TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 165

CHAPTER 110: THE WOLF THEY BURIED

EMBER’S POV

(A MOMENT EARLIER)

The vision shifts once more, and I find myself in a room I don’t recognize a clinic room with the kind of sterile coldness that makes you want to wrap your arms around yourself for warmth.

A woman stands with her back half–turned to me, her face obscured by shadow, pressing that same unmarked bottle into my mother’s trembling hands.

My mother – who has never trembled before anything in her life – looks small here. Diminished.

Afraid in a way that makes my stomach turn because if my mother is afraid of this woman, then this woman is someone worth fearing.

“This should keep her stable.” The woman’s voice is cold and clinical, devoid of warmth or comfort. “But

the dose needs to increase. Wolves like her… if she truly manifests…”

A pause. A slow shake of her head.

“They will not be happy, Devika. Not one bit. They will come for their own.” Her eyes meet my mother’s,

“And they will certainly come for a bed–warming whore like you.”

hard and unforgiving in the dim light

My mother flinches. Actually flinches.

She’s afraid of this woman. Afraid of whoever “they” are. Afraid of what I might become if I’m not kept ”

stable.”

The vision fractures, spinning into darkness, and I find myself back in the silver dreamscape with Sapphire watching me intently.

“I don’t understand.” My voice comes out shaky, confused, my mind reeling from everything I’ve just witnessed. “What was that? What was my mother putting in my food? And my father – he looked at me like he hated me, like I was some kind of monster, but -… don’t understand. Who was that woman? Who is ‘they‘? What the hell has my mother done this time?”

The truth is not always what appears in front of you, Ember. Her golden eyes hold mine with an intensity that makes it impossible to look away. Sometimes the truth gets rewritten. Erased. Suppressed for reasons that seem justified at the time. But the truth rarely stays buried forever, no matter how deep they try to dig the grave. She moves closer still, her massive head tilting as she studies my face. What you are is impossible to bury. The first mistake they made was thinking we would stay small forever.

My head is spinning with questions, with confusion, with a growing sense that everything I thought I knew about myself and my family was built on lies I can’t even begin to untangle.

“Is there something wrong with me?” The question comes out small and frightened, the voice of the little

girl I used to be rather than the woman I’ve become. “Sapphire, I’m scared. What happened? What

CHAPTERJATHE WOLF THEY BURIED

happened to Gale last night – my claws, the way I just… I tore him apart like it was nothing. What’s happening to me?”

Sapphire’s expression shifts into something that might be sadness, or pity, or perhaps just understanding.

That was the past, she says quietly. What happened to Gale, the claws, all of it – that was the past catching up to the present. But now…

She turns her head, those golden eyes fixing on something I can’t see, something beyond the boundaries of this silver dreamscape.

Now I need to show you the future.

The dream twists.

The silver light bleeds to black so quickly it feels like being swallowed whole.

Snow materializes under my feet, cold and wet, soaking through shoes I don’t remember putting on.

The air fills with the rotten smell of blood, thick and choking, coating the back of my throat until I can

taste it.

And I know this place. I know this mountain. This is where everything went wrong just hours ago.

But something is different this time.

Rafael is here.

He’s reaching for.me, his face desperate, his mouth forming my name – and then Knox is there, moving so fast he’s barely more than a blur of black and gold, and his claws tear through Rafael’s chest like paper.

The sound it makes is horrifying, the kind of sound that will haunt my nightmares for years to come.

Rafael drops.

His eyes are still on me as he falls, shock frozen on his beautiful face, blood pooling under him in a spreading stain of red against white snow.

He was reaching for me. He was trying to get to me, to protect me or claim me or something I’ll never understand now.

And Knox – the thing that used to be Knox – turns to look at me.

His eyes are gold when they find mine, blazing and wild, but there’s nothing behind them.

There is no trace of humanity, or warmth, or bits of the man who held me in that car and promised to come back for me.

He’s caught somewhere between man and beast, his body twisted in a partial shift that looks agonizing, and he steps over Rafael’s body like it’s nothing more than an inconvenient obstacle.

Like the man he just killed means nothing at all.

< CHAPTER HE WONE THEY BURIED

“Knox?” My voice comes out small and frightened, heart pounding. “Knox, it’s me. It’s Ember. Can you hear

me?

He doesn’t hear me. Tdoubt he could see me too.

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