TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 188

CHAPTER 130: SO MUCH TO DISCUSS

EMBER’S POV

“You moved him.” I stare at both of them, trying to wrap my head around the logistics. “In the middle of the night. While I was sleeping. You somehow moved a raving man in chains without me hearing anything?”

“You were exhausted, rightfully so after such physical exertion,” Knox says, like this explains everything. And some things are better handled quietly.”

“Where is he now?”

“Somewhere much more secure. Completely outside the council’s jurisdiction.” Nathaniel’s eyes meet mine, and there’s something grim in their depths that makes me shiver. “He’ll stay there until the political heat dies down. Then my extraction team will transport him to a maximum security facility in the States, where he’ll be dealt with under the full authority of the crown. There will be no council interference or political protection. He’d have every bit of the King’s justice and fury.”

The king’s justice. I look at Knox standing there in the gray morning light, eggs drying on his chest and murder in his eyes, and I believe every word of it.

Gale Crawford is going to pay for what he did to me. Not with a quick death, but with the slow grinding

horror of watching his entire world collapse around him.

It should probably concern me how satisfying I find that thought.

“Won’t you be in trouble though?” I ask, the worry bleeding through my satisfaction. “James didn’t exactly leave happy. If the council decides to make an issue of this-”

Knox pulls me into him, cutting off my spiral with a kiss that’s soft and reassuring and tastes faintly of the coffee he must have had before I woke up.

When he pulls back his eyes are warm, and some of the tension in my chest loosens.

“I’ve dealt with worse than an angry old man who got outplayed,” he says against my lips. “James can posture all he wants. At the end of the day, I’m still the Lycan King, and he just showed his hand far too clearly. He is in cahoot with Harrison.” His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “And I intend to show no

mercy.”

My eyes flick to Nathaniel without my permission, just for a second, but it’s long enough for the memory to surface unbidden.

His voice from yesterday, low and urgent and full of warning: The closer you get to him, the closer you get to dooming hirn.

Is he protecting Knox from something worse? Is the warning genuine or manipulation?

I don’t know. I can’t tell. And I’m definitely not ready to make accusations I can’t prove, not when Nathaniel just helped move a body in the middle of the night to protect us.

”

2 CHAPTERLAR MUCH TO DISCUSS

Ifile it away for later, another piece in a puzzle I don’t have the full picture of yet.

“There’s other news,” Nathaniel says, his voice settling back into professional neutrality. “Harrison Crawford has been confirmed at his pack’s hospital. Heavy security, significant injuries. He survived the cliff, but he won’t be mobile for weeks.”

Knox absorbs this with the cold fury I’ve come to recognize as his default response to threats that aren’t immediately within reach.

“Which means,” Nathaniel continues, “you can leave Anchorage without watching your back quite so closely. The immediate threat has been neutralized.”

Leave Anchorage.

The words hit me like sunlight breaking through storm clouds, warm and golden and full of impossible hope.

We can actually go. Pack up our things, get in a car or a plane, leave this city that has tried to destroy us at every turn.

“We leave today,” Knox decides, and there’s no room for argument in his voice. “Back to Mystic Fire to collect whatever we need. Then we’re done with this place.”

Done. The word feels like freedom, like breathing for the first time in weeks, like finally being able to

unclench a fist I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

We clean up quickly, showering off the eggs and the sweat and the lingering evidence of last night’s

activities.

The drive back to Mystic Fire Winter Resort passes in a blur of white landscape and quiet conversation, Knox’s hand warm on my thigh the entire way, his thumb tracing absent patterns through my jeans that make me want to climb into his lap and forget about driving altogether.

Nathaniel is behind the wheel, professional and silent.

Queenie meets us at a halfway point and joins the convoy in a separate vehicle, her smile bright and her chatter shallow and something in her eyes that doesn’t quite match the cheerfulness of her voice.

I watch her through the rearview mirror. Watch the way she keeps glancing at Nathaniel’s vehicle. The tension she’s carrying in her shoulders that she thinks no one notices.

Something is wrong there too. Another thread in a web I can’t quite see the shape of yet.

But I file it away with everything else, because right now all I want is to pack my bags and leave this city behind and figure out what Knox and I actually are to each other without the constant threat of violence and evil machinations.

Mystic Fire rises before us just before noon, all luxury and extravagance against the gray winter sky.

My last time seeing this building, hopefully. My last time walking these halls where I’ve been judged and

CHAPTER LAPSO MUCH TO DISCUSS

attacked and nearly destroyed.

Knox’s hand tightens on my thigh as we pull into the parking structure.

“Ready?”

“To pack and leave? More than you can possibly imagine.”

Clam

The private elevator carries us up to the penthouse in smooth silence, floors ticking by, anticipation building in my chest. Almost done. Almost free. Almost out of this nightmare and into whatever comes next.

The doors slide open.

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