TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 288

CHAPTER 217: HOW COMFORTING

EMBER’S POV

The room goes quiet. Everyone is looking at me.

“Rafael is only one part of it,” I say slowly “If we go by everything Nathaniel just told us, the real danger was never Rafael. It’s the gene itself. Having Knox susceptible to it means he’s one bad day away from another episode. One drugging.” I look at Nathaniel, and the word lands exactly where I aim it. “One person cruel enough to weaponise his weakness against him. Or-” My voice catches. “Or if something ever went wrong with me. If we have a mature bond and I’m hurt, or taken, or killed, he could lose his mind entirely. The bond that’s supposed to cure him becomes the detonator instead. And that means-”

“A new massacre,” Nathaniel supplies quietly. “Potentially worse than the first. A fully bonded Lycan without an anchor is exponentially more dangerous than an unbonded one. The bond supercharges every instinct. Including the feral ones.”

Knox is quiet for a long time. His chest rises and falls against my back in measured breaths.

Then he speaks.

“Then we figure out your wolf.” His voice is rough but certain. “Whatever Sapphire is, whatever your bloodline needs to fully manifest, whatever it takes to make you the anchor that holds we figure it out. Before anything else. Because none of the rest matters if we don’t solve this first.”

“There’s another question,” I say. “One that nobody’s answered and I don’t think anyone CAN answer, but I need it on the board anyway.” I point at Knox. “Lycans don’t get second chance mates. That’s what every text says. The bond dies with the first mate, and there are no do–overs. But Sapphire called Knox our TRUE mate. Not a second chance. TRUE. And Phantom must be feeling something, right? So either every text ever written about Lycan mate bonds is wrong, or…”

“Or the first bond wasn’t the true one,” Queenie says softly, and the room goes still.

Nathaniel puts the marker down, picks it up, and puts it down again.

“I have thought about this,” he says slowly. “Extensively. And I have no answer that satisfies. What I DO know is that I watched Knox’s wolf respond to Ember with an intensity I never saw with Celeste. Not even close. With Celeste, the bond was… appropriate. Functional. The mate bond hummed the way textbooks say it should. With Ember, I sensed trouble in ways that made me worried. I’ve never seen that. I’ve never READ about that. A Lycan wolf going completely obsessed in the presence of a new woman is not in any

record I’ve found.”

“Maybe because the records don’t account for whatever Ember is,” Knox says.

“Maybe. Or maybe the records were written by wolves who never encountered a bond between a Lycan and whatever Ember’s bloodline produces. A pairing that hasn’t existed in centuries wouldn’t HAVE

documentation.”

& CHATHA 2****WALL

Hook at the whiteboard. GELESTE’S NIGHT The names. The numbers. EMBER with her two branches SAPPHIRE with the scribbled theories. And the words CELESTE TEST that nobody wants to look at.

“Bottom line it for me, Nathaniel,” I say. “All the research, all the theories, all the ancient texts and Langford’s bloodwork and your decade of documentation. What do you ACTUALLY believe I am?”

Nathaniel stares at the board for a long time.

“I believe you’re carrying a bloodline that was supposed to be extinct. i believe your wolf is something that hasn’t walked in generations. I believe that whatever you are, you were designed by evolution or by the Goddess or by sheer genetic miracle to be the other half of what Knox carries. Two pieces of a system that is unfounded” He looks at me. “I believe you’re the cure, Ember. For Knox. For the gene. For all of it. But I also believe that if the bond goes wrong, if your power isn’t fully realised before it’s tested, you won’t just fail to cure him. You’ll both die. And possibly take a significant portion of whoever’s standing nearby with you.”

“Comforting,” Knox says dryly.

“I’m well past trying to be comforting. I’m trying to be honest for the first time in ten years, and it’s significantly harder than lying, which I was frankly excellent at.”

Knox makes a sound that might, in a generous interpretation, be amusement.

“You were adequate at lying. I found your journal in an unlocked cabin.”

“The drawer was locked.”

“The drawer was held shut by a piece of wood that I broke with my thumb.”

“I’ll note the security failure for future reference.”

“There won’t BE a future reference, Nathaniel, because if you ever keep a journal about me again, I will

feed it to you page by page.”

The exchange is not forgiveness. It’s not even close to forgiveness.

But it’s two men who have known each other for twenty years finding the muscle mempry communication under the rubble, and that’s something.

of

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify