Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 35

Kaelen’s POV

After a twenty-minute carriage ride, the carriage jolted over another rut, and the small body pressed against my side shifted closer.

“Lord Kaelen?”

I looked down. Valerius had his face tilted up toward me, those wide golden eyes—so eerily familiar—searching mine with the kind of open trust that made something in my chest clench.

“Yes?”

“Are we almost at Mommy’s house?”

“Almost.”

He nodded seriously, as if he’d received a military briefing, then tucked himself tighter against my arm. His small fingers curled into the fabric of my coat sleeve. He hadn’t let go of me since I’d found him—shivering, tear-streaked, but alive—in that godforsaken border forest. And I hadn’t let go of him either.

The carriage turned onto a narrow lane. Brick buildings crowded together on both sides, their facades crumbling in places, laundry lines strung between upper windows like tired flags of surrender. This was the merchant quarter’s edge—the part the merchants themselves pretended didn’t exist.

We stopped in front of a squat brick building. Peeling paint. A cracked window on the second floor patched with oiled cloth.

This was where she lived. Where she’d been raising her son.

My jaw tightened.

I lifted Valerius down from the carriage. He immediately reached for my hand, and I gave it to him without thinking. His fingers were impossibly small wrapped around mine.

We climbed the stairs to the second floor. Before I could knock, the door flew open.

Brenna stood in the doorway. Her dark hair hung loose and tangled around her shoulders. Her eyes were swollen, rimmed an angry red, and the skin beneath them was bruised with exhaustion. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

The moment she saw Valerius, a sound escaped her—half sob, half laugh—and she dropped to her knees.

“Little man!” She pulled him into her arms so tightly he squeaked. “Oh, thank the Goddess. Thank the Goddess, you’re here. You’re okay.”

“Aunt Brenna, you’re squishing me.”

She laughed—a wet, broken sound—and loosened her grip just enough to press her lips against his curls. “I don’t care. I’m squishing you forever. You’re never leaving my sight again.”

Over Valerius’s head, her red-rimmed eyes met mine. The gratitude in them was raw. Unguarded. She didn’t bother with formalities or titles.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t know how you found him, but—thank you.”

I gave a short nod. “How is she?”

Brenna’s expression crumbled. She stood, keeping one hand on Valerius’s shoulder, and lowered her voice.

“Bad. Elara collapsed at the academy. High fever. She hasn’t woken up since I brought her home.” Brenna’s throat worked. “There’s bruising—bad bruising—and I think something happened at that manor, something worse than what she told me before. Her ribs might be cracked. I need to get to the apothecary for herbs and a pain salve, but I couldn’t leave him alone, and she’s—”

“Go.” The word came out harder than I intended. I softened it. “I’ll stay with them. Go get what she needs.”

Brenna hesitated for only a breath. Then she grabbed a worn cloak from a hook by the door, kissed Valerius’s head once more, and disappeared down the stairwell at a near-run.

The door closed behind her.

And suddenly, it was just me and a four-year-old boy in a cramped apartment that smelled of dried herbs and old wood.

Valerius tugged my hand. “Lord Kaelen?”

“Yes?”

“I’m hungry.”

I looked down at him. He looked up at me. Those golden eyes. Patient. Expectant. Completely confident that I could solve this problem.

I had commanded armies. Negotiated treaties with hostile clans. Personally executed traitors who threatened the empire’s stability.

None of that had prepared me for this.

“What do you want to eat?” I asked.

“Mac and cheese!” The answer was instantaneous. His face lit up with the first real brightness I’d seen since I found him trembling in the dark. “Mommy makes the best mac and cheese. With the crunchy bits on top.”

Mac and cheese. Crunchy bits. Fine.

I walked into the kitchen. It was barely larger than my wardrobe back at the palace—a narrow strip of counter, a wood-burning stove, a shelf of mismatched pots. I found a sack of dried pasta, a block of hard cheese, and a tin of butter.

How difficult could this possibly be?

I filled a pot with water and set it on the stove. Stoked the fire. Waited. Valerius sat on a wooden stool in the corner, swinging his legs, watching me with fascination.

“You gotta put salt in the water,” he informed me. “Mommy always puts salt.”

“Right.” I found a salt cellar. Added some. Probably too much.

When the water finally boiled, I dumped in the pasta. The cheese was next. I hacked off several chunks and dropped them into a smaller pot with a lump of butter.

Twenty minutes later, I had created a smoking culinary disaster. The pasta was scorched, and the cheese sauce had fused to the pan in a bubbling layer that looked like something excavated from a volcanic site. Smoke began curling up in thick clouds.

