Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 36

Kaelen’s POV

Kill them.

Alexei’s voice was a low, grinding snarl reverberating through every nerve in my body. Find whoever did this. Rip them apart. Scatter the pieces.

I agreed with every savage syllable.

But I couldn’t move. My hand hovered over the torn lace of her bodice, fingers trembling with a volatile cocktail of fury and something else—something primal and possessive that the mate bond kept feeding directly into my bloodstream.

Her skin was exposed. Pale. Bruised along the collarbone where fingers had clearly gripped and dragged. The torn fabric told a story I didn’t need words to understand. Someone had tried to—

Don’t think it. Alexei’s growl dropped lower, vibrating against my skull. Just find them. Kill them slowly.

My jaw clenched so tight I tasted copper.

I forced myself to breathe. Once. Twice. Drew my gaze away from her bare skin with the discipline of a man disarming a weapon pointed at his own chest.

She needs care, not your rage. Focus.

I moved to the narrow wardrobe against the far wall. Opened it. Found a worn cotton sleeping robe—soft, modest, smelling faintly of her. Of winter frost and wildflowers. The mate bond pulsed hot beneath my sternum, and I shoved it down with brute force.

Returning to the bed, I sat on the edge. Carefully. Like approaching a wounded animal. I eased what remained of her shredded shirt away from her shoulders, keeping my eyes fixed on the task. Clinical. Controlled.

My knuckles brushed the curve of her waist.

Every muscle in my body locked.

Our mate, Alexei murmured, his tone shifting from murderous to something reverent and aching. She’s ours. Protect her. Hold her. Claim—

Enough. I shut him down hard.

I slipped her arms through the sleeping robe. Tied it at the waist. Pulled the blanket up over her chest.

Then I fetched warm water from the kitchen and a clean cloth.

Sitting beside her again, I pressed the damp cloth gently against her swollen cheek. The bruise was deep—someone had hit her with their full strength. A grown adult. Against this woman who weighed less than half of me.

I wiped the dried blood from the corner of her mouth. Her lips were cracked. Pale.

Names, Alexei demanded. I want names.

So did I.

I wrung the cloth out. Pressed it against her temple. Her fever burned against my fingers through the fabric, radiating heat that had nothing to do with the mate bond.

She stirred.

A soft sound—half whimper, half groan. Her brow furrowed. Her cracked lips parted.

“What are you doing?” Her voice came out hoarse and thin, scraped raw. “Playing Sleeping Beauty?”

Her ice-blue eyes opened. Glassy with fever but still sharp. Still defiant.

Even beaten half to death, she had the audacity to mock me.

“You’re awake,” I said.

“Obviously.” She tried to push herself upright and gasped. Her hand flew to her ribs. Color drained from her already pale face. “Where—”

Then her eyes went wide. Wild. The fever haze burned away in an instant, replaced by naked terror.

“Valerius.” She grabbed the front of my shirt with surprising strength, her fingers twisting the fabric. “Where is my son? Is he—did they—”

“He’s safe.” I caught her wrist. Gently. Her pulse hammered against my thumb like a trapped bird. “He’s in his room. Asleep.”

She didn’t believe me. I could see it—the desperate calculation behind those blue eyes, weighing my words against every terrible possibility.

“I found him in the border forest,” I continued. Kept my voice even. Steady. The voice I used for skittish war horses and frightened soldiers. “Fed him dinner. He told me about dinosaurs. In great detail.”

Something flickered in her expression. A crack in the panic.

“How many?”

“Fifteen different species. I now know more about the feeding habits of ancient lizards than I ever needed to.”

The faintest tremor crossed her lips. Not quite a smile. But close.

Her grip on my shirt loosened. She sank back against the pillow, eyes squeezing shut. A single tear slipped down her bruised cheek and disappeared into her silver hair.

“He’s okay,” she whispered. Not to me. To herself. Confirming it. Needing the words to exist in the air.

“He’s okay,” I repeated.

Silence settled between us. The lamp on the bedside table guttered, casting restless shadows across the walls of the tiny bedroom.

