TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 50

CHAPTER 31 GROWING OBSESSION-2

CHAPTER 31: GROWING OBSESSION–2

Claim

Justified doesn’t mean I sleep through the night. Justified doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the look in her eyes when she realized I wasn’t going to stop.

That door stays closed now. Locked. Welded shut with everything I refuse to feel.

I promised myself I’d never circle that particular drain again.

Seven days with Ember. That’s the arrangement, the only promise that matters.

Parade her around, help her escape the husband who treats her like a punching bag, collect my political advantage when Gale capitulates, and walk away clean.

Simple. Uncomplicated. The kind of transaction I’ve perfected over a decade of meaningless fucks with women whose names I forget before I finish getting dressed.

Except nothing about Ember is simple. And I’m not forgetting her.

Not the curve of her hip. Not the sound she makes when I first push inside her.

Not the way she looks at me sometimes like she thinks I might be worth saving, when I’m very clearly the opposite of savable.

So I put distance between us.

I kiss her like a stranger. I bury myself in phone calls that could wait until January, pack business that my betas could handle, anything to avoid looking at her face and seeing the confusion there.

The hurt. The slow realization that I’ve pulled back without explanation.

The truth is uglier than distance.

The truth is that I’m not obligated to work through the nauseating Christmas holidays, but I did it anyway because it distracts my wolf from tracking her every move.

Every smile. Every time she laughs at something on her phone or hums while she’s getting dressed or does any of the small domestic things I could watch forever if I let myself.

Eventually, after a long day of brooding, I check my phone. 2:47 PM.

The Rayana meeting is in thirteen minutes, and I need to shower the scent of Ember off my

skin before I step into that café and deal with the other ghost in my life.

“Thank you for coming,” she says as we sit, and her eyes are already bright with the threat of tears. “I know this is complicated. With your new girlfriend and everything.”

“She’s not complicated,” I say flatly. “She’s off–limits as a topic.”

Rayana’s smile flickers but holds.

She reaches across the table and touches my hand, and I let her because pulling away would be cruel and I’m trying to calibrate exactly how much cruelty is appropriate here.

“I made a list,” she says, producing a leather notebook that looks suspiciously expensive. Things I want to do before the end. I know it’s morbid, but my therapist says it helps to have goals. Even when the timeline is… so short.”

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