TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 286

CHAPTER 215: WE DON’T KILL OUR FRIENDS

EMBER’S POV

A sound escapes him. Broken and startled, a small laugh that somehow makes it through the madness.

“You’re insane,” he says. “You want me to make the man who killed sixty–three people a hypothetical GODPARENT”

“I want you to sit back down in that chair and hold me and let me anchor you while we figure out what the hell we do next. The godparent discussion, hypothetical or otherwise, can wait until I’ve had significantly more coffee and significantly less trauma.”

His hand opens.

Nathaniel drops to the floor in a heap, gasping, clutching his throat.

Queenie doesn’t rush to him this time.

Rather, she turns away, going to the window with her back to the room and her arms around herself, and

the distance between her and her husband on the floor is three feet and a thousand miles simultaneously.

Knox’s arms close around me. Crushing.

His face in my neck, his body shaking, and the claws retract against my back one by one, human fingers replacing them, and the gold drains from his eyes in a slow tide that leaves nothing behind but

devastation.

I hold him. My hand in his hair. His tears are hot against my neck. And over his shoulder, I look at Nathaniel on the floor, and the fury in my chest is breathing hot and unforgiving.

“You will answer for this,” I say to Nathaniel. “Not today. Today we survive. Today, we deal with Logan, the flash drive, and the hours we have left. But when this is over, Nathaniel, you and I are going to have a conversation about what you stole from this man and from those sixty–three people and from the two children who were hiding under a bed, hoping the monster would pass them by. And that conversation will

r not be gentle.”

Nathaniel looks at me from the floor with his crushed throat and his streaming eyes and nods.

“We don’t kill our friends,” I whisper into Knox’s hair. “Even when they deserve it.”

“He’s not my friend.” His voice is muffled against my neck. “He’s the reason I’m a monster.”

“You are not a monster. You are the sixty–fourth victim. And the man on the floor knows it, and he will LIVE with knowing it, Knox. Every single day. That’s worse than anything your claws could do to him.”

He pulls back and looks at me, and his face is a disaster, tear–streaked and bruised and blotchy and stripped of every defence he’s ever built, and it is the most devastated and most human face I have ever

seen.

I love you,” he says, like it’s the only true thing left in a room full of wreckage.

“I love you too. Now sit down before your knees give out.”

He sits. I sit in his lap. His arms lock around me and don’t let go.

Nathaniel pulls himself upright alone. His throat is bruising in finger–shaped marks that overlay the bandaged gash from before.

He looks at Queenie’s back, and something in his face crumbles further, because the woman who has defended him through every revelation tonight just learned the one thing she cannot defend.

“I deserve that,” Nathaniel rasps.

“You deserve considerably worse,” Knox says into my neck. “And the only reason you’re still breathing is sitting in my lap.”

“Repeat it,” I say softly. “One more time.”

“We don’t kill our friends.” A long pause. “I disagree with this policy. But I’ll comply under protest.”

The tension in the room drops from lethal to merely unbearable. I stay in Knox’s lap with his arms locked

around me and his face in my hair.

I give him a minute. Two. However many he needs to reassemble himself into someone who can sit in this

room and keep listening.

Then I say: “Nathaniel. Sit down. We’re not done.”

He sits. Slowly. His hands are on his bruised throat.

“I have questions,” I say. “And they’re not about Celeste, because I think Knox has heard enough about Celeste for one morning, and we can revisit the part where you’re a monster later. Right now I need to talk

about ME.”

Nathaniel nods.

“The journal entries about my bloodline. Dr Langford’s findings. The thing you said in the car about my blood attracting predators and the connections going back centuries.” I lean forward in Knox’s lap, his arms still around my waist, and I feel his attention sharpen behind me because this is the part that concerns our future, not just our past. “Tell me what you actually know versus what you’re guessing.” Nathaniel picks up the marker again, then writes EMBER on a fresh section of the board, draws a line down from it and writes two branches: CONFIRMED and THEORY.

Under CONFIRMED: “Dr Langford ran a full panel on your blood after the convoy. Your wolf signature doesn’t match any modern classification. You have dormant bloodline markers that haven’t appeared in an active wolf in documented history, at least not in any North American records. The claws that tore through Gale, the healing after, those should be physically impossible for any wolf classified as omega. Your official designation is wrong. Whatever you are, you are not an omega.”

“Okoy,” I say slowly. “Then what am I?”

“That’s where confirmed ends and theory begins.” He moves to the other branch. “I need to understand what happened at Rafael’s lodge. You mentioned in the car that your wolf caused some kind of incident.” Queenie nods from the window, turning slightly.

“Ember said her wolf did something, and Rafael’s men ended up shooting each other. But she never explained what actually happened.”

I exhale. Knox’s thumb traces a slow circle on my hip, and the steadiness of the contact gives me somewhere to anchor while I go back to the worst room I’ve ever beert in.

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