TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 273

CHAPTER 203: THOSE PRETTY TEARS

EMBER’S POV

Knox stiffens.

His hand lifts from my thigh and he shifts on the stool and I can see him reaching for the deflection before it’s even fully formed.

“You just woke up. We can talk about this another time, there’s no rush-”

“No.” I turn to face him. “I’m finally brave enough and I can’t bear one more second sitting next to you pretending everything is fine if we don’t go back to that day. I need us to go back to that day, Knox.” My eyes find his and I let him see everything – the fear, the shame, the desperate need to clean this wound before it festers any further. “Please.”

–

He holds my gaze for a long moment. Then he sighs, quiet and resigned, and nods once.

“Thank you.”

I take a breath.

“The things I said to you i–in the lodge. I need you to-” I pick at the edge of the bread crust and can’t look at him. “The Celeste thing. What I said about her d–death being a mercy. That was-” My voice is small and

thin and I hate the sound of it. “I don’t know how to start this.”

“Start anywhere.”.

“I knew what I was doing.” It comes out barely above a whisper. “When I said it. I knew. I went looking for the worst possible thing I could find and I found it and I-” I suck in a sharp breath. Then another. And

somewhere between the second breath and the third, my voice stops shaking and starts steadying.

I lift my head and meet his gaze.

“I aimed it at the one place I knew you couldn’t protect. And I pulled the trigger because I wanted you to feel what I was feeling. I wanted you on the floor. I wanted you gutted.” The tears come and I let them.” And it worked. I watched the light go out of your eyes and I felt POWERFUL and that power lasted about three seconds before it turned to acid in my mouth and I have been choking on it ever since.”

Knox is very still, and I dont’t know what to make of that. But I don’t let it stop me either.

“I’m not apologising because I should. I’m apologising because I need you to hear me say that I know what I did. I am capable of cruelty, Knox. When I’m hurt enough, I reach for the thing that kills. I did it to you and it haunts me.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand. “I can’t undo it. I can’t take those words back and put them somewhere they never existed. But I can promise you that I will never use Celeste against you again. I will never reach for a dead woman to fight my battles. And I will spend the rest of whatever this is learning to be honest without cruel, without hurting you, Knox. I’d do whatever it takes to never be that version of me again.”

CHAPTER 20 NOSE PRETTY TEARS

All that follows is silence.

Knox’s jaw is working and his eyes are fixed somewhere between my face and the counter and I can see him building up to something, but the last thing I expect is his chuckle.

My brows furrow. “Did I did I say something wrong?”

He shakes his head. The chuckle turns bitter, scraping against something raw in his throat, and he swears under his breath. “I’d be damned.”

“Knox-”

“Why would you waste those pretty tears on me right now?” He shifts closer on the stool and his thumb catches the wet streak on my cheek, wiping it away.

Then he brings his thumb to his mouth and tastes it, and the gesture is so unexpected and so strangely intimate that my brain stalls completely.

I open my mouth to speak and he shakes his head.

“My turn.” His voice is rougher now, lower, and the bitter edge hasn’t left. “And unlike you, I have a very clear memory of how we got here. Every word and every choice. If there’s anyone who dragged Celeste’s name into that room, Ember, it was me.”

His voice catches. He inhales through his nose, holds it, and lets it go.

“I crossed those lines. All of them. I pulled her into the mud between us and then I shoved you down into

that same dirt – made you stand in her shadow, made you wonder if you were just the next woman in a

dead woman’s shoes. I fucking compared you to her, Ember. And I did it to validate my fears. My worst

insecurities. Every pathetic reason I’ve ever built to convince myself that running is safer than staying.” His jaw locks. “And who cares if you said Celeste. Who cares if you brought a dead woman into it when your words were only the truth, Ember. Every single one. Yes, it hurt, but maybe it needed to hurt. Maybe it needed to gut me with the truth I’d spent years running from. Maybe I’d rather have your cruelest words

than not have you at all.”

“No, Knox-”

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