Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 32

Kaelen’s POV

“Are you my daddy?”

The words hit me like a blade between the ribs. For a moment I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The boy’s gold eyes stared up at me, shimmering with tears and desperate, fragile hope.

Alex roared inside me. Yes. YES. Ours. He is OURS.

I shoved him down. Hard.

“No,” I said quietly. The word tasted wrong. Bitter. “I’m not your daddy, little one.”

Something crumbled in the boy’s face. His chin dropped. His small shoulders caved inward, and a fresh sob tore from his chest—raw, animal, the sound of a child who had used up his last scrap of courage on a single question and gotten the wrong answer.

“But I know your mommy,” I added quickly. “I’m her... I’m her lord. She works for me. Do you understand?”

He sniffled. Wiped his nose with the back of a filthy hand, leaving a smear of mud across his upper lip. Those gold eyes studied me with a sharpness that didn’t belong on a face so young.

“You’re Mommy’s boss?”

“Yes.”

“The king boss?”

Despite everything—the cold creeping through the trees, the rogue markers stinking up the underbrush, the fact that a four-year-old child was sitting alone in the most dangerous stretch of forest in the empire—I almost smiled.

“Something like that.”

Valerius wiped at his cheeks. His fingers were trembling. The scratches on his forearms had crusted over, but the skin around them was angry and swollen. He was pale beneath the dirt. Too pale. And so thin I could see the knobs of his wrists jutting out from his torn sleeves like small stones beneath silk.

He’s malnourished, Alex growled. Underweight. Whoever is supposed to be feeding this child is failing.

I knew. The observation sat in my gut like poison.

“I know you,” Valerius said suddenly.

I went still.

“You’re the tall man.” He pointed one grubby finger at me, his brow furrowed in concentration. “You carried Mommy. She was sleeping and you carried her home. I saw you from the window.”

The memory surfaced—sharp, vivid. That night after the festival. Elara had fainted from exhaustion. I’d carried her back to her quarters myself because no one else was going to do it properly. I hadn’t realized anyone had seen.

“That’s right,” I said. “I carried your mommy home.”

Valerius nodded slowly. Something in his posture loosened. Not much. But enough.

“Is Mommy coming?”

“I’m going to make sure she knows where you are. But first—” I kept my voice low, steady. “Can you tell me how you got here, Valerius? Who brought you to this forest?”

The change was instantaneous.

His entire body went rigid. The color that had barely begun returning to his cheeks drained away again. His gaze dropped to the ground. His small hands curled into fists against his mud-caked knees.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell.” His voice had shrunk to almost nothing. A whisper pressed thin by terror. “She said... she said if I tell anyone, Mommy will get hurt. Bad hurt. She said they’ll make Mommy go away forever.”

The acid in my veins ignited.

She.

Someone—a woman—had dragged this child into rogue territory. Left him. Threatened him with his mother’s life to guarantee his silence. A four-year-old boy, terrorized into muteness by someone who understood exactly which nerve to strike.

Alex slammed against the walls of my control. Find her. Hunt her. Tear her apart.

I held steady. Barely.

“Listen to me.” I lowered myself further until I was at his eye level. Close enough to see the dried tear tracks cutting through the dirt on his face like tiny rivers. “No one is going to hurt your mommy. I won’t let them. Do you believe me?”

Valerius looked at me for a long time. His lower lip quivered.

“She was really scary,” he whispered. “She smiled but her eyes were mean.”

“I know scary people,” I said. “I’m scarier than all of them. And I promise you—I’m not going to leave you. Not tonight. Not ever while you’re with me.”

His chin wobbled. Then he lunged forward.

Small arms wrapped around my neck. Thin. Trembling. His face buried against my shoulder, and the sobs came again—not the terrified wailing of before, but something quieter. Deeper. The sound of relief so enormous it had nowhere to go except out through tears.

He weighed nothing.

That was the thing that nearly broke me. When I gathered him up and stood, he weighed nothing. Like holding a bundle of dry sticks wrapped in cloth. I could feel every rib through his torn tunic. Every knob of his spine pressed against my forearm.

Alex whimpered. A low, wounded sound I’d never heard from my wolf before. Protect him. Feed him. Keep him warm. Ours to guard.

