TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 222

CHAPTER 158: NATHANIEL’S JOURNAL

KNOX’S POV

The door isn’t locked.

Nathaniel doesn’t lock his door on the compound

in vulnerabilities, a costly oversight on his path.

Fine. I’ll bite.

a small vulnerability from a man who doesn’t believe

The cabin is minimal. Clean lines, no clutter, the living space of a man who keeps everything organized because mess in the external world reflects mess in the internal one.

I know this about Nathaniel. I’ve known it for twenty years. It’s one of the reasons I trusted him – a man

that disciplined, that controlled, that careful with his surroundings must be equally careful with his loyalties.

I was wrong about that.

I search the desk first. Operational paperwork – rotations, assessments, manifests. Standard. Boring.

The kind of material Nathaniel would leave in an unlocked drawer on purpose, just thorough enough to satisfy a casual search and just boring enough to discourage a deeper one.

But the bottom drawer catches. There is something wedged behind it, between the drawer and the back

panel.

I pull harder and the whole unit shifts forward, revealing a gap I wasn’t supposed to find.

A worn–out leather journal. The kind of thing you’d walk past in a shop without a second glance.

I open it.

The handwriting is Nathaniel’s. I’d recognize it anywhere – I’ve read his reports for two decades, his mission briefs, his threat assessments. Precise and cramped, every letter deliberate.

r

But these aren’t reports.

‘K’s aggression has escalated since the Aragon woman’s arrival. Three incidents in the span of days – each one triggered by proximity, each one harder to pull him back from. He doesn’t see it. He thinks he’s in control. He’s not. Recommend maintaining distance protocols.‘

I flip forward.

‘The Harrison Crawford incident. Full feral manifestation. He tore through an armed unit of men like they were straw – gutted, dismembered, barely recognisable as human when he was done. Then he ripped Crawford’s arm from the shoulder socket with his bare hands while the man was still talking. I had to use the

the bodies, injection. Full dose, straight to the carotid. When he went down and I looked at what he’d done

– I saw Alexei For the first time since the primary event, I the blood, what was left of those men in the snow

MÁSTURISE NATHANI LE JOURNAL

saw Alexei looking back at me through his son’s eyes.‘

My hands stop moving on the page.

And further.

‘Consulted with Dr. Langford re: EA’s wolf signature. Anomalies confirmed. Dormant bloodline markers present. Historical parallels deeply concerning. If K’s wolf bonds with E.A., cascading destabilization is not a possibility. It is a certainty.”

Pages and pages. Years of entries.

My entire life since Celeste, documented with the clinical detachment of a researcher studying something dangerous.

Not a friend’s concern. Not a brother’s worry.

Something colder. Something that calculates and measures and decides on courses of action without

consulting the subject.

Without consulting me.

And then I find the entries about that night. Celeste’s night.

‘Administered standard stabilization protocol. Dosage exceeded recommended parameters due to severity of

episode.‘

My vision goes white at the edges.

‘K’s subsequent memory gaps are consistent with pharmacological intervention. Recommend maintaining gap. Full recall risks triggering secondary event.‘

I read it again.

Administered.

help

He didn’t find me. He didn’t stumble onto the aftermath and help me survive it.

He was there.

He was there and he did something – injected something, dosed something that is the reason I can’t

remember.

The holes in my memory, the fragments that won’t connect, the decade of waking up in cold sweats reaching for details that dissolve like smoke, that wasn’t trauma.

That wasn’t my mind protecting itself.

That was Nathaniel. Protecting himself. Protecting his version of events. Protecting whatever the fuck actually happened that night that he doesn’t want me to know.

I keep flipping. Past the clinical entries, past the bloodline research, past the observations and assessments and containment protocols – and I find the last thing.

TAKIRJA MINNIELS JOURNAL

Tucked into the back cover of the journal, folded–carefully, preserved like evidence at a trial.

The 2016 correspondence.

My correspondence. My offer to Gale, drafted on my letterhead, bearing my signature, outlining the terms of a proposed arrangement regarding Ember Aragon née Crawford.

Copies. He kept copies of everything. Every draft, communication, record of the deal I wanted destroyed

the moment Gale refused.

And suddenly the shape of it is clear.

Brutally, sickeningly clear.

Nathaniel didn’t just know about 2016. He held onto it. He documented my behavior like I was a case

study.

He drugged me the night Celeste died and manufactured the memory gaps I’ve been living with for ten years. He lied to my face when I asked him directly.

And he’s been doing all of it – every calculated move, every careful manipulation, every quiet betrayal – from right beside me. Close enough to touch. Close enough to trust. Close enough that I called him brother and he smiled and wrote it all down in a little leather book and filed it away for the day he’d need

1. it.

I close the journal.

The cabin is very quiet. The compound is very dark. Somewhere outside, Nathaniel is walking his perimeter, checking his entry points, performing the routine of a man who has nothing to hide.

I take the journal. I take the correspondence. I walk out of his cabin and close the door behind me and cross the snow to my own cabin, and the cold barely registers anymore because there’s something colder inside me now, something that isn’t grief and isn’t rage but occupies the exact space where both of those things live.

I sit at my kitchen table. I set the journal down. I set the papers beside it.

I need a drink. A strong one.

12

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