Semua Bab TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING: Bab 331 - Bab 336

EMBER’S POV“He’s going to divorce me.”“You’re not married.”“He’s going to divorce me preemptively.” I’m losing a war with six shopping bags in the back of the car while Daxon and Reyes unload the rest in a haunted silence that says they’ve seen more today than they have in their entire jobs. “He’s going to invent a brand-new kind of divorce specifically for this.”“Ember, breathe,” Queenie says, practically vibrating with glee. “The damage is already done. It’s set in stone. Literally.”She clutches a spool of ribbon to her chest like a religious artefact.“Do you understand the sheer poetry of this? Just picture it. The most terrifying Lycan on the continent is going to walk out his front door in a perfectly tailored suit to survey his estate, and he is going to make direct eye contact with six feet of—”“Don’t.”“—premium, monumental yard-penis—”“Queenie, I swear—”“—and I want front-row seats.” She’s radiant. “I want to see the exact moment his soul leaves his body. I’d pay a f

EMBER’S POVCatherine doesn’t so much as glance at him. She’s looking at me.“When I met you,” she says, slower now, “you were a woman being taken apart by procedure. You stood in that chamber, and you told the truth, and they very nearly buried you alive for it. And by the end you had the look of someone who’d already given up on being saved.” Her voice gentles, and it’s worse than if she’d been cruel. “I know that look, Ember. I’ve seen it on more women than I could ever count. It’s the look of someone who stopped expecting good things a long, long time ago — because in her experience, every good thing was only ever the quiet part before the next bad one.”I can’t speak. The bag is crushed flat against my chest.“And now.” She spreads one hand, taking in the whole absurd scene — the bags, the ribbon, me. “Now I walk into this house, and there is an abomination at the front gate, and I was informed by a staff member that there are five hundred rubber ducks somewhere in this building—

EMBER’S POVKnox finds me a couple of hours later, after Queenie’s left and the light’s gone gold across the mountains.I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of the enormous bed we share, pretending to sort the day’s spoils and actually just running my palm over the ridiculous soft weight of a coat I absolutely did not need, feeling that dangerous, unfamiliar thing again.The one I keep waiting to be punished for. Peace.He stops in the doorway.“Ember.”“Mm?”“We need to discuss the gate.”“Do we, though?” I don’t look up. “Or could the gate simply be a beautiful, unspoken mystery between us, a thing we never—”“It’s six feet tall.”“It’s abstract.”“Ember.” He comes into the room, and there’s a slow, deliberate danger to the way he moves, and I finally look up, and his face is fighting very hard to be stern and losing at every seam. “A council elder photographed my front gate. She is going to show people. She told me to my face — I want you to understand she said this directly to m