“You’re all right,” I murmured against the boy’s tangled curls. “I’ve got you.”

I carried him back through the undergrowth toward the patrol. Marcus stood exactly where I’d left him, hand on his sword, eyes scanning the treeline. When he saw me emerge carrying a child, his expression shifted from battle-ready to stunned.

“Your Majesty—”

“A child was abandoned in rogue territory.” My voice was iron. “I want additional patrols deployed along this entire sector before nightfall. Send word to the border command—someone brought this boy here deliberately. I want to know who crossed the boundary line and when.”

Marcus stared at the small figure clinging to my neck. “Is he—”

“He’s safe. That’s what matters right now. Ready the carriage.”

Marcus moved without another word. The guards fell in around us—a tight formation, swords drawn, eyes on the shadows between the trees. The forest was growing darker by the minute. Somewhere far off, a wolf howled. Not one of ours.

Valerius flinched and pressed his face harder into my shoulder.

“Just an animal,” I told him. “Far away. Can’t reach you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

The carriage ride back toward the capital was tense. Marcus drove. The two guards rode flanking positions, their silhouettes sharp against the last bruised light of evening. Inside the carriage, Valerius sat on my lap because he refused to let go of my cloak.

His sobs had quieted to hiccups. Then to silence. Then, eventually, to questions.

“Lord Kaelen?”

“Hm?”

“Do you know stories about wolves?”

I looked down at him. His gold eyes peered up at me from beneath a mess of dark curls, still red-rimmed and puffy but no longer leaking tears. Curiosity had crept back into his face—tentative, fragile, but alive.

“A few,” I said.

“Mommy tells me wolf stories every night. She says wolves are brave and loyal and they never leave their pack.” He paused. Picked at a loose thread on my cloak. “Is that true?”

“It’s true.”

“Do you have a pack?”

“I do.”

“Is it big?”

“Very big.”

He considered this. His small fingers wound tighter into the fabric. “My eyes glow,” he said suddenly.

I blinked. “What?”

“My eyes. They glow in the dark. Like jewels.” He said it with a strange mix of pride and secrecy, the way a child might confess to owning a forbidden toy. “Mommy says they come from my daddy. She says my daddy has eyes like gold coins that shine in the moonlight.”

The carriage rattled over a rut in the road. I didn’t feel it.

Gold eyes, Alex breathed, his possessive instinct flaring wildly. Our blood.

I pushed the wolf’s baseless madness down. Shut up. He’s Elara’s son.

“Mommy says one day I’ll meet my daddy,” Valerius continued, oblivious to the earthquake happening inside my skull. “She says he’s very strong and very important. She says he just doesn’t know about me yet.”

My throat closed.

“I bet he’d like you very much,” I managed.

Valerius beamed. That wide, trusting, heartbreaking grin of a child who believed every word an adult told him. “Do you think so?”

“I know so.”

He settled against my chest. The steady rattle of the carriage wheels seemed to soothe him. Before long, his breathing began to slow. His grip on my cloak loosened. His head lolled sideways, pressing against my heartbeat.

He was asleep before we reached the capital walls.

I carried him through the palace corridors. The marble hallways of the administrative wing echoed with our footsteps—mine heavy, measured; the guards’ crisp and alert behind me. Courtiers and servants scattered from our path. I didn’t look at any of them.

Valerius slept through all of it. One fist still tangled in my cloak. His breath came in soft, steady puffs against my collarbone.

I reached my study and pulled the communication stone from my belt with my free hand. The enchantment hummed to life beneath my fingertips. I channeled Elara’s frequency.

It rang. And rang. And rang.

Then—a click. But not her voice.

“You’ve reached the message vault of Elara Frostfang. I’m unable to respond at this time. Please leave your message after the tone.”

The chime sounded. Brief. Hollow.

“Elara.” My voice was low. Controlled. Every word deliberate. “Your son is with me. He’s safe. He’s unharmed. I found him alone in the rogue territories near the eastern border.” A pause. Valerius stirred against my shoulder, murmuring something in his sleep. “I need you to contact me immediately. Whatever is happening—wherever you are—respond to this message the moment you hear it.”

With a sharp motion, I ended the transmission, leaving the stone to go dark in my palm.