TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 372

CHAPTER 298: THE ATTACK

EMBER’S POV

“Get up. Get up, Ember, we have to go, now—”

Knox’s voice is wrong.

That’s the first thing I understand, before I understand anything else, before my eyes are even properly

open.

His voice is wrong. Knox does not sound like this.

Knox sounds like a man who has never once in his life had to hurry, a man the world rearranges itself around, and right now he sounds like the floor is on fire, and his hands are on my shoulders shaking me out of the deepest sleep I’ve had since Alaska.

“What-” I’m already being hauled upright, the blankets ripped back, cold air slamming into me. “What’s happening, what’s-”

“No time.” He’s got a shirt over my head before I can find the armholes myself, dragging it down, his face

above me carved out of pure panic, the gold already bleeding at the edges of his eyes. “Something’s

wrong with the perimeter. The east alarms went off, and then the feed cut. Security can’t raise the gate

team. I need you moving. I need you with me. Can you walk?”

The east alarms. The feed cut. The gate team gone silent.

My whole body goes to ice, because I know exactly what those words mean, I’ve known since the plane, since a cockroach, something that survives what should have killed it, and the name is in my mouth

before I can stop it.

“Rafael.”

“I don’t know.” His jaw is granite. “I don’t know and I’m not wanting to find out with you in this bed. Up. Now.

Move.”

And then we’re running.

He grabs my hand, and we rush into the dark hall. The house has never felt so much like a trap. Outside the windows, there is nothing but black night. Knox moves fast and low, pulling me along so hard I almost

fall.

My heart is going so hard it hurts.

Somewhere behind us I hear Marjorie’s voice, sharp and urgent, this way, this way, hurry, and that’s almost the worst part, because Marjorie sounds frightened too, and Marjorie is the calmest person in this entire impossible house.

“Where are we going?” I gasp.

+25 P-1178

“Safe room. East wing, lowest level. Reinforced, off the main grid, no one gets in without my hand on the luck.” He takes a corner so fast I nearly go into the wall, and his arm shoots out and keeps me up without breaking stride. “I get you behind that door and then ! deal with whatever’s at my gate. You do not come out. Do you understand me, Ember? Whatever you hear. You do not open that door for anyone but me.”

“Knox-”

“Promise me.”

“Okay. Okay, I promise, just-” My lungs are burning.

We hurry down a stairwell I’ve never seen. The air grows colder and tighter with every step, and all the

horrors I’ve been carrying since we arrived rise to the surface.

Rayana dying helpless upstairs. Rafael still breathing somewhere put there. The magic in my chest that

refuses to answer me, the dead woman’s room, Hale’s unsettling eyes.

It is all crashing down at once.

It is the exact nightmare I have been bracing for since I walked into this house.

And even as I sprint through the dark with my heart in my throat, some small, exhausted part of me just thinks: There it is. Finally. I knew it was coming. It was all too good to be true.

We hit the bottom of the stairs.

We reach a heavy steel door. Knox slams his hand against the panel. The lock hisses, and he shoves the door wide open, pulling me into the dark beyond.

He plants his body directly in front of me, a physical shield against whatever is waiting inside.

Suddenly, a sharp, violent POP cracks through the air.

“Ember, duck!” Knox yells.

I collapse to the ground instantly.

I throw my arms over my head and squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for the nightmare waiting for the monster on the other side to finally strike-

The lights blaze to life.

“SURPRISE!”

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