TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 154

CHAPTER 102: YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED

EMBER’S POV

“Look at you.” His voice has gone soft. Almost loving. Like he’s reciting wedding vows instead of my death sentence. “Still fighting. Still struggling. Still thinking someone’s going to save you.”

I can’t breathe. Can’t scream. Can’t do anything but scratch uselessly at his arms while the gray at the edges of my vision spreads inward, eating everything, swallowing the world.

“I told you, Ember. I told you so many times.” His grip tightens until I can feel my pulse pounding against his fingers. “You belong to me. You’ve always belonged to me. And if I can’t have you…”

He leans in close, his lips almost brushing my ear, and whispers the words that shatter something inside

1. me.

“You should have died with that baby.”

The world goes white.

Not from lack of oxygen. Not from the drugs. Something else.

Something that starts in my chest and explodes outward like a bomb going off, like a door being kicked open after being locked for years, like something ancient and furious finally breaking free of its chains.

In the distance, fireworks explode. Midnight. January first. The sky lights up with reds and golds and silvers, the new year announcing itself while my ex–husband tries to choke the life out of me.

And with the first burst of light, something ignites inside me.

Heat floods through my veins. Liquid fire spreading through my blood, burning away the drugs, burning away the weakness, burning away everything except this white–hot rage that I’ve been swallowing for eight

fucking years.

My hands move on their own.

I watch, almost from outside myself, as claws extend from my fingertips. Long. Sharp.impossible.

Claws.

I have claws.

Omegas don’t have claws like this. Omegas can’t do what I’m about to do. But I don’t question it, don’t hesitate, don’t think.

I rake those impossible claws across Gale’s face with every single ounce of strength in my body.

The sound he makes isn’t human.

Three parallel gashes open up from cheekbone to jaw, so deep I can see bone, and blood sprays hot across my face. Into my eyes. Into my mouth.

* CHAPTER JOYOUSHDEN B MAVE DIED

It tastes like copper and victory and eight years of being afraid of a man who is finally, finally afraid of me.

He releases my throat, both hands flying to his ruined face, and the scream that tears out of him is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in my life.

But I’m not done.

I surge up from the snow and I hit him again. Claws across his chest, shredding fabric and flesh. Fist to his throat. Knee to his groin.

He tries to crawl away from me and I follow, slashing at anything I can reach – his face, his arms, his shoulders, his back. Blood everywhere. His blood. Soaking the snow. Covering my hands.

And I feel everything.

Every strike. Every scream. Every bit of blood. Every moment of revenge I’ve been dreaming about since

the first time he raised his hand to me.

I am not a victim anymore.

I am fury. I am vengeance. I am every woman who ever had to swallow her screams and smile, every woman who had to pretend the bruises were accidents, every woman who was told she was crazy and worthless and nothing without him.

And I am DONE.

I don’t know how long it lasts. Seconds. Minutes. An eternity compressed into a single red–hazed moment

of violence.

All I know is that I’m going to kill him. I’m going to tear him apart with my bare hands and I’m going to enjoy every fucking second of it, and when I’m done there won’t be enough left of him to bury-

Claws, massive black claws, close around my shoulders before I can process what’s happening, and I’m lifted off Gale like I weigh nothing.

Knox, still in beast form, still eight feet of fur and fury, grabs Gale by the ankle with his other hand and swings him like a ragdoll against the nearest tree. The crack of bones echoes through the clearing.

He does it again. And again. Until Gale is nothing but a broken heap in the snow.

Then Knox shifts.

It happens so fast I almost miss it

toward me just as my legs give out.

–

one second beast, the next man, naked and bloody and rushing

He catches me before I hit the ground, arms wrapping around me, pulling me against his chest.

“Fuck

are you hurt?” His voice is frantic, desperate, nothing like the controlled king I know. “I didn’t know he followed, I didn’t see him, fuck, Ember, are you-”

“Drugged,” I manage, and my voice sounds far away, like it belongs to someone else. My eyes are so

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