TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 256

CHAPTER 187: THE CHASE

EMBER’S POV

The staff–guests are screaming, diving under the table, trampling each other toward exits.

I don’t understand what she did and I don’t have time to ask because the path to the door is clear and adrenaline is shooting up my spine and my wolf is screaming: RUN.

I run.

Barefoot, bleeding from where the guards‘ nails bit into my arms, the red dress but I hold on desperately to it like a towel, even as it flows behind like a cape.

I hit the lodge doors at full speed and the cold slams into me and I don’t feel it because Sapphire is in my veins now, lending me her heat, her speed, her ancient and furious refusal to be caged.

The compound grounds blur past me – the cabins, the hot springs steaming in the dark, the tree line approaching with agonising slowness.

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Behind me the lodge is a chaos of shouting and gunfire and broken glass, and somewhere in the middle of

it Rafael’s voice rises above the rest, raw and commanding, bellowing orders at men who are too busy trying to kill each other to listen.

I hit the tree line and the forest swallows me, dark and dense. Snow deep enough to slow me down,

branches grabbing at the dress, at my hair, at exposed skin.

My feet are numb already – bare on frozen ground but Sapphire won’t let me stop.

She pushes me forward with a relentless, instinctive urgency that overrides pain and cold and the growing

heat in my core that means the compound is working, the vial is doing what Rafael designed it to do, and I

don’t have long before my body starts betraying me in ways I can’t fight anymore.

The compound perimeter is still extremely guarded. I can see them – Rafael’s security positioned at intervals, flashlights cutting through the dark.

I change direction, veering east, finding gaps between their positions, moving through the shadows the way prey moves when it knows the territory better than the hunter does

But I don’t know this territory. I don’t know these woods.

I’m running blind through unfamiliar forest in the dark in a torn dress with no shoes and a fire building inside me that makes my skin flush and my thoughts blur at the edges.

And every minute that passes the heat takes a little more of my clarity and replaces it with something desperate and consuming, drowning Sapphire’s leading voice and strength.

I hear them behind me, mobilizing.

Dogs or wolves or men or all three the sounds of pursuit crashing through the forest, growls closing the

F CHAPTER IS THE CUINTE

distance from all sides, and Rafael’s howl reverberating through the forest. The howl of an Alpha.

A beast.

I can’t lend you my strength for long. Sapphire’s voice fills my mind. We are still at odds, you and I, and your body is too weak for a full shift. But you must keep running. Faster than you have ever run. And you must reach out to him the one we yearn for Our true mate.

The word stops me mid–stride. Mate. Our true mate. Knox? KNOX VOLKOV?

Sapphire has never named this out loud before this moment. Never given any signs beyond her magnetic pull to him, her restless hunger whenever he’s near.

Surely a true mate bond reveals itself much faster than this- from the first touch, the first meeting. Not weeks into a fake arrangement.

“What do you mean mate? Lycans don’t get second chance-”

HIDE, EMBER!

I find a fallen tree and press myself behind it, making my body as small as possible, clamping my hand over my mouth to muffle my breathing.

My heart is so loud in my ears I’m certain they can track me by sound alone.

The heat pulses through me – a wave that starts at my core and spreads outward, flushing my skin, tightening my muscles, turning my thoughts soft and liquid.

I press my thighs together and bite down on my hand hard enough to taste blood because the alternative is making a sound that will bring every wolf in these woods directly to me.

Not yet, Sapphire whispers. Hold on. Not yet.

The footsteps get closer. Then pass. Then fade.

I wait until the silence feels real, and then I move again – slower now, more careful, placing each bare foot on the least frozen patch of ground I can find.

(‘

The perimeter has to end somewhere. The forest has to connect to a road, a trail, something that leads away from this compound and this man and this night.

The edge of the property appears through the trees – a gap in the security line where two guards have abandoned their position, probably drawn back toward the lodge by the chaos Sapphire created.

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