at men who are too busy trying to kill each

EMBER’S POVHe waves the question away like it’s a fly buzzing near his ear, already bored with the detour.“It doesn’t matter. What matters is this — if you genuinely don’t know where Gale is, then perhaps Knox will be more forthcoming. A trade worth the same value.” His eyes settle on me with a new calculation. “A mate for a mate.”“Logan, I swear to you, I don’t—”Logan snaps his fingers and two of his wolves step forward and take my arms, one on each side, grips hard enough to bruise, and the circle closes to a choking diameter around me.My legs are shaking and the heat is starting to build in my core, a slow rolling warmth that has nothing to do with the cold air.The exhaustion from whatever Sapphire did in the lodge is catching up with me now, draining through my muscles like sand through an hourglass.“You’re coming with me. Tonight. Right now. And you’re going to stay with me until you remember something useful, or until you find a way to contact your Lycan King and get the