TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 337

<CHAPTER 265 DO THE MATH

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CHAPTER 265: DO THE MATH

EMBER’S POV

I look at Queenie. Queenie looks at me.

Neither of us has an answer because the truth is that in the chaos of the Bacchanal’s aftermath – the

heat, the compound, the rescue, everything that followed nobody stopped to check.

Queenie laughs.

It comes out high and tight and hollow.

“Okay, come on. You’re both scaring me right now and I’m not doing this.” She waves her ice cream cup like a tiny plastic shield against the direction this conversation has taken. “Rafael is not alive. He simply CAN’T be alive. We barely made it out of that lodge in one piece, Rayana. Ember was drugged, I was

terrified, Knox went full wolf and tore through that man like he was made of paper. You want me to believe

that someone survived THAT and is just what, recovering quietly somewhere while we all frolic around

Alaska having ice cream?”

“Queenie-”

“NO. I refuse to accept it. Think about it logically.” She holds up a finger. “If Rafael was alive, why wouldn’t

he have come for us already? We slept in his lodge AFTERWARD. We were right there, completely

vulnerable, and nothing happened. No attack, no retaliation, no men in the night. If that man had a breath

left in his body and a grudge to settle, he would have used it. He had every chance, and nothing came.” Another finger. “Ten doctors could mean anything. An elder’s wife. A council member’s kid. Some asshole

Alpha who had a heart attack at a bad time. Alaska is not short on powerful people with medical emergencies.” A third finger. “And Knox didn’t just scratch Rafael. He DESTROYED him. I saw the

aftermath. It was, like, gory and stuff. Who the hell could survive that?”

“Queenie’s right,” I say, and I want to mean it more than I do. “It’s probably a coincidence. The doctors, the

whispers – it doesn’t add up to Rafael specifically.”

Rayana looks between us and something in her expression softens, the intensity receding. She shakes her

head slowly and picks up her ice cream again.

“You’re probably right. I’m probably being dramatic. Painkillers and paranoia and too much time alone in a

hospital room with nothing to do but eavesdrop on nurses and construct conspiracy theories.” She takes a

bite of the tropical paradise. “Forget I said anything. Ghost stories from a dying woman. Very on brand”

Queenie exhales. Rayana smiles. The conversation moves on.

But the itch stays.

It sits at the back of my skull in the place where instinct lives, and it connects to something I hate to think

about.

CHAPTER 265 DO THE MATH

The dream. The vision Sapphire showed me.

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Knox’s claws, my chest, collarbone to hip. Rafael had been alive in that vision. The prophecy hadn’t been about the past. It had been about something coming.

Something we were still barrelling toward.

If Rafael was dead, the vision should feel finished. Closed. Filed away under “averted disaster” alongside

the flash drive and Harrison and every other threat we’ve neutralised this week.

It doesn’t feel finished. It feels like an open door in a dark hallway, and the wind coming through it is cold.

But Queenie is right. If he was alive, he would have come for us. He had every opportunity and nothing

happened.

The ten doctors are a coincidence, and Rayana is on painkillers, and the vision is just a vision, and dead

men stay dead.

For all our sakes, I hope we’re right about that.

The conversation naturally shifts.

Queenie talks about Nathaniel, filling Rayana on the daily reality of a marriage that has been dying by

inches for years while both people in it pretended the patient was healthy.

She talks about the corridor confrontation, the things she said, the look on Nathaniel’s face. She doesn’t cry. She’s past crying about it.

She’s arrived at the specific, exhausted clarity that comes after you’ve felt everything there is to feel about a situation and have nothing left except the decision.

“I’m going to tell him today,” Queenie says. “Before we get on that plane. I need to do it here. In Alaska. I

can’t carry this onto Knox’s territory and pretend we’re fine while everyone watches.”

I hold one of her hands, and Rayana takes the other. We sit like that for a long moment, anchored together by our grip and our absolute honesty.

It is the specific, unbreakable bond forged only when you see someone at their absolute worst and

actively choose to stay.

Rayana coughs. It is a violent escalation from the small, suppressed sounds she’s managed until now.

Deep and terrifyingly wet, the sound scrapes from a hollow place inside her lungs. She turns away. pressing a tissue from beside her hip firmly over her mouth.

As the fit subsides and she lowers her hand, I see the red. Blood. Bright, fresh, stark against the white tissue. She folds it rapidly. Too rapidly.

The sheer efficiency of the movement betrays exactly how long she has been hiding this, burying the evidence out of pure habit.

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