TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 283

CHAPTER 212: CELESTE TEST

EMBER’S POV

Nathaniel nods. “Logan was hunting for ammunition during the trial, and maybe far before they made it known. He kept circling the night Celeste died, perhaps in a bid to use her case against Knox. But I believe he stumbled on something else. Something larger that no effort of my cover–up could completely erase. I’d documented a rogue attack in papers in case questions were ever asked, but there isn’t enough that can be done when you are hiding the gruesome death of over 60 people. He had sources who could easily

confirm it. He was getting close.” Nathaniel draws a line on the board: FLASH DRIVE with an arrow

pointing to LOGAN. “I calculated that if I gave him something scandalous enough to feel like a victory,

something that would damage the trial, but not be disastrous enough to destroy Knox’s reign, Logan would stop digging. The recording of Knox and Ember’s original arrangement was embarrassing, damaging to the trial, but survivable. The flash drive is not survivable.”

“So you sacrificed my relationship with Ember,” Knox says, “to protect me from a bigger threat.”

“Yes.”

“Without asking me.”

“You would have said no.”

“Because it was a shit plan, Nathaniel!”

“In retrospect, I agree. Logan didn’t stop. He never stops.” Nathaniel writes FAILED beside the arrow and circles it. “And now he has the flash drive and eleven hours left on his ultimatum.”

Queenie speaks for the first time, softly from her corner of the sofa.

“I need you all to know that when Nathaniel asked me to help with the recording, I fought him on it. I told him it would destroy Ember. Nathaniel said the alternative was worse.” She looks at me with red–rimmed eyes. “I chose wrong. I know that now. But I need you to know didn’t choose easily.”

I nod. I’m not ready to absolve her, but I’m done punishing her in silence.

“I know, Queenie.”

Knox shifts under me, his hand leaving my hip to run through his hair with the specific agitation of a man whose patience is eroding by the second.

“Is that everything? The massacre, the injection, the recording. Is that the full scope of your decade of lies, or is there MORE, Nathaniel? Because I’d rather eat it all at once than keep finding new courses.”

Nathaniel goes still. The kind of still that I’ve learned to recognise in wolves as the moment before something irreversible happens.

“There’s more,” he says.

Knox laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound.

“Of course there is.”

Nathaniel uncaps the marker again. His hand is shaking now, visibly, and the line he draws on the board is uneven. He writes two words.

CELESTE TEST.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

Nathaniel doesn’t answer me.

He’s looking at Knox with an expression I’ve never seen on him before, something that goes beyond guilt

into the territory of a man standing at the edge of a confession that will cost him everything he has left.

“Knox. What I’m about to tell you is the thing I swore I would take to my grave. I have no defence. I have no justification that holds. I have only the truth and whatever you decide to do with it afterwards.”

The room has gone so quiet I can hear the snow settling on the roof.

“Before the massacre,” Nathaniel begins, his voice barely holding its shape, “I had been studying your feral gene for years. Tracking patterns, triggers, escalation markers. And I had a theory – a theory supported by every ancient text I’d found – that the mate bond, if strong enough, could subdue the gene. That the bond between true mates could serve as an anchor powerful enough to override the feral response, even under

extreme emotional stress.”

“Get to the point, Nathaniel.”

“I needed to test it.” He swallows. “I needed to create a controlled scenario where your mate bond would be pushed to its absolute limit, so I could observe whether it held you together or whether the gene overwhelmed it. Maximum stress. Maximum emotional provocation. And the most extreme trigger for a

bonded Lycan is-”

“Mate betrayal,” I finish, because the shape of it is assembling in my mind before Nathaniel finishes, and the picture is making me sick.

“Celeste and Kieran had a closeness that made Knox uncomfortable,” Nathaniel continues. “I’d noted it in my journal months before. They were friends – genuinely. But the way Kieran looked at her, the way she laughed around him, the amount of time they spent together when Knox was away on pack business. Knox noticed. He didn’t say anything because Knox doesn’t SAY things, he bottles them and lets them ferment. But I could see the jealousy. The way his eyes tracked them when they were in the same room. Phantom’s

agitation.”

Knox’s hand tightens on my hip. A slow, compressive grip that tells me he remembers the jealousy even if

he won’t say so.

“I used it,” Nathaniel says, and the self–loathing in his voice is so thick it changes the texture of the air. “1 went to Celeste. I told her I was working on a treatment for Knox’s feral gene. I told her I needed her help

with a specific scenariu designed to test the bond’s stability under stress. I told her it was MEDICAL. That it was controlled. That I would be monitoring from the adjacent property with a full team ready to

intervene.”

“What did you ask her to do?” Knox’s voice is terrifyingly flat.

“I asked her to create a situation that would appear, from the outside, as intimate contact with Kieran.

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