TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 464

CHAPTER 387: THORN IN MY FLESH

EMBER’S POV

In that moment, I almost murder her.

Matricide.

My claws are already out in a blink, moving to slash right through her neck, when Knox’s firm arms band like iron around my waist, hauling me violently backward away from the despicable piece of shit.

“Breathe, baby,” Knox rasps into my ear, his solid chest expanding against my back as he holds me flush against him. “We can’t kill her yet. Not without getting your answers first.” He presses a hot, rough kiss into my hair, his golden eyes locked purely on my mother. “The second she talks, I promise I will hand you the pleasure myself.”

“Devika,” Silas growls. “Watch your filthy mouth in front of the girl.” He drags a huge hand down his scarred face and shakes his head slowly, and when he speaks again it’s almost to himself, weary to the bone. “Fifty years. Fifty years I have wondered what my mother did to offend the Goddess so badly that she cursed her with a daughter this foul. Fifty years, and I

still don’t have an answer.”

And I’m reeling; I have too many questions and no ground under my feet, and I turn to this enormous terrifying stranger who is somehow my blood.

–

“I don’t – I don’t understand. Who are you? Where have you been? How do you – what are you to each other, what happened, I don’t-”

“Easy, girl. Easy.” And Silas’s whole voice changes when he speaks to me, gentles, the way you’d speak to something that might spook. “Sit with it a moment. I’ll tell you, because you’ve clearly been told nothing true your whole life, and that ends tonight. Boys, give us the room!”

The rogues scatter, leaving us alone. He straightens, and his dark eyes go somewhere far

away.

“Hello, dear. I am Silas Chamberlain Black, known as the Black Butcher of the rogues. Killer of Alphas.” His eyes move to Knox’s in that moment, heated with the poison of an age-long rivalry. His glare is met with a small eye roll from Knox. “We were born here in this mountain. We are rogues to the bone. Both of us, back when this place was smaller and meaner, and our mother ran it on her own two hands. I’m the elder by four years. I spent most of my childhood chasing that one-” a jerk of his chin at Devika “-out of trouble, because she came out of the womb wanting more than a rogue life could give her and hating everyone who couldn’t hand it to her.” His jaw works. “I loved her anyway. Goddess help me, I raised

COUARTER BE TON TO MY FLESH

her half the time. Fed her when Mama couldn’t. Kept the worst of the men in this place away from her. Taught her cards, taught her to survive, and asked one thing in return that she stay. and help me carry this place when Mama was gone, and keep what family we had.”

“And I said no,” Devika says flatly, from across the floor. “Because I wanted more.”

“You said no,” Silas agrees, and there’s years of hurt in it. “And then, one night when she was nineteen, she said no with her hands. Devika emptied half our family’s safe. Took the antiques off our mother’s own shelves, the ones our grandmother carried out of the East a lifetime before either of us drew breath. Took my cards, took my cash, took everything that wasn’t nailed down, and she vanished into the dark, and she showed me exactly how much of a fool I’d been to ever trust her.”

He looks at me, and the pain is naked on his face now.

“I didn’t know where she went. Not for years. She was simply gone, and I mourned her too, the way you mourn the living. And then one night, the wind carried news that my sister was in the East, and she was a fugitive to dangerous people. And worse, she was pregnant. I scoured hell and back for my pregnant sister, putting out more rogues into territories I had no business with, striking deals to find my leach of a sister. But she didn’t want to be found until she needed some money a few years ago. She turned back up on my doorstep. Half-dead. Terrified out of her mind. Weeping, and swearing the baby had come stillborn, and begging me to take her back.” His huge chest rises and falls. “And I did not. I was more furious that she dragged an innocent child into her mess and made them pay the price for her carelessness. I sent my sister away, and it had cursed me with years of regret. You can never truly scrub off the scent of your own blood. So when my network caught sight of my troublesome she-devil fleeing Alaska, I took her in. Second chances, they say. After all, she owed a debt for all she had stolen from this house. All she had to do was run my highest-paying floor, but I should have known by now that trouble follows my sister wherever she goes. She draws in every shark with the scent of her blood.”

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