Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 100

Kaelen’s POV

The howl hit like a slap across the face.

Not distant. Not probing. Close enough that the sound vibrated in my teeth, rattled through the bones of my skull and down into the base of my spine where instinct lived.

Trap.

Alex—my wolf—surged forward before the thought finished forming. Not panic. Recognition. The kind that came from years of warfare, from a lifetime of reading the language of predators. That howl wasn’t a greeting or a territorial claim. It was a signal.

A command.

"HOLD FORMATION!" I roared.

Too late.

The fog erupted.

They came from every direction simultaneously. Dark shapes launching out of the white nothing—massive, wrong-smelling, their bodies reeking of that same chemical bitterness that saturated the air. I recognized the foul stench instantly—it was dark magic. The first one hit our circle like a battering ram, slamming into the knight on the eastern edge with enough force to send him flying backward into the trunk of a pine.

I heard the crack. Bone or bark, I couldn’t tell.

Then everything became chaos.

"Alpha!" Cassian’s voice, somewhere to my left, raw with alarm. "I can’t see—I can’t—"

"BACKS TOGETHER!" I bellowed. "Don’t break the—"

A second wolf barreled through the gap the first had created. Enormous. Bigger than any Rogue I’d ever fought. Its eyes glowed a sickly yellow through the fog, bright as lanterns, and they found me with a directness that made my blood freeze.

It knew exactly who I was.

I didn’t think. I shifted.

The transformation ripped through me—clothing shredding, bones cracking and reforming, muscles expanding until the world shrank around me. In my wolf form, I was massive. Black-furred. Twice the size of any Beta wolf. Built for exactly this.

The Rogue lunged. I met it mid-air.

We collided with a sound like thunder. Jaws snapping. Claws tearing. The creature was strong—unnaturally so—and fast in a way Rogues shouldn’t be. It twisted beneath me, going for my throat, and I caught its shoulder instead. Fur and flesh tore between my teeth. Hot blood flooded my mouth.

It didn’t retreat. Any normal Rogue would have. Pain was supposed to trigger flight. That was the whole point of Rogue psychology—survival above everything.

This one pressed harder. Fought smarter.

I locked my jaws around its neck. Bit down. Deeper. Through muscle, past tendon, until I felt the cartilage of its windpipe collapse between my teeth and the blood turned from a trickle to a river. The creature spasmed. Went limp.

I released it and spun toward the sound of steel on claw.

Cassian was fighting two of them. His sword arm moved in precise, desperate arcs, but the Rogues weren’t attacking blindly. One of the massive wolves feinted left, only to instantly pivot and lunge right with terrifying speed. Coordinated. Timed.

They’ve been trained.

The realization hit like ice water. Rogues didn’t do this. Rogues were feral, scattered, driven by hunger and madness. They didn’t execute flanking maneuvers. They didn’t coordinate feints.

Someone had taught them to fight like soldiers.

I launched myself at the one circling Cassian’s flank. Caught it across the spine with my full weight. It went down screaming—a horrible, almost human sound—and I finished it before it could rise.

The second one bolted into the fog. Smart. It had seen what happened to its partner and calculated the odds.

Trained to retreat, too.

I shifted back. The cold air hit my bare skin like needles. Naked. Weaponless for a heartbeat until Cassian tossed me a fallen knight’s sword without being asked.

"Report," I said. My voice came out rough. Blood—not mine—dripped from my jaw.

"Seven down." Cassian’s face was gray beneath the grime. His left forearm was torn open, a deep crescent of teeth marks weeping blood through the torn sleeve of his armor. He pressed his other hand against it, but red seeped between his fingers steadily. "We’ve lost seven, Alpha."

Seven. Out of twelve.

I swallowed the grief. Later. There would be time for it later or there wouldn’t be time for anything at all.

"How many still out there?"

"Five. Maybe six. Hard to count in this filth." He jerked his chin toward the fog.

"The ridge," I said. "Half a mile north. Granite outcropping—natural walls on three sides. We hold there."

