TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 225

CHAPTER 161: A DIFFERENT MAN

EMBER’S POV

Rafael’s jaw tightens. Something moves behind his eyes, a strange hurt that twists my chest in the wrong way. Nonetheless, he steps back and raises both hands, palms out.

“Fine.” He drops the manila envelope at my feet. It hits the floor with a heavy thud. “I’m not taking it back

with me. It’s yours. Your truth. Your choice what to do with it.”

He walks to the door and pauses.

“But when he breaks your heart today – and he will, Ember, because that’s what he does don’t say I

didn’t try to save you from it.”

He leaves. The door clicks shut behind him.

I stand there for a long time, staring at the envelope on the floor.

The temptation is almost torture. A gravitational pull toward the answers I’ve been chasing since yesterday morning, since I crouched in the snow and heard Nathaniel say words that rearranged everything I thought I knew.

I could pick it up. Open it. Read whatever’s inside and KNOW, finally, definitively, what 2016 means and what Knox did and whether the man I’m falling for is who I think he is.

But I don’t.

I step over the envelope. I get dressed. I dry my hair

If the truth is that bad, I’d rather see it on his face when he tells me.

I’d rather watch his eyes when the words come out and decide for myself whether there’s remorse there

or not.

I leave the envelope on the floor and walk out.

The lodge is warm and bright and smells like burned cookies and fresh coffee and the particular tension that comes from too many people with too many secrets crammed into a space designed for relaxation.

Rayana has arranged the main room like a salon – chairs pulled into a loose circle near the fireplace, a tray of her catastrophic baked goods on the coffee table alongside mugs and a teapot and what appears to be a stack of blank paper and pens.

Queenie is already seated, her legs tucked under her, her hands wrapped around a mug she’s clutching like a life raft.

She looks terrible

dark circles, puffy eyes, the specific pallor that tells that she has been crying all night and is trying to pass it off as allergies.

She sees me and attempts a smile. It’s the worst smile I’ve ever seen. A hostage–situation smile,

desperate and terrified and begging me not to detonate whatever bomb she knows I’m carrying.

I don’t smile back.

Nathaniel is by the window. Standard position as always. His arms are crossed, shoulders rigid, face arranged into that mask of professional neutrality.

Rafael drifts in after me, settling into a chair at the edge of the circle with less grace than he usually possesses. His bruised face adds a certain dramatic flair.

There is something wild in his gaze when he catches me staring and holds it for a beat too long before

looking away.

I blink, searching through the rest of the room. A inkling of a frown on my face.

Knox is missing.

I look out the window, and there is no sign of him either.

A bad feeling sits in my chest.

Rayana stands at the center, surveying her assembled audience with a too–bright smile.

“Good. Everyone’s here. Almost.” She glances at the empty space where Knox should be. “Where is-”

“Give him a minute,” Nathaniel says. “He’ll come.”

Rayana’s mouth thins but she nods, adjusting the paper stack on the table, rearranging mugs, fidgeting in a way I haven’t seen from her before. Nervous energy. Whatever she’s planning to tell us, it’s costing her

something.

“Well, while we wait,” she begins, “I want to explain why I asked you all here. This is our last full day together. Tomorrow we disperse – Knox and Ember back to the States, Nathaniel and Queenie to wherever duty calls, Rafael to his empire of overpriced real estate.” She pauses. “And me to wherever dying women go when they’ve run out of excuses to keep traveling.”

The room tenses. Queenie’s grip on her mug tightens.

“I’ve been carrying something I want to share with all of you,” Rayana continues. “But before I do, I wanted us to try something together. Something my therapist taught me when I was first diagnosed and drowning in all the things I’d never said.”

She gestures at the paper.

“Letters. To anyone. About anything. Something you’ve been carrying that’s too heavy to hold anymore. You write it down, you fold it up, and then we burn them together. The act of writing makes it real. The fire makes it gone.” She looks around the circle. “I know it sounds ridiculous. I know it sounds like wellness retreat nonsense. But I have learned the hard way that the things we refuse to say out loud are the things that eat us alive. And I am running out of time to be eaten.”

The words land heavy. Queenie’s eyes are wet. Even Nathaniel’s mask slips for half a second before the

blankness reasserts itself.

Rayana distributes the papers, and I pick up a pen, turning it between my fingers. What would I never say out loud? What is worth burning unsaid?

Then the door opens

Knox walks in, and everything in the room recalibrates.

The first thing I notice is the slight sway in his step–barely perceptible, the kind of unsteadiness you’d

miss if you weren’t looking for it.

The second thing I notice is the grin. It slides across his face the moment we all turn to look at him, slow

and unsettling and not reaching his eyes even a little.

He offers no explanation for being late. He doesn’t sit either. He simply leans against the far wall, one shoulder pressed to the wood, a bottle of whiskey dangling from his left hand.

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