TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 270

CHAPTER 200: ONE CHOICE

KNOX’S POV

Nathaniel drops to the mud

Queenie rushes to him, wrapping herself around him, pressing her hands to the marks my fingers left on his throat. He waves her off and gets to his knees again, facing me, head bowed. Waiting.

I turn back to the river. Ember is standing in the shallows, the water around her knees, my violence and Nathaniel’s plea still hanging in the cold air between all of us.

She’s shaking- the heat fading, the cold taking over, her body finally coming down from the compound’s assault.

But her eyes, when they find mine, hold something I haven’t seen directed at me in a very long time.

Trust. Fragile, bruised, conditional trust, the kind that has survived everything we’ve done to each other and is still standing and still choosing to stand and still reaching for me across the distance of our

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damage.

We need to move.

Whatever bullshit Logan said comes back to me. But that would be dealt with later.

For now, Ember needs warmth and shelter and medical attention.

Rafael’s compound is the closest structure – empty now, his staff scattered by the chaos, the lodge standing dark and stocked and secure.

arms, legs, her face in my neck, her I wade back into the river and pick Ember up. She wraps around me body pressed against mine – and I carry her out of the water and into the forest.

Nathaniel and Queenie follow at a distance because they know, without being told, that the radius of my tolerance is approximately fifteen feet and everything inside it belongs to Ember and me and arıyone who crosses the line does so at their own risk.

We walk through the wreckage. Past the overturned car. Past the bodies of the wolves I killed, already cooling in the snow.

Past the spot where Rafael lies motionless and broken, and I don’t look down. I have no business with the

dead.

The compound appears through the trees. I carry Ember through the front doors of Rafael Montenegro’s own home and the irony of it is not lost on me.

The predator’s lair becoming the sanctuary, the scene of the crime becoming the place of healing.

We pass the dining room where the Bacchanal was staged and I see it – the long table, the crystal, the candles burned to stubs, the chair where silk restraints still hang from the armrests

MAD

and something in

CHAPTER 20FONT CHOICE

my expression makes Nathaniel and Qucenie stop breathing.

carry her upstairs and find a bedroom that doesn’t carry his scent, then kick the door shut behind us. The room is dark with clean sheets. A bed that belongs to no one.

I lay Ember down with a care that contradicts every violent thing I’ve done tonight and pull the blankets over her and sit on the edge of the bed with her hand in mine and my back to the door like a guard dog who has found his post and intends to die on it.

Her temperature is stabilising. Her breathing is evening out. The compound’s hold is loosening, wave by wave, the fire in her blood cooling to embers.

She’s going to be okay. She’s going to live.

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