TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 474

CHA, T

TIME THE THEANE

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CHAPTER 397: WE’LL TAKE THE THRONE

EMBER’S POV

“Oh, but it was a trophy, Ember.” She looks at me with genuine, baffled frustration, like I’m a slow child failing an obvious sum. “I survived, did I not? That is the only trophy there has ever been. My survival. The world will teach you the way it taught me and the world is a far crueller tutor than I ever was.”

Not once have the men broken their stunned silence, watching this foul woman gloat over her own

atrocities.

She will burn anyone, sacrifice anything, as long as it guarantees her survival.

“They saved your life!” I snap, the disgust finally boiling over into pure rage. I lean forward. “That woman pulled you out of the dirt when you had absolutely nothing! She fed you. She housed you. And you slaughtered her-and every single girl in that house-just so you could play mistress to a married man. How could you possibly live happily knowing their blood bought your bed?”

Devika’s jaw hardens, but I don’t give her a second to speak.

“And you call yourself clever?” I laugh harshly. “You gave your life over to a man who happily executed a dozen innocent women just to secure a promotion from his wife! What kind of an idiot trusts a monster who wastes lives that easily? How could you ever close your eyes next to him and truly believe your own neck wouldn’t be next on the chopping block?”

And here comes the worst register of all, because she lights up.

“Oh, but you naive fool, those were the best years of my life,” she says, and Goddess help me, she smiles through every syllable. “Three of them. I lived in that luxurious golden palace. I ate food I’d only dreamed of, wore expensive silk that cost more than this whole mountain, and every night, my Rhovan, my precious snake, came to me, and I had him, and every morning we smiled at the queen over her breakfast, and she never knew. Never.” Her eyes glitter with something sick and shining. “Do you understand the power in that? To hold the most dangerous woman in the world’s own husband in your two hands while she pours his tea and doesn’t feel it? I have never felt anything like it in my life. I never will again.”

“You think that’s power?” I ask with pure disgust. “Sneaking around like a rat in her walls? She wore a crown, Devika, and you were just the secret nobody he fucked in the dark.”

Her smile tightens, her eyes flashing with vicious venom.

“Oh, you stupid girl,” she whispers. “It wasn’t only his body I had. It was the rest of him too. The parts he showed no one. Rhovan hated her, Ember. He hated Isolde with everything in him. Do you know what it is to be a man in the East? To be born strong and clever and ambitious and then forced to kneel at a woman’s heel? He hated it. But my dearest lover was also a snake biding his time.” Her voice drops into that intimate, dreamy register. “He used to lie in my bed in the dark and tell me his dreams. How the East had it backwards. How men like him, in a place like my world, would have ruled like true gods. He was going to change it. One day he was going to pull her down off that throne and take it, and rule Caelora the way it was meant to be ruled, by someone who deserved it. And I believed him. I lay there, and I believed every word, because he made me part of it. He said we, Ember. He said, ‘When we take the throne. Not I. We. That’s how you know a man owns you completely. When he lets you dream his dreams and promises you a throne on it.”

173

KE THE THRONE

+25 Points

Something about the way she talks about his ambition sends a strange chill down my spine.

The fire in her eyes is exactly like the hunger he must have borne-a desperate, starving need to strike down his queen.

“You’re describing the affair that ended your entire existence,” I say, “like it was the best meal you ever ate.

او

“It was.” There is no shame in it. “And I’d do it again tomorrow. I served her directly, once or twice, you know. The Alpha Queen. I walked through her inner court and saw how things worked from the inside. That’s where I learned what Lady Isolde truly was. She was the most heartless woman I have ever known, but the terrifying part was that she was meticulous about justice. However, justice to Alpha Queen Isolde was strictly whatever she decided it was. She would order the slaughter of an infant if she deemed it the right thing to do, and she would sleep like a babe that very night because, in her mind, the math balanced.” Devika shivers. “She was a monster, but a completely rational one. And she ruled over a court of lords who tended to her every breath, trailing after her like dogs. But Rhovan was her chosen, true mate. And with him, she had two little girls.”

My heart suddenly sinks, a cold drop in my chest.

I remember Maurice’s story about the woman who visited Devika with the suppressants. The woman who often visited with… two little girls.

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