TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 194

CHAPTER 134: PROVE IT

KNOX’S POV

“I will tear your tongue out of your skull.”

“You could try.” Rafael’s smile returns, thin and sharp. “But that won’t change the facts. And it won’t

change what I’m about to tell you.”

“Which is?”

He pauses and allows the moment stretch. The bastard always did have a flair for drama.

“I believe Ember is my fated mate.”

The words don’t make sense at first. They hang in the air between us, and I’m waiting for the punchline, waiting for Rafael to laugh and admit he’s fucking with me, but his expression doesn’t change.

He’s serious.

He actually fucking believes it.

“You’ve lost your mind,” I say.

“My wolf reacts to her. Far too strongly.” Rafael’s voice is steady, certain, the voice of a man who’s already done the calculations and arrived at an answer he’s satisfied with. “Every time she’s near, every time I catch her scent, it’s like something inside me is trying to claw its way out. I’ve bedded more women than I can count, Knox. I know what attraction feels like. This isn’t attraction. This is something else. Something

deeper.”

“It’s obsession. It’s delusion. It’s you being a presumptuous piece of shit who thinks he’s entitled to anything he wants. You’ve always done this. You’ve always found a way to go after every woman I have wanted just to spite me. That’s what this is.”

“Maybe.” Rafael shrugs. “Or maybe it’s the truth, and you’re too stubborn to see it. Tell me something, Knox. ” He leans closer, close enough that I could rip his throat out before he finished his next sentence. “When you’re with her, when you’re inside her, when you’re doing all those filthy things I’m sure you excel at… does your wolf respond? Does it reach for her? Does it feel like completion, like coming home, like everything the poets write about when they describe the mate bond? No, humor me. Does she feel it?”

I don’t answer.

I can’t answer, because the truth is a knife in my chest and Rafael is twisting it with every word.

My wolf doesn’t respond the way it should. It stirs sometimes, moves sometimes, like it did when I almost marked her, but it’s not the roaring, undeniable connection that I felt with Celeste.

I know what a mate bond feels like. It’s a tether – something that keeps you leashed to another person at the soul level, pulling constantly, impossible to ignore.

CHAPTER APPROVE O

And outside of that, separate from it, I know that I care for Ember. I know I’d kill for her. Die for her. I’d rip

this bastard’s throat out right now just to silence him.

But that specific gravity that pull that exists only between two people whose wolves recognize each other completely, that string that draws you closer without your permission – I didn’t feel it.

Not the way it’s supposed to feel. Not the way I know it should.

It’s fragmented. Like trying to tune into a radio station that keeps cutting out.

“That’s what I thought.” Rafael’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “She feels it too, you know. The disconnect. She might not admit it, but some part of her knows that whatever you’re giving her isn’t the whole thing.

Isn’t what she deserves.”

“You don’t know what she feels.”

“I know what I see. A woman who lights up when you walk into a room and dims when you pull away. A woman who’s desperate for something real after years of surviving something terrible. And a man who keeps one foot out the door because he’s too much of a coward to admit he can’t give her what she

needs.”

My hand is around his throat before I make the conscious decision to move. I slam him back against the galley wall, hard enough to rattle the glasses, and his pulse beats steady against my palm.

He still doesn’t flinch.

“I could kill you right now,” I growl. “No one would know. Tragic accident. Turbulence. The Lycan King sends his condolences to the Montenegro family”

“You could,” Rafael agrees, his voice slightly strained from the pressure on his windpipe but otherwise calm. “But you won’t. Because killing me won’t change the truth, and deep down you know it.”

“What fucking truth?”

“That something is broken inside you, and no matter how many times you bury yourself in her body, you can’t fix it.” His eyes bore into mine. “I’m not here to steal her from you, Knox. I’m not that stupid or that suicidal. I’m here to find out the truth. For both of us.”

“And how exactly do you plan to do that?”

Rafael’s smile returns, slow and dangerous.

“I’m going to prove it.”

I release him and step back in revulsion. My claws are fully extended now, my wolf growling inside my chest like it’s trying to break through my ribs and finish what I started.

“If you touch her,” I say quietly, “I will end you. I will tear you apart piece by piece and scatter what’s left across every corner of your precious territory. There won’t be enough left to bury.”

“Noted.” Rafael straightens his collar, smooths his jacket, as unbothered as if we’d been discussing the

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