TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 314

CHAPTER 244: BRINGING HER HOME

KNOX’S POV

“The council has every right to-

“The council has every right to explain how Harrison Crawford showed up here with six armed men while YOUR surveillance team sat parked down the road and did nothing.” I let that land and watch it hit. “Your men were here, James. They watched Harrison arrive. They watched him open fire on this house. And they sat in their vehicles while he murdered his own son, shot a civilian, and put a bullet in his own head. So before you start asking ME questions, you might want to prepare some answers of your own.”

James doesn’t flinch. The advisors behind him do.

“I’m certain the timing can be explained-”

“I’m sure it can. But here’s what I can’t explain.” I step closer. “How did Harrison know, to come HERE? This

address. This house. Middle of nowhere, unmarked, unremarkable. He didn’t stumble across it, James. He came with coordinates, a plan, and a team. Somebody pointed him straight at this door.” I tilt my head.”

Who do you think that was?”

The silence between us says everything neither of us is willing to say out loud. He knows that I know. I

know that he knows I know.

And we’re both standing in a destroyed house pretending we don’t.

“A full investigation will address all of that,” James says carefully.

“Good. And while that investigation is running, it can also look into why your closest political ally just committed a murder–suicide. Because that’s going to be a very ugly headline for your faction, James. The moderates you’ve been courting are going to have questions. The press will have more. And I don’t think we were parked down the road‘ is the answer anyone wants to hear.”

His jaw tightens. Just barely. But I catch it.

“The crown extends its condolences,” he says, retreating into the stiff, formal tone that politicians use when the real conversation has become too dangerous. “We will cooperate fully with the investigation.”

“I appreciate that. And I’m sure you’ll be just as cooperative when the investigation looks into how your surveillance team managed to watch a massacre happen from fifty metres away without lifting a finger.”

I have him in absolute checkmate.

James always finds a way to move, surviving like a political cockroach, but every single option available to him right now forces him into a worse position.

If he pushes the illegal–detention angle, I will demand to know how Harrison obtained the address.

If he defends the surveillance team, he takes full ownership of their failure to intervene.

< CHAPTERJAKARINDING HER HOME

If he distances himself from Harrison, the traditionalists lose their most prominent martyr.

Every square on this board costs him dearly.

James recognises losing position instantly, shifting smoothly into a retreat.

+25 Points

He leaves with absolute grace, offering promises of cooperation and deploying a poisonous courtesy as he plans his next strike.

I watch his vehicles disappear down the road, heading in the exact opposite direction from Logan’s

transport. I stand in the ruins of the house.

We have processed the bodies, documented the scene, and politically defanged Elder James. Logan

remains in custody, and Ember rests safely at the hospital. Maurice is alive.

Winter air pours through the destroyed walls. For the first time in months, the screaming, clawing urgency

of the crisis finally quiets down.

The danger merely sleeps. I know perfectly well that James will regroup and the traditionalists will pivot.

Logan sits in a cell, yet his final smile stays lodged in my head like an unreachable splinter.

Under it all, the feral gene ticks inside my blood like a hidden clock. But right now, standing in this ruined

house, I finally have quiet.

“Get me to the hospital,” I tell Nathaniel. “And call ahead. Find out where Rayana is being kept. We’re going to need all of us in one place for what comes next.”

“What comes next?”

“We leave. Tomorrow. All of us. I want Maurice transferred when he’s stable, Rayana relocated to our medical wing, Queenie offered a good accommodation for when you leave for jail, and Ember in my home by sundown tomorrow.”

Nathaniel flinches, but he nods in understanding.

“And the house?”

I look at the crossbow bolts in the walls, the blood on the kitchen floor, the hallway where a drunk held a kitchen knife against a man with a gun and chose his daughter over his own survival,

“Board it up. Nobody enters. Crown seal.”

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