TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 73

CHAPTER 47:THE COUNCIL-1

EMBER’S POV

The council antechamber is our impending guillotine.

I’m still riding the high of Knox’s public declaration on the terrace, still feeling the subtle warmth of his arm around my waist as he announced to half the Summit that I’m his fated mate.

Well, it’s a lie. But it’s one that lights up my insides and releases a flutter of butterfly in my lower belly.

The whispers haven’t stopped since we left the Christmas games.

People are looking at me differently now-with curiosity, with envy, with the kind of calculating interest that comes from realizing the nobody omega just became somednie worth knowing.

Then we walk into the antechamber, and my blood turns to ice.

My mother is here.

She’s draped on the arm of a silver-haired man like she was born there, her designer dress catching the

light, her amber eyes bright with the particular satisfaction of a chess player who’s just cornered her

opponent’s king.

When she catches my gaze across the room, she smiles.

That smile.

I know that smile from my childhood. From the moments when she’d outmaneuvered someone, when she’d positioned herself exactly where she needed to be, when she’d proven once again that everyone else was just a piece on her board.

The man she’s draped across turns slightly, and I see his face clearly for the first time.

Elder James.

The head judge. The man presiding over my case.

I recognize him from Nathaniel’s briefing an hour ago-his tablet full of judge profiles, their political leanings, their likely sympathies. Elder James had been marked as the biggest threat.

Now I understand why.

The man who will decide whether I’m free or whether I’m sent back to Gale in chains is fucking my mother.

The realization crashes over me like a wave, dragging me under. She didn’t leave Mystic Fire after I threw

her out.

“Mark my words, Ember. You’ll regret this.”

Her last words to me.

CHAPTERA

25ints

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