TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 301

CHAPTER 230: MUTUAL AGREEMENT

KNOX’S POV

“I’m not revealing his location while you’re holding a trigger that could end my reign.”

“And I’m not surrendering my only leverage on the word of a man who is illegally detaining my chosen mate.”

We stare at each other. Two men at an impasse built from identical materials – love and fear and the absolute unwillingness to blink first.

In another life, I think I might have liked Logan.

The sheer, obstinate, self–destructive devotion is something I understand at a molecular level, and under different circumstances – circumstances that don’t involve him threatening to expose the worst night of my life I could almost respect it.

“Gale is alive,” I say. “Unharmed. Being held in a location I control. I’m prepared to take you to him personally.”

“After I give you the drive.”

“After you disarm the trigger and tell me where the drive is stored.”

“No.”

“Logan.”

“No.” He stands. The crate screeches against concrete. “I’ve been reasonable. I gave you forty–eight hours.

I came alone. I let you choose the location. But I’m not dismantling my only protection before I see proof

that the man I love is still alive.”

The man I love. He says it without flinching, without hedging, without the careful deflection that men in our world usually employ when discussing love for another mah,

He says it the way I said it to Ember this morning – like a fact, like gravity, like something so fundamental to his existence that qualifying it would be absurd.

“I can’t show you Gale without revealing his location. And I can’t reveal his location while you hold a weapon aimed at my throne.”

“Then we have a problem.”

“We have a solvable problem. If you’re willing to bend.”

“Bend how?”

“Mutual disarmament. You disarm the trigger in front of me. I call the location and have Gale brought here. You see him alive, you confirm he’s unharmed, and you give me the drive. Then you both walk out of this building and disappear. New identities. New territory. Safe passage guaranteed by the crown. Nobody

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MEMUTUAL AGREEMENT

fellows. Nobody searches. Logan and Gale Crawford cease to exist, and the flash drive ceases to matter.”

Logan listens. Really listens. His posture shifts from confrontational to something less rigid, the exhaustion winning over the paranoia for the first time since I walked in.

He’s tired. So tired that the offer of ending this- of walking away with Gale and starting over somewhere nobody knows them – is landing in the part of him that’s been running on fumes and fury for weeks.

“If I disarm the trigger,” he says slowly, “and you’re lying about Gale…”

“I’m not lying.”

“But if you are-”

“Then you walk out of here and rebuild the trigger and send the drive, and my reign ends, and I deserve it. But I’m not lying, Logan. Gale is alive. He’s breathing. He’s unpleasant, and he talks too much, but he’s alive.”

Something shifts in Logan’s face. The exhaustion is winning. The love is winning.

The desperate need to believe that this nightmare has an exit door and the door is standing in front of him, offering terms that don’t require anyone else to die.

“Safe passage,” Logan repeats. “Both of us.”

“Both of you. My word as Lycan King.”

“Your word.” A bitter laugh. “The word of a king who massacred several innocent people at a Christmas

party.”

“The word of a man who understands what you’re going through. Because the woman I love was

unconscious for hours yesterday, and I sat on that floor, wondering if I’d ever see her beautiful eyes again.

I know what it costs, Logan. I know what it takes from you. And I know that right now, in this moment, you

want Gale back more than you want me destroyed.”

Logan looks at me. The bitterness is fading. The calculation is fading.

What’s under is just a man, tired, scared, in love with someone the world won’t let him fove openly,

carrying a weapon he never wanted to use because using it was always the backup plan, and the real plan was always, ALWAYS just getting Gale back.

He exhales. The fight leaves his shoulders.

“Fine. The drive is stored at a-

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