TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 253

HAPTER 184: THE INELEGANT WAY–2

“The dinners.” His voice is quiet and wet with blood and more frightening than any shout. “The kindness. The patience. Being there every time you called, every time HE let you down, every time you needed someone and I was the one who showed up.” He wipes his face with the back of his hand and stares at the red on his skin with disbelief. “The Buenos Aires reservations. The dress. THIS all of this – I did for YOU, Ember. Everything. And you hold onto HIM? A man who ABANDONED you? Who flew to another country with another woman and didn’t look back?”

And there it is. The entitlement.

The ledger of kindness he’s been keeping, every good deed an entry in a balance sheet that I’m expected to pay with my body and my freedom and my gratitude.

I’ve heard this speech before. Different words, different accent, but the same rotten core: I gave you

everything, so you owe me everything, and if you don’t pay willingly I’ll collect by force.

Gale in a better suit. Gale with better wine and a bigger vocabulary and a more convincing smile, but Gale all the same, and I was stupid enough to trust him and confide in him and let him close when Knox wasn’t

there, and the shame of that burns hotter than the anger.

“You’re just like him,” I say, and my voice is calm in a way that surprises me. “Maybe with better hair, but the vile packaging is all the same. The vile entitlement. The vile belief that wanting someone gives you the right to own them.”

Something in Rafael’s face goes very cold and very still.

“Hold her.”

The guards move. Two of them, one on each side, and their hands close around my arms with ruthless

force.

I struggle desperately, but a third grabs my shoulders from behind and a fourth appears with something in his hand – a vial, small and dark, catching the candlelight.

“The wine was supposed to handle this,” Rafael says, straightening his suit, wiping the blood from his face with a napkin he plucks off the table with unsettling composure. “A diluted dose in your glass. Gentle.

a night of wine Gradual. You would have felt warm, relaxed, open. The way the old traditions intended it and moonlight and desire that reveals the truth of the bond.” He takes the vial from the guard and holds it up to the light. The liquid inside is dark and thick and it catches the candlelight in a way that makes my stomach lurch. “But you knocked the wine over when you decided to rearrange my face. So now we do it the inelegant way.”

“Don’t. Rafael, don’t-

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with pain from his “I didn’t want this.” And the horrible thing is that he sounds sincere. His eyes are wet broken nose, yes, but also with something else, something that looks devastatingly like genuine

CHAPTERU&THE INDIFITAMY WAY O

heartbreak. “I wanted the dinner and the wine and the slow romance. I wanted you to feel it naturally and. turn to me and KNOW. But you won’t give me the chance. You won’t give US the chance. So yes, I’m forcing the question. And when the answer comes back that your wolf wants ME and not him, you’ll understand why I had to do this.”

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