I set the cloth aside.

“Who did this to you?”

She opened her eyes. Stared at the ceiling.

“Elara.”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.” The words came out low. Controlled. But Alexei was pacing behind my ribs like a caged predator, and the control was a thin, brittle thing.

She turned her head slowly. Looked at me. There was something terrible in her expression—not pain, not fear, but a bone-deep exhaustion. The kind that comes from being betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect you. Over and over. Until the betrayal itself becomes expected.

“My foster mother,” she said quietly. “The Baroness de Valois.”

I went still.

“She arranged a deal. Sold me.” Elara’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “As a ‘slightly used commoner.’ Fifty thousand gold coins to a man named Harold. A disgusting old bastard who wanted a young wife to breed heirs.”

The room temperature dropped. Or maybe that was just the blood leaving my extremities and flooding directly into the killing parts of my brain.

“She sold you.” I repeated it. Each word was its own sentence. Its own verdict.

“Tried to.” A ghost of dark pride flickered across her battered face. “Harold’s in the healers’ ward now. Broken nose. Shattered jaw. And the Baroness...” She paused. The corner of her split lip twitched. “Well. She was bleeding on her own parlor floor when I left.”

Despite the murder roaring through my veins, something fierce and hot flared in my chest. Pride. Raw, unexpected pride.

Our mate is strong, Alexei rumbled approvingly. Then, in the same breath: But the old man and the Baroness still breathe. Fix that.

“Names.” My voice had dropped into a register that made the air itself feel heavier. The Alpha command vibrated beneath the surface, barely leashed. “Full names. Addresses. I want them tonight.”

Elara studied me. Her ice-blue eyes narrowed—not with fear, but with something wary. Assessing.

“And what will you do? Storm a Baron’s estate in the middle of the night? Start a political incident because a commoner got roughed up by her betters?”

“They are not your betters.”

“The empire disagrees.”

“I am the empire.”

The words hung in the air between us. Too heavy. Too honest.

She looked away first.

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “I handled it.”

“You shouldn’t have had to handle it alone.”

“I’ve been handling things alone for a long time, Your Majesty.”

Your Majesty. The title landed like a door slamming shut. I felt the distance she was building with every syllable—brick by careful brick, mortared with formality and pain.

I turned, ready to hunt them down.

But she reached out and grabbed my wrist, stopping me. Her fingers were cold and fragile against my skin, bearing the faint ridges of half-healed calluses—evidence of a life spent scrubbing floors and carrying heavy loads.

“Kaelen,” she said softly.

My name. Not the title. My actual name, spoken in that raw, fractured voice. Something cracked open behind my ribs.

“What?”

But her expression was already changing. The brief vulnerability drained away like water through sand, replaced by something cold. Hard. Armored.

Her eyes fell to the collar of my uniform jacket. Fixed on something.

I followed her gaze.

She was looking at the empty space over my heart where my personal signet—my imperial badge—usually rested. The same badge I had temporarily entrusted to Seraphine for court duties. I saw the immediate shift in her eyes as she remembered who currently possessed it, the devastating conclusion she drew from that absence.

Because her hand withdrew from my wrist. Slowly. Deliberately. Like pulling a knife from a wound.

“Your fiancée has your badge,” Elara said. Her voice had gone flat again. Emptied of everything soft.

“She’s not my—”

“She carries your imperial crest, Your Majesty. She bears your signet. In this empire, that means something very specific.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

Explain, Alexei urged desperately. Tell her the truth. Tell her the badge was ceremonial. Tell her Seraphine means nothing—

But Elara was already turning away. She pulled the sleeping robe tighter around herself—the one I’d just dressed her in—and stared at the far wall with eyes like frozen lakes.

“Don’t waste your time on me,” Elara continued, her voice growing more resilient and cutting with every word. “I’m just the commoner subordinate you happened to sleep with in a moment of weakness. Seraphine is your real mate, the one you’ve been looking for all along. Don’t let me stand in the way of your happily ever after.”