TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 294

CHAPTER 223: FATHER OF THE YEAR

EMBER’S POV

“Never. Not once. Not his name, not his bloodline, not where he was from. Just that the affair was brief and that whatever he was connected to scared her badly enough to disappear.”

“What did you do? When she told you.”

Maurice’s face changes.

“I lost my mind.” He says it plainly. “I put my fist through the kitchen wall. That wall, right there.” He nods toward a patch near the doorway where the paint doesn’t quite match the rest. “Then I got in the car and drove to every bar in a thirty–mile radius and drank until they stopped serving me. Then I drove home and drank everything in the house. Then I went to sleep on the lawn because I couldn’t find the front door.”

“While I was inside.”

“Yes. Probably alone and confused, because your mother had gone to a friend’s and the man you thought was your father was lying shit–faced in the grass trying to make the stars stop spinning.” His voice thickens. “I woke up the next morning with frost on my jacket and you standing over me in your pyjamas. You’d come outside to find me. You were carrying a blanket. You were trying to cover me up because you thought I was cold.”

Something hot presses behind my eyes and I blink it back with force. No. I am not crying in this kitchen. Not here. Not for this.

“How touching,” I say, and the coldness in my voice is a wall I’m building brick by brick. “The three–year–old took care of the grown man. Lovely memory, Dad.”

He flinches.

“I deserve that.”

“You deserve worse. But keep going.” I take a breath. “What do you know about her life before you? Before

Alaska?”

Maurice almost laughs but the sound comes out hollow.

“Devika didn’t exactly hand me a biography. What I pieced together over the years was mostly from her drunk confessions and the lies she forgot she’d already contradicted.” He rubs his jaw. “She was a traveller. That much I know for sure. She’d been everywhere – kingdoms, cities, nations I’d never heard of The eastern territories, the coastal packs, the old–world courts in Europe. She told people she’d been an exotic dancer, but honestly I don’t think she danced a day in her life. She just tried very hard to be noticed. Climbed every golden ladder she could find, and when the rungs broke under her, she found another one.”

“And when the ladders ran out, she found you.”

“And when the ladders ran out, she found a man in a nice car and assumed he owned it.” The bitterness is

CURANTERARMHCT THE YEAR

thick enough to taste. “Alaska was her hiding place, Ember. Not her home. She settled here because of you. Before you, she never stayed anywhere longer than a season.”

“Did you know about the suppresants?” I ask, steering us back. “When did those start?”

“When you were about two. Maurice’s hands tighten on the mug. “You started doing things. Small things at first. Your eyes would catch the light and flash silver for a second. Wolves in the neighbourhood would behave strangely around you – following you in the park, sitting outside the house at night, whining at the front door like they were trying to get to you. Your mother was terrified. She contacted someone, a woman, and the strange woman started coming.”

“How often?”

“Twice a year at least. Always in a long black car with tinted windows. Always at night.” His eyes go distant, reaching for details he hasn’t visited in years. “She never came alone. There were always two girls with her. Young. Twins, I think, or close enough in age to pass for it. Dark hair. Serious faces. They’d sit in the car while the woman came inside, or sometimes she’d bring them to the door and they’d stand behind her like little soldiers.”

Something tugs at the base of my skull. A familiarity I can’t place, a shape that almost fits a gap I didn’t know existed. Twin girls. A long black car. I frown but I can’t grab the thread before it slips away.

“Did you ever learn their names? The girls?”

“No. I didn’t care enough to ask and the woman didn’t volunteer. She’d come in, check on you – your eyes, your behaviour, how you were sleeping, eating, whether you’d shown any new signs. Then she’d leave something with your mother. The drops, at first. Small bottles, enough for six months. Your mother would put them in your cereal, your juice. Eventually everything.”

“And you let her.”

“I let her.” He doesn’t flinch from it. “I should have demanded to know what was being given to my child and why. I should have taken the bottle and had it tested. I should have called a doctor or a healer or anyone with half a brain and asked what the hell my wife was pouring into my daughter’s breakfast. But by then I was deep in the drinking, and after the fight, after finding out the truth, I-” He breathes in painfully. “I told myself it wasn’t my business anymore. That you were someone else’s child and the drops were your

mother’s problem. I used the paternity as my excuse to stop caring and the bottle as my permission to

stop paying attention.”

I chuckled now, a dry, bitter sound.

“Father of the year, right?”

His eyes dim. “The worst.”

“That’s generous.”

“I agree.”

CHAPTER OWNER OF THE YEAR

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