All Chapters of TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING: Chapter 271 - Chapter 280

EMBER’S POVWhen her eyes meet mine, the dying socialite and the sharp-tongued ex are nowhere to be found. The pretense is over.Underneath it all is just a terrified girl who has worn armor for so long she forgot it wasn’t skin.“So why are you doing this? Why are you selling me hope right now like it’s something I can afford? Why are you trying to make this HARDER? Do you know how hard I’ve fought to get to this place? To this acceptance? I don’t want to go back to the hoping, Ember. The hoping is what kept me awake at three in the morning bargaining with a Goddess who stopped listening months ago.” Her voice drops to a whisper that is barely audible above the heart monitor. “I’m scared. I am so scared, and I have been holding this together with herbs and sarcasm and sheer fucking vanity, and under all of it I am TERRIFIED of what comes next. Of the dark. Of whatever judgement the Goddess has waiting for a woman who left good men at altars and manipulated everyone she ever loved and

EMBER’S POVThe janitor at the far end of the cafeteria has stopped mopping and is staring.“Nathaniel, get up.”“Not until you tell me if there’s a chance. If there’s anything I can do. If Queenie has said anything to you about what she needs from me that I can still give.”I stare down at him on the dirty linoleum.Queenie’s words from the car hit me suddenly.Looking at him now, her jealousy toward Knox makes terrifying sense. It was never romantic. It is so much worse.She has to sit back and watch her husband pour every ounce of his energy, his sharpest focus, and his absolute devotion into another person day after day.He gives Knox everything. Queenie just gets the scraps.“Get up,” I say. Gently but firmly. “Off the floor, Nathaniel. This isn’t a briefing room and I’m not Knox and you don’t need to be on your knees for this conversation.”He gets up and sits back in the chair. His eyes are wet and he doesn’t wipe them and the vulnerability of that — Nathaniel allowing someone

EMBER’S POVThe colour drains from Knox’s face so fast it’s like watching someone pull a plug.“She thinks he’s alive,” I continue, and the words feel dangerous leaving my mouth, like setting something loose that I can’t put back. “She heard whispers among the nurses a few nights ago. An emergency call went out demanding every qualified surgeon in the hospital. All ten senior doctors pulled from their shifts in the middle of the night, driven out in private cars. The patient was in critical condition. She thinks it was Rafael.”Knox doesn’t respond.His eyes go blank, sinking to a place I can’t follow. The Lycan King is taking over.I can practically see the ruthless calculations forming behind his stare—a cold precision that terrifies and reassures me all at once.His jaw locks.“You think it’s true, don’t you?” I ask.“FUCK.” The word comes out sharp and vicious and he drops my hand to drag his palm across his jaw. “I KNEW I should have ripped that bastard’s head clean off his shoul

EMBER’S POVI do not know what to do with that.I’ve spent my whole life being the woman people look through. Being looked at like this, like I am something, makes my skin feel two sizes too small.I am busy, not knowing what to do with my own face when one of them just—leaves.She breaks right out of the line, a little older woman, small and fast, and she is already crying before she gets to us, which, I want to be clear, no one had warned me was on the agenda.“You brought someone home.” She says it to Knox, and then she says it again, quieter, like she doesn’t believe her own mouth. “Oh, dear. Ten years. Ten years and you finally brought someone home.”Beside me, something in him goes soft. First soft thing I’ve felt off him in hours.“It’s late,” he says. “You should be asleep, Marjorie.”“Don’t you tell me about my sleep.” She scrubs her face with the back of her hand, and then she turns all of it on me, and I brace, because I know that turn.I have felt that turn in every fancy

EMBER’S POVHe carries me up the wide dark stairs, away from the line and the happy crying and the cousin with the frozen smile, into a part of the house that feels different the second we cross into it.Older. More majestic.He carries me over the threshold of the big double doors at the end of the hall, and finally sets me down on my feet just inside the doorway.His hands linger on my waist for a second, his mind already somewhere past talking.Then I actually look at the room, and my brain flat lines for real.It is bigger than the entire apartment Gale and I lived in.Not a room, a country. A bed you could lose a family in, a wall of black windows with the mountains stacked up behind the glass, a low fire already going in a fireplace big enough to stand in, and everywhere that soft expensive dark that doesn’t show off how much it cost because it doesn’t have to.“This is your room,” I say.“Our room.”“Knox, this is your room.” I turn in a slow circle. “I had a whole apartment sm