TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 317

CHAPTER 247: NEVER CALLED MY NAME

EMBER’S POV

“He’s alive,” I say into his chest. “Surgery went well. He’s in a coma, but he’s alive.”

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“I knew he would. You gave him his miracle.” His mouth is in my hair, and his voice is the low, rough, private register that he uses only when we’re alone or close enough to alone that the distinction doesn’t matter. “How are you?”

“I’m standing. That’s about all I’ve got right now.”

“That’s enough.” He pulls back just far enough to look at my face, and his eyes do the thing they always do, which is scan me for damage. He actively treats every shadow under my eyes and every tremble in my lip as a critical threat. “Have you eaten?”

“Knox, I am not eating hospital cafeteria food while my father is in a coma.”

“You’re eating something. Your hands are shaking, and your face is the colour of the wall. I’m not having this argument with you because I’ll win and you know it.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“And yet here you are. In my arms. Voluntarily.” The ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and the fact that he can find it, that he can locate something resembling humour in the wreckage of this day, makes me want to cry again for entirely different reasons.

Queenie stands a few feet away with her arms crossed.

She watches us, clearly torn between genuine happiness for me and absolute devastation over her own

reality.

I see both feelings etched across her face at the exact same time, and the sheer guilt of it pinches hard

behind my ribs.

Nathaniel appears in the waiting room doorway behind Knox.

Managing the crime scene for hours left a visible mark on him.

His shirt is wrinkled, and his jaw is locked tight, his eyes reflecting the thankless grind of solving

continuous problems since dawn.

He sees Queenie. His expression shifts into something softer, something almost human, and he takes a

step toward her.

“Queenie-”

She turns and walks away. She keeps her focus forward, moving down the long corridor toward the ICU.

Nathaniel follows and reaches for her arm.

8 CHAPTER34 PNEVER

FD MY NAME

“Qucenie, wait. Let me=”

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She spins. And the look on her face is not the Queenie I know

–

not the warm, steady, endlessly patient

woman.

This Queenie is cracked open, and the thing under is fury and grief and something that has been fermenting in the dark for a long time.

“Don’t touch me, Nathaniel. Not right now.”

“I just want to make sure you’re-”

“I’m WHAT? Okay? Fine? Holding up?” Her voice is rising, and we’re in a hospital corridor, and people are looking, and Queenie doesn’t care, which is how I know this is serious because Queenie ALWAYS cares about the audience. “I just watched a man murder his son in a storage room. I was HELD DOWN by soldiers while it happened. And where were you? Where were you while Ember and I were pinned in a kitchen listening to gunshots?”

“I was at the scene as fast as-”

“You were with Knox. You’re ALWAYS with Knox. Managing his crises, cleaning his messes, running his operations. And I’m always wherever you left me, waiting for you to remember I exist. Even at the house, you went straight to the bodies and the perimeter. You didn’t even call out my name.”

The corridor goes quiet.

Nathaniel’s face is doing something I’ve never seen it do: cycling through emotions without the usual filter that processes them into composure before they reach the surface.

I can see the hurt, the confusion, the guilt, the argument he wants to make, and the knowledge that

making it would be the wrong move, all of it passing across his features.

“This isn’t the place,” he says quietly.

“You’re right. It’s not. But it never is, is it? There’s never a right time, never a right place, never a moment

when your work is finished, and your phone is off, and your attention is actually, fully, completely on me.” She swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand, angry at the tears. “I can’t do this right now. I can’t stand here performing ‘supportive wife‘ while I’ve got a dead man’s blood on my jacket. Give me space,

Nathaniel. Real space. Not the kind where you hover twenty feet away checking your phone.”

She turns and walks. This time, he doesn’t follow.

He stands in the hospital corridor with his hand half–raised toward a woman who is already gone, and the

hand stays there for a beat too long before it drops to his side.

He turns and sees Knox and me standing at the end of the hallway. The three of us form a triangle of awkwardness that the hospital lighting makes worse.

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