All Chapters of TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING: Chapter 321 - Chapter 330

EMBER’S POVI bring it down against the edge of the counter hard enough to shatter it, clay and brew and a dark wet smear spraying across the wood.And into the ringing silence that follows, I start to laugh, because it is funny, it’s the most elaborate murder I’ve ever nearly walked myself into, and I can’t help it.For a long moment, nobody says a word.“Well.” I set the surviving cup down, gentle, and look between the two of them. “That was very good. Truly. I almost drank it.”“How,” the old man breathes. He’s leaning both hands on the counter now, his eyes bright as a boy’s. “How did you see it. Forty-one years I’ve run that game, and I’ve watched Alphas and Gammas and a sitting Luna lift the wrong cup with my face doing the very thing it just did. How did you see it?”“I didn’t. Not at first.” I lean a hip against the counter, because my legs have decided they’ve had enough, and because if I’m going to explain this I may as well be comfortable while I do. “At first I did exactly

EMBER’S POVShe takes both my hands in her small dry ink-stained ones, and grips them hard, and looks up into my face with something burning in her pale eyes that was not there a minute ago. Awe. Plain, naked awe.“The first thing,” she says quietly. “The first thing you learn in this trade is the detail. Two leaves can look exactly the same to the whole world. One of them heals you. The other stops your heart. And the only difference between them is a single vein on the underside, so small you’d never find it unless someone taught you where to look.” Her grip tightens. “To an outsider, my husband’s three cups were one and the same. Three black rims, all alike. But a true alchemist does not simply see what a thing looks like. She sees the one difference that matters. And that difference, girl, is the whole of it. It is everything. It is the entire distance between living and dying, and you walked straight to it with no one in this world to teach you the way.”She steps back. And then

EMBER’S POVThe first thing Queenie does, the very second we’re clear of the moth shop and into a part of the city that has actual sunlight and shops that sell things that won’t kill you, is hold out her hand.“Card.”“It’s for the herbs—”“The herbs are bought, the herbs are in the bag, the herbs are handled.” She wiggles her fingers. “Knox Volkov looked your two boulders here dead in the eye this morning and said, and I quote, because I was standing right there, ‘she comes back with bags up to her elbows and a smile on her face.’ His words. A direct order from your future husband. Are you going to disobey a direct order, Ember? In front of the staff?” She tips her head at Daxon and Reyes. “They’ll report you.”“We will not,” says one of the boulders, with great dignity.“You absolutely will, you’ve called him four times, don’t pretend you’re not his little snitches.” Queenie snatches the card out of my hand before I’ve decided to give it to her. “Right. First order of business. We b

EMBER’S POVAnd what do you say to that?I, of all people, who spent the whole morning learning exactly how much a person needs the fantasy sometimes, the silly unreal thing that isn’t another catastrophe.“Yeah,” I say softly. “Yeah, of course. We stay in the fantasy.” I link my arm back through hers, and I bump her shoulder, and I pitch my voice deliberately light, giving her the off-ramp. “Besides, we’re not done humbling Knox. We’ve barely scratched the surface. A man that rich, Queenie. There’s so much more spiritual damage to do.”She laughs gratefully, and squeezes my arm, and the door closes again, gently, over the thing beneath, and I let it, because she asked me to and because some doors you only open when the person’s ready to hold what’s behind them.“Okay,” she says, scrubbing her eyes, brightness firmly restored. “Okay. Yes. More damage.”And maybe it’s the leftover adrenaline, or the giddy bulletproof feeling of having walked out of that shop alive, but the mischief is

EMBER’S POVThe man follows my gaze to the flower, baffled, then sees Daxon and Reyes, who have arrived and are looming with the unmistakable energy of men deciding whether to break someone, and he goes pale and starts to babble.“I — please — I didn’t — a man gave it to me, I swear, I didn’t take anything, a man in traffic, back there, he just — he handed it to me through the car window, said it was too pretty to throw away, I thought it was odd but it was pretty, so I kept it, I haven’t done anything, please—”“What man?” I’m closer now, and the guards have him hemmed, and he’s whimpering. “Describe him. The man who gave it to you.”“I — I don’t — it was quick, I was in traffic, he was just there and then gone—”“Was he—” My mouth is dry.I describe Rafael. Tall, beautiful, the kind of handsome that makes a room rearrange itself, the easy charm, the way he holds himself like he’s doing the world a favour by existing.I describe him in detail, every detail, my voice shaking.And the