TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 274

CHAPTER 204: LANDED FOR YOU

EMBER’S POV

“Knox-”

“So I loved her from behind glass. Never fully committed, never fully gone. And she stayed anyway because she was brave and stubborn and she believed I’d eventually let her in, and I didn’t, Ember. I never let her in. Not all the way. She wanted more, and she never said it out loud, but she resented me. She hated the man I was and couldn’t be and hated the goddess even more for trapping her with the worst of men. And then she died and I couldn’t even remember how because my mind erased the memories to protect me from the guilt, and the IRONY-” His laugh is bitter and short. “The irony is that the guilt found me anyway. It’s been finding me every day for ten years.”

“That is not what I was saying at the lodge.”

“It’s what I heard.”

“Then you heard wrong.” I turn on the stool to face him fully. “What I SAID was cruel and designed to wound, Knox. Don’t twist it into something noble to play the martyr. I was wrong by every standard and I won’t let you carry that blame for me.” I take a breath. “The 2016 thing hurt me. It hit me in my most

vulnerable place – the place where there’s still a little girl who has never once been in control of her own

life. It reached into those wounds and tore me open to bleed, because I had trusted you. And I understand

now that you were a spectacular arsehole back then. But Knox – every moment since we’ve met has been

the best of my entire life. Despite the walls and the terrible fights, you have given me the closest I have

ever come to peace. To safety. To being seen and understood and teased and valued and WANTED. That is not the monster I made you out to be in that room. I was just so angry.” My voice wavers. “And even then, that anger only made me a hypocrite, because I was no better. I hid the truth about Nathaniel from you. And unlike then, I understand now how keeping it felt like protecting you. I understand that it was never my job to decide what truths you could handle. I understand now that I trust you enough to make the right call over your own life – much like you should have trusted me with the parts of yourself you weren’t proudest of. Much like I need you to trust me now, Knox. Fully. Without one foot already out the

r door and the expectation of the worst.”

He catches my face in his hands and pulls me closer, his grip fierce and tender at once.

“I know that now, Ember. Fuck – I know so much right now it’s drowning me, and I wish I could claw my way back to that room and do it over. Hold you. Crawl if you demanded it. Tell you in every way I know, the best ones and the worst ones, that you are nothing like Celeste. You are nothing like any woman I have ever met. And even if you sink an arrow straight through my chest, I’d rather it be your hand on the bow than anyone else’s.” He exhales, raw and shaking. “I mean–fuck, Ember. Nathaniel would have been a dead man ages ago if you’d told me. Have you MET my temper? I’m atrocious at this. I’d start a war over the wrong dessert choice. But I understand it now. All of it. Better than I ever have.”

A laugh chokes its way out of me, small and wet, stealing space between my sobs.

S CHAPTER 204 HANDED FOR YOU

“But trusting is dangerous, Knox.” My fingers curtinto the front of his shirt. “That puts me on a pedestal I’ll only fall from. What if I hurt you again – the way she did? I know I would never willingly do anything to cause you pain, but I’m scared. What if I prove you right? Or worse what if I’m never worth the depth of your…” I trail off, grasping. “Your heart. The one thing you’ve guarded since this whole hoax of a fake arrangement began. I’m scared of wanting you this much and watching you hold me at arm’s length and never knowing if you’re going to truly let me in or if I’m going to spend the rest of my life orbiting a man who orbits me back but never, ever settles. Never lands.”

Something shifts in his face. Something desperate and raw and so full of emotion it steals my next breath clean out of my lungs.

“I landed.” His voice cracks on it. “In a fucking river in Alaska. I landed, Ember. I landed so hard I don’t know how to take off again. I don’t WANT to take off again. I want-” He runs his hand through his hair and the frustration in the gesture is so human, so un–king, so entirely Knox that it makes my chest ache. “I know this doesn’t make sense right now. But I want to be the man my mother wrote about in her letter. The one who chooses to stay. She left me a letter – in Zürich, at my family’s house, the housekeeper kept it for me for over twenty years – and she wrote ‘choose to stay even when staying is the hardest thing in the world‘ and I read those words in my dead mother’s handwriting and realised I had already failed, because I was standing in Switzerland while you were being-”

“No. No-” I pull his face to mine, my heart slamming. “Don’t do that, Knox. None of what happened was

your fault. None of it. And you came back. You came back for me even when I didn’t deserve it.”

“Because Rayana told me what Rafael was planning. If she hadn’t-”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify