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

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Whatever poison she’s been dripping in Elder James’s/ear has been absorbed by the man who will decide

my fate.

“We should take our seats,” Elder James says, and there’s something cold in his voice when he looks at

1. Something that’s already made up its mind. “The hearing begins in ten minutes.”

He escorts my mother into the chamber like she’s royalty, his hand proprietary on her lower back.

She doesn’t look back at me, but she doesn’t need to. Her rnessage has been delivered.

She’s won. She positioned herself perfectly. And I’m only finding out now, minutes before my life gets

decided.

“Breathe.” Knox’s voice is low, meant only for me. “Whatever she’s done, we handle it. Together.”

I nod, but my throat is too tight for words.

Inside the chamber, it’s worse.

The room is designed to intimidate, dark wood paneling that absorbs light, seven elder seats arranged on a raised dais like thrones, gallery seating packed with Summit attendees who’ve gathered to watch the spectacle of my life being torn apart by formal procedure and ancient law.

CHAPTER A

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