“Lord Kaelen?” Valerius hopped off his stool and padded over. “It’s not supposed to be black.”

Simultaneously, the larger pot hissed violently. I grabbed the handle—burned my palm—swore under my breath—and yanked it off the heat.

A shrill alarm rune on the ceiling activated, filling the tiny kitchen with a piercing wail. Smoke billowed in thick grey clouds.

“That’s the fire alarm!” Valerius announced cheerfully, entirely unbothered.

I set down both ruined pots, threw open the kitchen window, and fanned the smoke with a dish towel until the alarm rune finally sputtered into silence.

Then I stood in the middle of the wrecked kitchen—scorched pans, spilled water, a ceiling still hazy with smoke—and looked down at the four-year-old boy who was grinning up at me like this was the most entertaining thing he’d ever witnessed.

“Mac and cheese is harder than it looks,” I said.

Valerius giggled. A real, genuine, belly-deep giggle that bounced off the tiny kitchen walls and settled somewhere warm in my chest.

“Mommy says practice makes perfect.”

“Your mother,” I said dryly, “is far more talented than I am.”

I scraped the remnants into the waste bin, admitted total defeat, and sent a quick message through a courier stone for a pizza delivery, which made Valerius giggle again.

While we waited, he grabbed my hand again—that automatic, trusting grip—and pulled me down the narrow hall.

“Come see my room!”

His room was barely a closet. A small cot pushed against the wall, covered with a quilt patterned with what appeared to be green reptilian creatures.

“Those are dinosaurs,” Valerius explained, patting the fabric proudly. “They lived a long, long time ago. Before even wolves.”

“Impressive.”

He pointed to a piece of paper tacked to the wall above the cot. A crayon drawing. Two figures—one tall with silver hair, one small with dark curls. They were holding hands. A lopsided yellow sun beamed overhead.

“That’s me and Mommy,” he said.

Then his voice went quieter. He sat on the edge of the cot, his small legs dangling, and stared at the drawing.

“Lord Kaelen?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think my daddy is looking for us?”

The question hit me like a blade between the ribs. I crouched down to his eye level.

“Why do you ask that?”

Valerius shrugged, but the gesture carried a weight no child should know. “Some kids at school have daddies. They pick them up and carry them on their shoulders.” He traced a claw mark in the wooden cot frame with one small finger. “I asked Mommy once, and she got really sad. So I stopped asking.”

He looked up at me. Those golden eyes—so eerily similar to my own—held a longing so raw it nearly undid me.

“I think maybe he just doesn’t know where we are,” Valerius said softly. “Maybe if he knew, he’d come find us.”

My throat was a closed fist. I forced words through it.

“I think,” I said carefully, “that any father would be incredibly lucky to have a son like you.”

A sharp knock at the door announced the arrival of the food. When the pizza arrived, Valerius attacked it with the single-minded ferocity of a small, starving wolf. Cheese stretched from the slice to his chin in long strings that he slurped up with dramatic sound effects. He ate several slices as we sat together and watched a glowing magical projection of a puppet show. I watched him, something fierce and unfamiliar expanding behind my ribs.

By the time the clock struck eight o’clock, the puppet show had ended. Valerius yawned—a massive, jaw-cracking yawn that made his whole body shudder.

“Will you check on Mommy?” he asked, eyelids drooping as I tucked him into bed.

“I promise.”

He curled onto his side, pulling the dinosaur quilt to his chin. Within moments, his breathing evened out. I stood there longer than I needed to, watching the steady rise and fall of his small chest.

Then I pulled away.

I heated a bowl of broth from a pot Brenna had left simmering on the back of the stove. Filled a cup with water. Carried both down the narrow hall to the closed door at the end.

I pushed it open.

And my heart stopped.

Elara lay motionless on the bed. Her skin was ghostly pale beneath the dim lamplight, sheened with fever-sweat. Her silver-white hair was spread across the pillow in damp, tangled strands. But it was her face that made something violent lurch inside my chest.

A massive bruise consumed her left cheek—deep purple, almost black at the center, spreading toward her temple and jaw. Dried blood crusted the corner of her mouth. Her breathing was shallow. Labored. Each exhale carried a faint, wet rasp that suggested damaged ribs.

I set the broth and water on the bedside table. My hands were trembling. Not from fear. From something far more dangerous.

I reached toward her, carefully pulling back the torn edge of her shirt collar to check the extent of the bruising along her collarbone.

And I froze.

Her lace bodice—the delicate undergarment beneath the shirt—had been ripped nearly in half. The fine lacework was shredded beyond any possibility of repair, torn with a violent, deliberate force that had nothing to do with an accident. The ruined fabric gaped open, exposing her bare breasts.