TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 218

CHAPTER 154: YOUR TRUE ENEMIES

KNOX’S POV

There is nothing more grating in this world than the laugh of a man who believes he has won.

Rafael Montenegro lies in the snow with blood pouring from his nose and a gash splitting his eyebrow and his expensive coat soaked through with crimson, and he is laughing.

A wild, genuinely terrifying laugh. Deep and delighted and utterly unbothered by the fact that I just rearranged his face with my bare hands.

My knuckles are split to the bone. His blood is cooling on my skin, mixing with mine where the skin tore on his cheekbone.

The snow around us looks like a crime scene – red on white, the kind of contrast that photographs well at

murder trials.

And he’s fucking laughing.

“Feel better?” he asks, spitting a mouthful of blood sideways into the snow casually. “Got it out of your

system?”

“I’ll feel better when you stop breathing.”

“Dramatic.” He shifts on the ground, wincing when something in his ribs protests the movement, but the grin doesn’t falter. It never falters. That’s the thing about Rafael – you can break his body and his face and every bone he owns, and the smile will outlast all of it. “Though if you’re going to kill me, I’d appreciate heads–up. I have dinner reservations in Buenos Aires next Thursday and I’d hate to miss them.”

Ember’s door catches behind me. It’s just a stone’s throw away but it might as well be two continents, the distance between us stretching wider with every second.

But I can’t walk away from Rafael yet. Not with his blood still wet on my hands and my wolf clawing at the walls of my chest and a question burning in my throat that I’m too furious to swallow.

“2016.” I crouch down, getting level with his ruined face. “Is that your angle? Is this how you prove your little mate bond theory – dig up every skeleton I have and feed them to her one by one?”

Something shifts behind his eyes. Interest. The kind of sharp, predatory interest that tells me I just gave him more than I intended.

“2016?” Rafael wipes blood from his chin with his thumb, examining it like a sommelier assessing a vintage. “That’s interesting. I don’t know what that is yet, Knox. But the fact that you look like you’re about to shit yourself at the mention of it tells me everything I need to know about how badly you want it buried.”

“Don’t insult me by playing ignorant. I know it was you.” I straighten up. “I’m warning you, Montenegro. Stay out of things that don’t concern you.”

“Everything about her concerns me.” The amusement drains from his voice, and what’s left is something harder. More honest. “Have I not already proved it? You are not the right choice for her. You are fickle and emotionally constipated. You can’t even be honest with yourself about what you feel, let alone with her. And whatever you’re hiding behind that number – 2016, some deal, some dirty little arrangement – I will find it. And believe me, Knox, this is not a threat. I will dig until I hit a bone, and I will not hesitate to shatter whatever delusion she has of you with that bone.”

I grab his collar and haul him up so his face is inches from mine. His breath is hot and copper–stained and his heartbeat doesn’t even spike. Bastard.

“I will kill you. I will fucking kill you if you dare pull those cards.”

“You can hide it all you want, Volkov. You only make my job so much easier.” He tilts his head after a beat, and his voice drops into something almost conspiratorial. “Though I’ll say this while you’re so busy worrying about me, about what I might find, about whether I’m going to steal your girl with better serenades – maybe you should worry about what’s happening in your own house. You are so fucking devoted to making me your bane that you don’t see your true enemies.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means your girl was eavesdropping at dawn. On your beta and his lovely mate, arguing behind his cabin like they forgot that the forests have eyes.” Rafael’s grin returns, slower this time, and laced with something that isn’t humor. “Whatever she heard, it broke something in her before the day even started. Before I said a single word of seduction. Before the dog sleds and the gallery and the panic attack and all the rest of it.” He pauses, letting that sink in. “She asked you about 2016 at the clinic, didn’t she? And you shut her down like the fucking asshole you are. Believe it or not, that information didn’t come from me, Knox. I don’t know what 2016 is. Not yet. But… Nathaniel does. And sources say he has sinister things up

his sleeves with it.”

The name lands like a fist.

I release Rafael. He drops back into the snow and I’m already straightening, already turning the information over in my head, already running the math on who knows what and how and since when.

Ember asked me about 2016. She said it wasn’t Rafael. The only people who know about that arrangement are me, Gale – who is rotting in a cage somewhere – and the man I sent to negotiate it.

Nathaniel.

I pull my arm back to hit Rafael again because the alternative is processing what he just said, and I’m not ready for that, I’m not fucking ready for anything except violence right now

“Knox.”

The voice comes from behind me, thin and entirely too steady for a woman who was in a clinic bed twelve

hours ago.

Rayana is crossing the snow from the direction of the on–site clinic with one of Rafael’s medical staff

SIMUL MEU FOWE INFIAN S

hovering at her elbow, the nurse’s expression tight with the particular frustration of someone whose patient has overruled every professional recommendation she’s made tonight.

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