TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 342

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CHAPTER 270: WHAT ARE HER FAVOURITE FLOWERS?

EMBER’S POV

The janitor at the far end of the cafeteria has stopped mopping and is staring.

“Nathaniel, get up.”

“Not until you tell me if there’s a chance. If there’s anything I can do. If Queenie has said anything to y about what she needs from me that I can still give.”

I stare down at him on the dirty linoleum.

Queenie’s words from the car hit me suddenly.

Looking at him now, her jealousy toward Knox makes terrifying sense. It was never romantic. It is so П

worse.

She has to sit back and watch her husband pour every ounce of his energy, his sharpest focus, and his

absolute devotion into another person day after day.

He gives Knox everything. Queenie just gets the scraps.

“Get up,” I say. Gently but firmly. “Off the floor, Nathaniel. This isn’t a briefing room and I’m not Knox and you don’t need to be on your knees for this conversation.”

He gets up and sits back in the chair. His eyes are wet and he doesn’t wipe them and the vulnerability o that – Nathaniel allowing someone to see him cry is so foreign that it feels like watching a building

discover it has a basement.

“Queenie doesn’t need you to solve her,” I say. “She’s not a problem. She’s not a crisis to be managed or variable to be optimised. She is a woman who has been married to a man for years and has watched the man pour the absolute best of himself into someone else’s life while she gets the scraps.”

“I don’t give her scraps-”

“You give her what’s left of you after Knox gets the test. And what’s left isn’t enough. It hasn’t been enougi for a long time, and she’s been telling you that in every way except the direct one because she loves you and she didn’t want to be the wife who gives her husband an ultimatum.” I hold his gaze. She needs to be the first thing you think about in the norning Not Knox Not the pack Not the gene. Her She needs to know that if Knox called at three in the morning with a crisis and Queenie called at three in the morning with a crisis, you’d go to HER And if you can’t honestly say that’s true, if Knox will always be the first call you answer, then the kindest thing you can do for Queenie is let her go”

“No.”

The word comes out of him like it’s been torn from somewhere physical, somewhere behind his ribs, and the force of it surprises both of us

CHAPTER 270 WHAT ARE HER FAVOURITE FLOWERS?

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can’t do that, Ember. I won’t. I refuse to accepta version of my life where Queenie is not in it.” His voic is shaking and Nathaniel’s voice does not shake, has never shaken in any conversation I’ve witnessed. “I know I’ve done a horrific job of showing that. I know I’ve been a disaster of a husband and a worse hum being and I know the list of things I’ve done wrong is long enough to wallpaper this entire cafeteria. But can’t just LET HER GO. She’s not a strategy I can abandon when the numbers stop working. She’s my WIF

He drags both hands down his face and when they come away, his eyes are red and wet and desperate.

“What do I do? Tell me what to do. Flowers? Do I send flowers? I’ll buy every florist in-”

“Do you even know her favourite flowers, Nathaniel?”

He opens his mouth, but no words come out, then he tries again:

“Lilies?”

“She’s allergic to lilies. She breaks out in hives. She told me this herself, which means she’s told you at some point in the last however many years you’ve been married, and you either forgot or never registere it in the first place.” I stare at him, unimpressed.

“Shit. Well, um… Peonies? Roses? I mean, roses are classic-

“She thinks they’re cliché. And peonies make her sad because her mother used to grow them before she passed.” I watch the information land as a slap to his face. “I’ve known your wife for a few WEEKS, Nathaniel. WEEKS. And I know more about her flower preferences than the man who married her. And the tells me that this not a problem flowers are going to fix this.”

His shoulders fall. The last structural support giving way.

“I know flowers won’t fix it. I know nothing I buy or say or engineer is going to undo what I’ve done. But Ember-” He runs his hand through his hair and the tears come again. “I might be going to jail. You know that. Knox told me I’m done, and ‘done‘ might mean a cell, and if I’m sitting behind bars for the rest my life, I cannot leave Queenie alone. Hopeless. Thinking that the man she married never loved her enough to fight for her.”

His voice breaks on the word “fight” and his hands flatten on the table and I can see them trembling

“I have destroyed myself, Ember. That’s done and I’ve earned it. But in destroying myself, I destroyed HER She used to be so bright I know you’ve only known her a short while, but the woman you’ve met is not the woman I married. The woman i married could walk into a room and make everyone in it feel seen. She had this energy, this warmth, and I watched it dum year by year and I told myself it was just life, just the stress of my position, just the natural settling of a marriage, when the truth is that I was the one dimming

it.”

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