TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 207

CHAPTER 144: SNEAKING AROUND

EMBER’S POV

I wake with his voice still rooted in my chest.

‘I might do the same.”

The words have been sitting under my ribs since the aurora, intimate and warm and terrifying in equal

measure.

I said them. Or almost said them. Stood under those impossible lights with Knox looking at me like I was the only thing in the universe that mattered, and I almost told him everything.

I almost said I love you.

The thought makes me want to pull the covers over my head and never emerge. Because when did this happen?

When did I become the kind of woman who lies awake replaying almost–confessions, parsing every word and glance for meaning, wondering if he feels the same or if I’m building castles on sand?

I told him it was fine. When Rayana asked for some time alone, I said yes. I smiled and meant it, or thought I meant it, and watched him walk away with her.

So why does my chest still ache?

Why does it hurt so much?

What is this strange, irrational rage in my heart?

It’s not jealousy. Or not just jealousy. It’s something deeper and uglier, something that feels like standing on the edge of a cliff and realizing you’ve already jumped.

I’m falling for him. Actually falling, the kind of fall that breaks bones and ruins lives and leaves you gasping on the ground wondering how you got here.

And I don’t know if he’ll catch me.

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I don’t know if he’d ever rewrite the terms we started with. No feelings, we said. Clean and simple, we

said.

Well, the feelings came anyway, uninvited and unwelcome, and now I’m stuck with a heart that didn’t get

the memo.

But what about everything else? What about the after? Where do we stand when there’s no crisis to distract us, no enemies to fight, no drama to hide behind?

Where do I fit in the sprawling vastness of his life – his kingdom, his legacy, his world that existed long before me and will exist long after?

CHAPTER JA

POUND

Outside the walls of Arichorage, would he still reach for me? Would Knox want forever? Or am I just one delusional woman who is simply a good fuck in the bed of a powerful man?

The alarm pulls me out of my spiral, shrill and insistent, bleeding through the walls from somewhere beyond my door.

It takes me a moment to place it, another moment to realize it’s been going for a while now, maybe ten minutes, maybe longer.

Queenie’s alarm. Queenie’s room.

I drag myself out of bed, the cold biting as I pad down the hall to bang on her door. No answer. The alarm keeps screaming.

I push inside, ready to shake her awake, ready to deliver a lecture about basic courtesy and paper–thin walls.

However, the bed is empty. Made, actually, the covers pulled tight like she never slept in it at all.

I silence the alarm and stand there in the quiet, trying to make sense of it. It’s barely six.

The sky outside is more black than gray, dawn still just a blur on the horizon. I frown. Where would

Queenie be at this hour?

And that is exactly when I hear them.

Voices, low and urgent, drifting through the window from somewhere outside. I cross the room without

thinking, my breath fogging against the cold glass as I peer out.

Two figures behind Nathaniel’s cabin. Queenie’s brunette hair catches the faint light. Nathaniel’s shoulders

are tense, his posture rigid, and even from here I can see this isn’t a casual conversation.

They’re fighting.

I should go back to bed. Mind my own business. Trust that whatever’s happening between my so–called

best friend and her sleazy husband has nothing to do with me.

But I know better.

And this time, I’m done being the last to know.

I grab my coat and slip outside, the snow crunching under my boots no matter how carefully I step.

I take the long way around, staying in the tree line where the shadows are thickest, feeling like a paranoid child playing at espionage.

I’m not proud of this. Sneaking around, spying on people I’m supposed to trust.

But I’m tired of trusting people who don’t deserve it.

I find a spot behind a thick pine, close enough to hear, hidden enough to stay unseen. Queenie’s voice

reaches me first, broken and wet with tears.

CHAPTER 44 SNEAKING ARDEND

“I can’t keep doing this, Nate. It’s killing me. Every time she looks at me, I want to confess everything. I want to tell her what we did and beg her to forgive me and just be done with all of it.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“She’s my friend. My only real friend. And we-”

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