TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 127

CHAPTER 84: THE GUEST LIST

EMBER’S POV

My mother stands in the doorway, draped in designer everything as always.

A silk dress in garish emerald that probably cost more than she can actually afford. Jewelry dripping from her neck, her ears, her wrists, every piece fighting for attention.

Hair and makeup done to perfection, not a strand out of place, like she’s walking a red carpet instead of entering a private dining room.

She wanted to make an impression.

Our eyes meet across the room.

The color drains from both our faces.

I didn’t know she would be here. Harrison didn’t mention her.

He said family, he said Gale, but he never said anything about my mother and now she’s standing there staring at me with an expression caught somewhere between shock and fury and I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t-

“You,” she breathes.

Before I can respond, before I can form a single word, someone else steps through the door behind her.

And my entire world tilts on its axis.

Maurice Aragon looks older than I remember.

His auburn hair has gone gray at the temples and thin on top. His face is lined and weathered, like he’s aged decades in the years since I last saw him.

His eyes, that same warm brown I used to love before the alcohol turned them glassy and distant, are red–rimmed and nervous and filled with something that looks almost like hope.

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He looks lost. Shoulders hunched. Hands trembling at his sides. Completely out of place in this room full of predators and wealth.

Then he sees me.

Something falls apart in his face. Something that might have been hope or grief or the weight of eight years too long.

“Birdie,” he breathes.

The nickname drains the air from my lungs.

Birdie.

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That’s what he called me when I was small, when he used to carry me on his shoulders and point out the birds in the trees and tell me I was his favorite little songbird.

Before the bottles took over. Before his words started slurring and his hands started shaking and the man I loved disappeared into someone I barely recognized.

I used to crave that nickname.

In fact, I used to lie awake at night hoping he’d come home sober enough to say it clearly, gently, the way he used to when I was too young to understand that some things can’t be fixed.

Now it just sounds… wrong.

I lock every emotion behind a wall of ice, shoving it all down where it can’t touch me, and I look away without acknowledging him.

“Wonderful,” Harrison says, rising from his seat with that unsettling smile. “Now we’re all here. Mr. and Mrs. Aragon- my apologies, I understand the divorce was recently finalized – please, take a seat. We have much to discuss.”

Divorce?

“It’s Ms. Chamberlain now” my mother snaps, stalking toward the table with her heels clicking against the marble floor. “And I wasn’t informed my mentally unstable daughter would be attending. It’s bad enough I

was forced to show up with this useless bum-”

“Shut up, Devika.” My father’s voice is quiet but firm in a way I’ve never heard before. “For once in your

miserable life, stop embarrassing yourself.”

“Embarrassing myself?” She whirls on him, eyes blazing. “You’re the one who showed up looking like you crawled out of a dumpster! Did you even bother to shower this week? I can smell the failure on you from

here.”

“At least I’m not dressed like a Christmas tree that got mugged by a jewelry store.”

“How dare you-”

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“Do you even hear yourself? We’re in front of the Lycan King and you’re still running your mouth like-” “Don’t you lecture me about propriety, you pathetic drunk! If you had an ounce of ambition we wouldn’t have spent twenty years scraping by on nothing while you drowned yourself in-”

They launch into each other with the practiced ease of two people who have been destroying each other for decades, voices rising, old wounds ripping open and bleeding all over the pristine white tablecloth.

I can’t breathe.

This is my childhood. This is every dinner table, every holiday, every car ride, every night I spent with my pillow pressed over my ears trying to block out the screaming.

This is the soundtrack of my entire life, playing on repeat like it never stopped, like I never escaped, like I’m

CHAPTER 84 THE CUEST LIST

still that little girl frozen in the middle of the war zone trying to make herself invisible.

My vision blurs. My chest tightens.

The panic I thought I’d conquered in the car comes roaring back, sinking its claws into my lungs and squeezing until black spots dance at the edges of my sight.

Under the table, Knox’s hand finds mine.

His fingers thread through mine, warm and solid, and he squeezes once.

“Breathe,” he whispers, so soft only I can hear. “Slow. In and out. I’m right here. I’m right here, Ember.”

His thumb traces circles on my palm, grounding me, anchoring me to the present, and I focus on the sensation with everything I have.

The warmth of his skin. The steady pressure of his grip. The rhythm of his breathing.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs after a moment.

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