"Can we make it?"

"We don’t have a choice."

I grabbed a cloak from the ground—didn’t check whose—and wrapped it around my waist. My own shoulder burned with agonizing pain, torn open by deep claw marks, but I pushed it aside. Then I moved to the wounded.

Derek was the worst. He was lying face-down. Three parallel gashes ran from his left shoulder blade to his lower back, deep enough that I could see the white gleam of bone beneath the torn flesh. His breathing was shallow. Rapid. Wrong.

I knelt beside him. Pressed my hand against the wound. Blood welled hot and thick around my fingers.

"Derek."

His eyes fluttered open. Glazed with pain but present. He managed a smile that was more grimace than anything. "Had worse, Alpha."

He hadn’t. We both knew it.

"You’re going to stand up," I told him. "And you’re going to walk. That’s an order."

"Yes... Alpha."

Two of the others hauled him upright. He swayed but stayed on his feet. Barely.

We moved.

The half mile to the ridge took an eternity. The fog pressed in from all sides, alive with sounds—low growls, the soft pad of paws on pine needles, the occasional testing howl meant to rattle us. They were herding us. Or following. Waiting for the wounded to slow us down enough to strike again.

Twice, a shape would materialize from the white—a flash of yellow eyes, a snarl—and one of the knights would lunge with his sword. Both times the Rogue retreated before contact. Testing defenses. Probing for weakness.

Like wolves hunting elk, Alex growled inside my skull. Patient. Methodical.

We’re the prey, I thought grimly.

We are no one’s prey.

I agreed with the sentiment. Living up to it was another matter.

The granite outcropping rose from the fog like the spine of a buried giant. Massive. Gray-black stone slick with moss, jutting upward to form a natural wall on the north and east sides. A cluster of ancient pines provided partial cover on the west. Only the south face was open. One approach. One direction to defend.

"Here." I pointed. "Get Derek against the rock. Bind every wound you can. Use cloaks, belts, anything."

They collapsed more than sat. All five surviving knights were bleeding. Cassian wrapped his forearm with a strip torn from his cloak, pulling the knot tight with his teeth. The younger knight—barely old enough to grow a beard—was pressing both hands against a gash in his thigh, his face white as the fog.

I stood at the southern edge and watched the mist. Listening.

The growls had stopped. No eyes in the white. No padded footsteps.

They were regrouping.

I closed my eyes and reached.

Elara.

I threw everything into the bond. Every ounce of Alpha will, every desperate thread of longing. I pictured her face. Her ice-blue eyes. The way she smelled—winter frost and wildflowers, impossible and perfect. I pictured Valerius beside her. Safe. In the palace. Behind walls and guards and wards.

Please be safe. Please, both of you, be safe.

The bond flickered. A candle flame in a hurricane. There—then not. I felt something. A ghost of warmth. The faintest echo of a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.

Then nothing.

The connection that had been iron-strong for months was barely a whisper now. Guttering. Dying. As if the same dark magic choking the forest was strangling the thread that tied my soul to hers.

I opened my eyes. My hands were shaking.

"Alpha?" Cassian’s voice. Careful. He’d been watching me. "The bond?"

"Weak." The word tasted like ash. "Almost gone."

His expression said what his mouth didn’t. We both understood what that could mean. Either the magic in this fog was powerful enough to suppress even a mate bond—or something was happening to her on the other end.

I couldn’t think about the second possibility. Not now. Not yet. Trapped on this mountain, I realized with sickening dread that I didn’t have Elara’s magical "golden hands" to heal my dying brothers.

The sun was sinking, casting long shadows across our granite shelter. I picked up my silver sword, testing its weight in my hand, resolving to survive the night and send every attacking Rogue straight to hell. I reached out through the mental link one final time.

Elara.

Silence. An abyss of nothingness answered me. Trapped on the mountain, I stared into the dark void.

"I’ll find my way back to you," I whispered into the darkness. "Hold on."