Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 31

Kaelen’s POV

The border raids were getting smarter. That was the problem.

“Three days, Your Majesty.” Sir Marcus rode beside me, his jaw tight. A fresh gash split his left cheek—still weeping blood, dark and sluggish in the fading light. His knuckles were raw, crusted red. “Three days of hit-and-run attacks. Always a different point along the line. Never the same approach twice.”

I stared at the map I’d unrolled across my saddle horn, the parchment edges curling in the damp forest air. Red marks dotted the border like a pox. Each one a skirmish. Each one a failure.

“Casualties?”

“Three knights badly wounded. Two more with minor injuries. No deaths—yet.” Marcus paused. “They’re not trying to kill us, Your Majesty. They’re testing us.”

“They’re mapping us.” I rolled the parchment shut. “Every raid hits a different section. They probe, we respond, they watch how fast our patrols arrive and from which direction. Then they vanish before we can engage properly.”

Marcus’s horse shifted beneath him, uneasy. The trees here grew close—ancient things with trunks wider than a man was tall, their canopy so dense the late afternoon sky was reduced to scattered coins of light on the forest floor.

“Reconnaissance,” Marcus said flatly.

“Sophisticated reconnaissance. Someone is coordinating these strikes. Planning them. This isn’t feral rogues acting on instinct—this is military strategy.”

I folded the map and tucked it into my saddlebag. The frustration sat in my chest like a stone. Every time we moved to intercept, they were already gone. Ghosts in the treeline. Shadows that struck and dissolved.

“Double the eastern patrols tonight. Rotate the watch every—”

I stopped.

Marcus looked at me. The two guards flanking us tensed, hands drifting to sword hilts.

“Your Majesty?”

I held up one hand. Silence.

The forest had gone quiet. Not the natural quiet of evening settling in—this was the wrong kind of still. No birdsong. No rustling. The insects had stopped.

And then I heard it.

Crying.

Faint. Distant. Carried on the wind like something fragile and broken. A child’s voice, raw with terror, sobbing somewhere deep in the woods ahead of us.

Marcus heard it too. His hand went to his blade. “Could be a trap.”

“Could be.” I turned my horse toward the sound. “Weapons ready. Concealed. Follow me—quiet.”

We moved off the path and into the undergrowth. Single file. My horse picked its way between the roots and fallen logs with careful, silent steps. The crying grew louder as we advanced—hitching, desperate sobs punctuated by gasping breaths. A small voice calling out words I couldn’t yet make out.

The scent trail on the ground told its own story. Rogue markers—urine and claw-scored bark, the sour musk of wolves who belonged to no pack. Fresh. Left not long ago. Whatever child was crying out here was doing so in territory that rogues had recently claimed.

My grip tightened on the reins.

Then the wind shifted.

It came from the east, curling through the trees like a living thing, and it carried something on its back that made every muscle in my body lock rigid.

Winter roses.

Parchment.

Sweet. Pure. Unmistakable.

Mate.

The word detonated inside my skull. Not my thought—Alex’s. My wolf. He slammed against my consciousness with the force of a battering ram, clawing, snarling, howling with a frenzy I hadn’t felt since the night of the masquerade ball all those years ago.

MATE. That is our mate’s scent. HERE. She is HERE.

My vision blurred at the edges. My pulse hammered so violently I could feel it in my teeth.

That’s impossible. I shoved back against Alex’s surge. She’s in the capital. She’s safe at the palace. This doesn’t—

I know her scent. Alex’s voice was a roar now, rattling through every nerve. I know it like I know our own blood. That is HER. Winter roses and parchment. No one else in this world smells like that. NO ONE.

He was right. I knew he was right. I’d spent years searching for that scent—years of it haunting my dreams, clinging to the edges of my memory like smoke that refused to dissipate. And since she’d walked into my palace, since I’d confirmed what Alex had always known, her scent had become the axis around which my entire existence rotated.

But she wasn’t here. She couldn’t be here. She was miles away.

The crying continued. Closer now.

“Stay here,” I ordered. My voice came out rough. Wrong. I didn’t care. “All of you. Do not move until I call.”

Marcus opened his mouth to object.

“That’s an order, Sir Marcus.”

He closed his mouth. Nodded once. The two guards behind him went still as statues.

I dismounted and moved forward on foot. Alone. The undergrowth clutched at my boots, brambles scoring thin lines across my forearms. I barely felt them. Alex was thrashing inside me—a storm of recognition and confusion and desperate, howling need.

It’s faint, I told him. The scent. It’s not her—not directly. It’s on something. On someone.

The child, Alex growled. The child carries her scent.

The trees opened into a small clearing. A massive oak dominated the center, its roots erupting from the earth like the fingers of a buried giant. The last scraps of daylight filtered through the canopy above, casting everything in pale gold and deep shadow.

And there, huddled against the base of that oak, was a boy.

Small. So small it hurt to look at him. Knees drawn to his chest, arms wrapped around his shins, face buried against his kneecaps. His narrow shoulders shook with each sob. The bright blue tunic he wore was torn at both sleeves, smeared with mud and streaked with green from undergrowth. His linen trousers were in worse shape—ripped at one knee, the fabric dark with dirt and moisture. Scratches lined his thin forearms, some still beading with pinpricks of blood.

His dark hair was a wild tangle of curls matted with leaves and broken twigs.

I stepped forward, and a twig snapped under my boot. The boy’s head shot up, his tear-streaked, dirt-smudged little face looking up at me. Even from twenty feet away, I could recognize his eyes. Dark gold eyes with flecks of bright amber. Like looking into a mirror. Like looking into my own face from when I was a boy.

Elara’s scent clung to him like a second skin. Winter roses and parchment, woven into every thread of his clothing, every strand of his hair. He was saturated in it—the way a child would be who’d been held close, kissed goodnight, carried on a mother’s hip day after day after day. Before any rational part of my mind could process it, my wolf had already recognized him. This was Elara’s son.

But a sudden, terrifying, and urgent question seized my mind, making my blood run cold: Why was Elara’s child out here? How could a helpless toddler be left all alone to wander in a hostile wilderness swarming with enemy rogue tribes?

With my heart hammering wildly in my chest, I closed the distance and looked down at the terrified child. I crouched down slowly. Carefully. The way you’d approach a wounded animal. Every instinct screamed at me to move faster, to gather this shaking child into my arms. But he was frightened. And I was a stranger to him—a towering figure in dark armor emerging from the shadows of a forest that had already taken everything from him tonight.

“Hey,” I said. Soft. Gentle. The voice felt foreign in my own throat. “You’re safe now.”

The boy stared at me. Those gold eyes—my gold eyes—blinked once, twice. Tears still rolling down his muddy cheeks.

His lower lip quivered. His small chest hitched with a fresh sob.

Then his gaze locked onto mine. Something shifted in his expression. Not recognition—he’d never seen me before. Something deeper. Something instinctive, encoded in blood and bone.

He uncurled slowly from his huddle against the tree. His small hands pressed into the dirt. He leaned forward, staring up at me with an intensity no child his age should have been capable of.

“Are you my daddy?” he asked, his voice thin and full of hope, instantly shattering something inside my chest.