TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 444

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CHAPTER 367: 72 HOURS LEFT

CHAPTER 367: 72 HOURS LEFT

KNOX’S POV

I go to Hale after breakfast, which is to say after one cup of coffee and most of a second, becaus I put it off exactly as long as I can justify and not one minute longer.

She’s in the small sitting room she’s colonised over the years, the warm one in the east wing with her grandmother’s things crowding every shelf and the permanent smell of dried herbs hanging in

the air.

She’s at the window with her tea when I fill the doorway, and her whole face opens when she sees me, warm and delighted, the way it always does.

“Knox! Up before noon two days running, that’s practically a feast day. Sit, I’ll ring down for-”

“Hale.”

Something in my voice stops her hand halfway to the bell. She sets the tea down instead, slowly, and folds her hands in her lap, and her head tilts.

“That’s your bad-news voice, cousin. You’ve had it since you were twelve. Out with it.”

“You’re moving out.”

I watch it land. I watch the warmth drain out of her face by degrees, watch her go pale and then very deliberately blank, and I keep going, because she’s right.

I’ve had that voice since I was twelve, and I’ve also had the habit of losing my nerve if I stop, and this cannot be stopped halfway.

“There’s a house at the far end of my Greenvale estate,” I say. “The old dower house, past the west woods. I’ve had it opened up-it’s being aired and staffed as we speak. Full complement. A butler, cooks, maids, whatever you want and however many. I’m putting three of the cars at your disposal.

Ion you always liked is being groomed, and if you want it changed, changed to

holds steady through sheer will.

CHAPTER 367: 72 HOURS LEFT

+25 Points

Point

“This is my home.” And the blankness cracks, and under it is something raw enough that it catches me off guard. “I have lived in this house for the better part of my life, Knox Volkov. I kept it. When you were off wearing the crown, when you couldn’t bear to walk these halls after Celeste, I was the one who stayed. I aired the rooms. I paid the staff out of my own pocket when the accounts were running slowly. I kept your mother’s china from going grey with dust so that when you finally, finally came home, there would be a home here to come to.” Her eyes are wet now, bright and/furious And now you want to pack me off to the far end of the state like an aunt you’ve grown tired of. With a garden. As though a garden makes up for it.” Her voice fractures. “It’s her, isn’t it?”

I don’t insult either of us by pretending not to follow.

“Hale-”

“It’s her.” She’s on her feet now, and she’s trembling. “That girl walked through your door mere days ago, and now I’m being removed. I have done nothing, Knox! Nothing but try to help her-and she

looks at me like I’m something that crawled out of hell, and now you’re standing in my grandmother’s room telling me to pack.” And to my genuine alarm, the tears spill over, and my

prickly, sharp-tongued, unbreakable cousin is crying in front of me, openly, her composure gone.

You’re throwing me out of my own home. For her.”

And something in my chest gives way.

Because for all her excesses, for all the strangeness I’ve spent days refusing to name, I know this

woman.

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”

I have known her since we were both small and both broken in the specific matching ways our

fathers broke us.

And the sight of Hale Volkov crying is doing something to me I did not brace for and cannot fully

armour against.

I cross the room. I don’t touch her-we’ve never been that; neither of us was ever taught how-but I stand close, and I drop my voice, and I say the thing I walked in here already knowing I’d have to

say.

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