TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 439

WISH

EMBER’S POV

I don’t even blink. I don’t look away from her face. I just hold my hand out to the side.

“Daxon,” I say, my voice dead calm. “Phone.”

Daxon doesn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. He slaps his heavy, encrypted comms device straight into my palm.

Marjorie’s breath catches. Her chest heaves, panic finally warring with the fanaticism.

“What are you doing?”

I dial the King.

It rings twice.

“Daxon.” Knox’s voice is a low, dangerous rumble. He assumes it’s an emergency when his personal guard calls him directly.

“It’s me,” I say.

There is a micro-shift in the line. The danger turns into something much sharper, entirely focused.

“Ember. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” I say, keeping my eyes locked on the housekeeper. “But I’m standing in the east wing service passage with Marjorie. Reyes and Daxon are with me. She was wearing a dark hood, trying to move two sedated women through the servant tunnels. They are burning up with fever, and one of them has a fresh, bleeding knife wound on her arm.”

Marjorie’s face goes completely pale.

“Daxon just had to disarm her,” I continue, my voice remarkably steady, “because she drew a blade and tried to slash Reyes to stop us from taking them. She refuses to explain why she did it. She says I’m making a mistake, and then she called me a witch.”

Absolute, deafening silence on the line.

I can almost hear the air freezing in whatever room Knox is standing in.

୮

The sheer, terrifying weight of the Lycan King processing the fact that the woman who runs his household was bleeding girls in the dark and just pulled a knife on his guards in front of his mate.

Marjorie is shaking now. Real, physical tremors rack her frame as she stares at the phone in my hand, a horrific mix of terror and trapped-animal desperation on her face.

I expect a roar. I expect Knox to tear through the house, to order her thrown into the deepest, darkest cell in the dungeons.

Instead, when he finally speaks, his voice is terrifyingly calm.

You are the lady of this house, Ember” The words vibrate through the speaker, heavy with a complete and Total transfer of power. “Do what you feel is right.”

The line clicks dead,

I lower the phone.

Marjorie stares at me. The defiance has completely drained out of her, replaced by the crushing realisation that the King didn’t even ask to speak to her. He handed her fate entirely to me.

Reyes shifts the bleeding girl in his arms, his armour smudged with her blood.

“Lady Ember, her fever is spiking. I need to get her to the clinic now. I’ll send two more guards back down immediately for the second one.”

“Go,” I say, pocketing the phone. “And I want a guard on the east wing tonight. Rotating. Nobody moves these girls again without my say-so or the King’s. Understood?”

“Understood.” Reyes doesn’t hesitate, turning and striding fast down the corridor with the bleeding girl.

“And her?” Daxon asks, a heavy hand resting near the cuffs of his belt, his eyes fixed on Marjorie.

I look at the woman who just insulted me. A woman who used to look at me with nothing but motherly affection. How had she turned so hostile so fast? Why? I’d done nothing to her.

“Lock her in the holding cells. Solitary. She doesn’t speak to anyone until I decide what to do with her.”

Daxon moves, grabbing her firmly by the arm, and the moment his hand closes over her cloak, Marjorie completely shatters.

She screams.

It is a raw, blood-curdling shriek that tears out of her throat and bounces violently off the stone walls, so loud I physically flinch.

“No! No, you don’t understand!” she wails, thrashing so hard that Daxon has to use both hands to restrain her. Her eyes are wide, manic, and rolling with absolute, unhinged terror. “The moon is red! The moon is bleeding! It’s bleeding!”

“Quiet,” Daxon barks, hauling her forcefully backwards toward the exit.

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But Marjorie digs her heels into the stone, twisting her neck to fix me with a look of pure, feverish horror.

“You’re working with her, aren’t you?!” she shrieks, spit flying from her lips. “You arrogant, bloody witch! You’re working with her! You’re letting it in!”

“Keep moving,” Daxon growls, dragging her bodily into the shadows of the passage.

“The moon is bleeding!” Her voice echoes back through the dark, high and utterly hysterical, fracturing into frantic, broken sobs. “You’re going to kill us all! You bloody witch! The moon is bleeding!”

Her screams slowly fade into the depths of the tunnels, swallowed by the heavy stone, leaving a suffocating, ringing silence in their wake.

I stand there in the corridor alone with the remaining unconscious girl, waiting for the backup guards to

CHAPTER 36

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