TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 195

CHAPTER 135: 40 PERCENT IMPRESSED

KNOX’S POV

And worse worse than the threat, worse than the rage, worse than every murderous impulse screaming through my blood is the tiny splinter of doubt he just drove into my chest.

Because Rafael is wrong. He has to be wrong.

Ember is mine. I feel it in my bones, in my blood, in every cell of my body that aches for her when she’s not close enough to touch.

But my wolf…

My wolf has been… different since Celeste. It moved for her. It ached for her.

That night in the safehouse, when I almost marked her without meaning to. It rose up and reached for her

and tried to claim her before I wrenched it back.

But it wasn’t like before. It wasn’t like Celeste, when the bond sang so loud it drowned out everything else.

It was a certain, undeniable pull, one driven into instinct.

What if Rafael is right?

What if I’ve been lying to myself this whole time?

What if she truly is his?

I clean the blood from my hands in the tiny galley sink, watching it swirl down the drain, red against white.

By the time I return to the cabin my face is carved from stone, every crack and doubt buried where no one

can see.

Ember stirs when I slide into the seat beside her, those breathtaking eyes blinking up at me, soft with sleep and something that looks dangerously like trust.

“Knox?” Her voice is rough. “What’s wrong?”

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“Nothing.” The lie slides out easily. “Rafael was just being a fucking asshole about logistics.”

She studies me for a long moment, and I know she doesn’t believe me.

But she lets it go, settling back against my shoulder with a small sigh, and I wrap my arm around her and pull her close and pretend that everything is fine.

The plane begins its descent.

Through the window, interior Alaska stretches out under us – white and endless, boreal forest bleeding into frozen tundra, mountains rising in the far distance like sleeping giants.

The private airstrip is barely visible below, just a cleared strip of ground carved out of the wilderness.

PRESSED

When we step off the plane, the cold hits instantly, sharp enough to steal breath.

Ember shivers beside me, her jacket inadequate against the arctic air, and I’m already reaching for the coat I packed when Rafael appears from nowhere with a fur–lined monstrosity that probably itches. “You’ll freeze in that,” he says to Ember, holding the coat open like a fucking gentleman. “Please. Let me.”

I snatch it out of his hands before he can drape it over her shoulders.

“I’ve got her,” I say, wrapping the coat around her myself, my eyes locked on Rafael’s with a warning he’s

too smart to ignore.

His smile doesn’t waver. “Of course you do.”

The drive to the property takes thirty minutes through landscape that would be beautiful if I could focus on anything besides the poison Rafael planted in my mind.

Ember presses her face to the window like a child, watching the snow–covered pines and frozen lakes slide past, and something in her expression loosens in a way I haven’t seen since this nightmare started.

She likes this form of escapism. The bubble that exists outside my chaos.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathes.

I watch her watching the wilderness, and my chest aches with something I don’t have a name for.

She deserves this. Peace. Beauty. Moments that don’t involve blood or violence or the constant threat of

destruction.

She deserves so much more than I know how to give.

The property comes into view as we round a final curve, and even I have to admit that Rafael chose well.

A main lodge built of timber and glass, nestled between snow–covered pines. Smaller cabins scattered

around it, each one with glass ceilings for watching the aurora.

An artificially heated spring sat at the center of it all, steam curling lazily into the arctic air – imported

warmth in a place that had none.

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Everything pristine and perfect and obscenely intentional.

Envier turns to me, eyes bright, and she’s smiling – actually smiling – and I’d burn the whole world down

to keep that expression on her face.

“You look like a child on Christmas,” I tell her.

Ember doesn’t look at me. Still taking it all in, eyes moving slowly across the landscape like she has never seen anything quite like it before.

“Maybe I’m forty percent impressed.”

“Only forty?” Rafael appears at her other side, smooth and unbothered as always. “What happens to the remaining sixty?”

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