TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 254

CHAPTER 185: STRIPPED NAKED

EMBER’S POV

The hand behind my head grips my hair and tilts my chin upward and I’m thrashing, kicking, biting at the fingers that pry at my jaw, but there are four of them and one of me and they are strong, unbelievably

strong.

–

Rafael steps forward and cups my face with one hand gentle, impossibly gentle, the way a lover would – and pours the liquid past my lips with the other.

It burns. Goddess, it BURNS – like swallowing liquid fire, like the inside of my throat is being scoured with

acid, and I gag and choke and try to spit but his hand clamps over my mouth and his gray eyes hold mine with such steady, certain gaze.

“Swallow,” he says softly. “It’ll pass.”

I swallow because I can’t breathe otherwise and the fire slides down my throat and into my chest and spreads through my bloodstream like wildfire, wild poison.

The first thing I feel is pain, like my organs are being rearranged from the inside, like every cell in my body

is being rewritten without my permission.

I double over in the guards‘ grip and a sound tears out of me that I don’t recognise as my own voice.

The burning intensifies, climbs, radiates outward from my core until my skin is flushed and my vision blurs.

Something deep in my abdomen clenches with a heat that has nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with what Rafael just poured into me.

“What did you do to me?” The words come out strangled, gasping. “What was in that – why is it – what did you DO?”

Rafael doesn’t answer me. He’s already turned back to his guests, straightening his suit with the fastidious

calm.

He dabs at the gouges on his cheek with the napkin and examines the blood on the white cloth with mild annoyance before folding it neatly and setting it aside.

“All is fair,” he says to the table, spreading his hands in a gesture of gracious apology, “in love and war. And tonight, my friends, we have a little of both.”

A smattering of polite laughter from the staff–guests, and I am writhing in the guards‘ arms with fire pouring through rny veins and this man is making dinner conversation about it.

“I had intended,” Rafael continues, clasping his hands behind his back and beginning another slow circuit of the table, “to hold off the ravaging of our more carnal, animalistic desires until midnight. The traditions call for patience

wine first, conversation, the slow and beautiful unveiling of what the wolf wants. But it seems my dearest flame is impatient.” He glances at me with a smile that drips with indulgent affection,

–

CHATTI ROBE STEPS DY NAKED

like I’m a child who opened her Christmas presents early. “So we begin now.”

He reaches for the wine bottle at the centre of the table and holds it up to the candlelight.

The liquid inside catches the flame and glows deep, dark red, almost black at the edges.

“In your glasses is a carefully concentrated dosage of lunar hellebore – the sweetest nectar the old world ever cultivated. Extinct in the wild. Preserved only by families who remember the traditions.” He sets the bottle down and a guard appears at his elbow with a fresh vial–identical to the one he just forced down my throat – and tips it into Rafael’s own glass. The liquid swirls into the wine like ink into water. “It is promised to make us monsters. Slaves to our desires and the need to find our soul’s hunger in skin against skin and a want so violent we transcend the cages of civility we’ve built around ourselves.”

He raises his glass and every staff–guest raises theirs in unison.

“Tonight, we toast to Ember.” His eyes find mine across the room. “Ember Montenegro. My sweetest flame. My violent delight. My fated.”

He drinks. Deep and long, draining the glass, and the effect is almost immediate – his pupils blow wide, his jaw clenches, and a growl rolls up from his chest that vibrates through the dining room floor.

His eyes flash full gold, his wolf surging to the surface with a hunger that rearranges every line of his face into something feral and worshipful.

The staff–guests drink. And the room transforms.

It happens in seconds.

A man at the far end of the table lunges across the crystal and silverware to grab the woman beside him, pulling her into a kiss so violent it knocks their chairs over.

A groan fills the room, then another, then the wet sounds of mouths and hands and bodies responding to whatever Rafael just fed them, the polite dinner–party facade dissolving into something primal and graceless.

Glasses shatter. Candles topple. Fire catching onto the fabric, but no one cares.

Two more couples collide across the table and the sound of ripping fabric and desperate moaning fills the

lodge.

Rafael watches the chaos bloom around him with a satisfied expression, and then his golden eyes swing back to me and the grin that splits his face is pure feral delight – the last veneer of the charming gentleman finally, irrevocably gone.

“At last,” he breathes. “We consummate.”

His claws slip from his fingertips, and he stares at them for a moment with something like surprise, like the speed of the transformation has caught even him off guard.

He flexes his fingers, steadies himself, and I can see him fighting for control, wrestling the wolf back

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