TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 228

CHAPTER 164: LIKE A SEX SLAVE

EMBER’S POV

“So. Like a sex slave.” I hear myself say, and my voice sounds like it’s being transmitted from somewhere far away, from someone standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down.

His jaw tightens, a flash of pain following.

“Yes.”

“And when I ran – when I stumbled onto that plane thinking it was fate, thinking the universe had finally

thrown me something kind – you were already there. You already knew my name. You’d been watching me for years. And I thought that meant something beautiful. Romantic, even. I thought it meant someone finally saw me.”

“Yes.”

“But you weren’t seeing me. You were collecting what Gale wouldn’t sell you.”

Knox flinches – hard, visibly, like the word is a fist connecting with his jaw.

“Yes.”

“And you were never going to tell me.”

The guilt comes alive now, but also the ghost of a justification he’s been polishing in the dark for weeks, turning it over and over until it shines enough to pass for reason.

“You wouldn’t have-”

“Finish that sentence and I swear to the Goddess I will walk out of this room and you will never see me

again.”

The words do something to him, ripping apart whatever is left of his composure, his face falling apart.

“You wouldn’t have taken it well, Ember. I knew what it would sound like, what it would,

d remind you of–”

The sound that comes out of me is something I’ve never heard myself make – a sharp bark of humourless laughter that makes Queenie flinch and makes even Rafael sit up straighter in his chair.

“Of COURSE I wouldn’t have taken it well! What part of my history – what single chapter of my goddamn life – made you think I would EVER take that well?” My voice cracks open and I don’t care, I am past caring about what I look like or sound like in front of this room full of these cruel people. “I have been CATTLE my entire life, Knox! My father put a price on me. Gale collected on it. And you – you, the one man I TRUST, were going to do the exact same thing and then hold me at night and let me fall in love with you and NEVER. TELL. ME.”

“That’s not-”

“You decided for me! Without me! Just like every other man who has ever laid a hand on the direction of

my life! You decided that I was better off in the dark – that the woman you claim to want couldn’t handle the truth about the man she was choosing – so you made the choice FOR me.” I take a step toward him, and my voice drops into something quieter but infinitely more dangerous. “Just like my father made the choice to sell me. Just like Gale made the choice to cage me. You just dressed it up prettier and held me closer while you did it.”

He takes it. Every word, every blow, standing there absorbing it without deflection or defence, and

somehow that’s worse than if he fought back, because I want him to fight, I want him to give me

something to push against, but he’s just open and taking it and behind the acceptance I can see the part

of him that agrees with every single thing I’m saying, that has always agreed, and that agreement is more

devastating than any argument he could make.

“I was going to come to you this morning.” My voice drops, and this is the part that costs the most – the part that bleeds. “I was going to find you and tell you that whatever 2016 was, I wanted to hear it from your mouth. I wanted to give you the chance to choose me enough to be honest. I was going to give you so

much, Knox. I was going to give everything for this.”

His face does something terrible – something I will see behind my closed eyes for a long time after this the specific expression of hope recognising its own death and having to stand there and watch it happen.

“But you couldn’t do it for me. You did it because Rafael backed you into a corner, in front of everyone. So much for wanting me, Knox.”

“Ember. Please-”

“Please WHAT?” I’m in his face now, close enough to smell the whiskey and the exhaustion, close enough to see every burst vessel in his ruined eyes, close enough to count the hours of sleep he didn’t get. “Please forgive you? Please understand? Please be the bigger person, AGAIN, the way I have been the bigger person my entire fucking life? Please swallow my hurt so yours doesn’t have to sit alone? PLEASE WHAT,

KNOX?”

“Please don’t leave.”

The words come out so small that for a moment I’m not sure he actually said them shattered and so utterly stripped of everything that makes Knox Volkov the man the what’s left is just the ask, raw and bleeding and bare.

A plea from a man who knows he has no right to make one and is making it anyway.

And I want to give in.

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