TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 271

CHAPTER 201: ALIVE AND BREATHING

EMBER’S POV

My body feels like it was mauled by a truck, ten times, and reversed.

The unfamiliar ceiling spins above me in Jazy circles that my brain can’t correct, and the room smells like laundry detergent that isn’t mine and a shirt collar against my neck that smells like Knox.

And that last detail is the one my body grabs onto before my brain has finished loading – the scent of him wrapped around me, which means someone undressed me and put me in this and the someone was him and I am safe.

I turn my head and he’s already moving.

From the floor – he’s been on the floor, back against the wall, between me and the door – and he crosses the space so fast his injuries don’t have time to register their complaints.

His hands find my face and his fingers are pressing into my pulse points, my jaw, my neck, shaking badly,

and the look on his face before he has time to arrange it into something composed is the most terrified

expression I have ever seen on Knox Volkov.

And Knox Volkov is afraid of nothing.

“There you are.” His voice is wrecked. Hoarse in a way that tells me he hasn’t spoken in hours, maybe longer, hasn’t used his throat for anything except breathing and listening to me breathe.

His thumbs trace my cheekbones and his forehead drops to mine and he just stays there, eyes closed,

inhaling me.

Knox Volkov does not do this. Knox Volkov does not press his face against a woman and tremble.

But he’s doing it now, and I can feel every tremor running through him into me.

“Hi,” I squeak. “How long have I been out?”

“Thirty–one hours.”

(*

“Thirty-” I try to sit up and my body stages a full rebellion, every muscle screaming, and I collapse back against the pillow. “You’re lying.”

“Thirty–one hours and change. You stopped breathing twice. I stopped counting ceiling cracks at four hundred and twelve.” His mouth twitches, just barely. “The plaster in this room is in terrible condition. Rafael had money for dresses but not for basic home maintenance. Shameful, really”

I laugh.

deflect the terror with

It comes out cracked and surprised and it hurts my ribs and I don’t care because he just made me laugh thirty seconds after regaining consciousness and that is such a Knox thing to do dry observation, make the unbearable bearable by being an arsehole about ceiling plaster

CHAPTER 20M ALD AND PREATHING

“Have you slept?”

“No

“Eaten?”

“Ember.”

“That’s a no.”

“I ate some crackers around hour nineteen. They were stale. I have thoughts about Rafael’s pantry organisation that I’ll share when you’re stronger.”

“Knax, you can’t just sit on a floor for thirty–one hours without

“I can and I did and I’d do it for thirty–one more, so let’s not have this argument because you’ll lose and you hate losing and I don’t want the first thing we do in this room to be a fight.” He pulls back enough to look at me and his eyes are red–rimmed and bruised underneath and so soft it makes my chest crack. “Although if you’re feeling well enough to nag me, that’s actually the best news I’ve had all day. The nagging means your lungs work and your brain works and your personality survived intact, which I was not entirely certain of at hour fourteen when your heart rate dipped and I-”

He stops and swallows.

And the thing he swallowed was big, I can tell, because his jaw works twice and his eyes go bright and he

looks away from me for the first time since I woke up.

“Hey.” I catch his face and bring it back to mine. “I’m here now.”

“I know.”

“I’m breathing. See? In and out.”

“I’ve been checking. Obsessively. To a degree that would concern a medical professional.”

“Then stop looking at me like I’m going to disappear.”

“I’ll work on that. Give me a decade or two.”

pull him down and kiss him.

Γ

It’s a terrible kiss – my lips are cracked and his are split and we both taste like someone who’s been through a war, which is accurate – but his hand slides into my hair and he makes a sound against my mouth that lives somewhere between relief and grief and I feel it in my spine.

When we separate, neither of us goes far. Foreheads touching. Noses brushing.

“Is Rafael dead?” I ask against his mouth.

“Very.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify