Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 44

Elara’s POV

The medical wing behind the training ground was a sterile, long, narrow room. White stone walls. Iron cots in rows. The smell of antiseptic and dried herbs hung so thick it coated the back of my throat.

Through the windows, I could see the courtyard where armored wagons were being loaded with weapons and supplies. Knights in full battle gear jogged in formation, heading straight toward the escalating border conflict.

“Ela, the IV bags with healing draught. Bring them.”

Leila’s voice cut through the room, sharp and efficient.

I moved to assist her, my hands steady. The rest of me was not. I pulled the bags of pale gold healing draught from the cabinet. The glass was cold against my fingers. I carried them back to Leila’s station and hung them on the metal rack.

Suddenly, the double doors were slammed open.

I flinched. Leila didn’t.

Knights shouldered through, carrying stretchers between them. The wounded from the rogue pack attacks flooded in like a tide—men with shattered arms, gashed faces, armor cracked open like eggshells. The smell of blood intensified until it was the only thing in the room.

“Over here!” Leila shouted, directing the chaos. “And clear the back cots, move the stable patients to the floor if you have to—”

A young knight was slammed down onto the cot in front of us, barely conscious. He had massive claw marks raked across his chest. The gashes were horrific, the skin around them torn and purpling. Every time he breathed, fresh blood bubbled up.

Leila immediately leaned over him, assessing the severity of the wounds. “Keep pressure here, Ela,” she ordered, her hands moving with terrifying precision.

I pressed both hands flat against his chest. Warm blood seeped through my fingers immediately. The knight groaned, his back arching off the table.

His glassy, terrified eyes found mine.

“Am I...” His voice was barely there, a faint whisper. “Am I going to make it?”

“Steady,” I whispered back, ignoring the tremor in my own voice. “Steady. Look at me.”

“Ela.” Leila’s voice suddenly changed.

I looked up.

She wasn’t looking at our patient anymore. She was staring at the doorway, where two knights were maneuvering a final stretcher through the frame with extreme, almost reverent care.

The man on the stretcher was big. Broad shoulders. Dark hair matted with sweat and blood. His armor had been cut away, revealing a body that was a map of violence. He was completely unconscious, his face gray and his lips blue. His left arm hung wrong—not just broken. Shattered. The bone had fragmented beneath the skin, creating grotesque lumps along his forearm.

But it was the wound on his thigh that stopped my heart.

A deep, long gash running from his hip nearly to his knee. The edges gaped open like a mouth, revealing severed muscle and glistening white tendon. The massive claws that had done this were the size of carving knives, carving through flesh with brutal ease.

Sir Cassian.

“No.” The word left Leila’s mouth as a whisper. Then louder. “No, no, no—put him here. Here! This table, clear it, NOW!”

Her professional composure shattered like thin ice. She shoved past me, nearly knocking the gauze from my hands, and was at Cassian’s side before the stretcher had fully settled. Her gloved hands hovered over the thigh wound, trembling.

“Cassian.” Her voice cracked. “Cassian, can you hear me?”

Nothing. His chest rose and fell in shallow, irregular hitches. His skin was the color of wet ash.

Leila pressed her fingers to his neck. Searching for a pulse. Her jaw clenched. She moved her fingers. Pressed again. Harder.

“Pulse is thready,” she said. But she wasn’t speaking to anyone. She was speaking to herself, to the room, to whatever god might be listening. “He’s lost too much blood. The femoral—if the femoral is severed—”

She peeled back the torn fabric around his thigh. What she saw made her go still.

Then the sound that came out of her was not the sound of a physician.

It was the sound of a woman watching someone she loved die.

“The muscle is severed clean through.” Tears streaked down her face, cutting pale lines through the blood that had spattered her cheeks. “The artery is nicked—maybe worse—I can’t tell, there’s too much blood. He needs surgery. A full surgical theatre. The Royal Hospital, not this—not this field station—”

She grabbed a tourniquet and cinched it above the wound with shaking hands. Blood slowed but didn’t stop. It pooled beneath him on the white sheet, spreading in a dark, terrible bloom.

“Leila.” I was beside her. I didn’t remember moving. “Tell me what to do.”

“There’s nothing.” Her voice broke completely. “I can slow it. I can’t stop it. He needs a surgeon. He needs—” A sob tore through her. “Cassian, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare leave—”

His breathing stuttered. The gap between each inhale grew longer.

Something happened in my right hand.

It started as a tingle. Faint. Like the pins-and-needles sensation of a sleeping limb waking up. Then warmth. Not the warmth of blood or friction. Something else. Something that came from inside my bones and radiated outward through my skin like heat from a banked fire.

I looked down.

My hand was glowing.

Soft. White. The light pulsed gently, like captured moonlight trapped beneath my skin. It was beautiful and impossible and it moved with my heartbeat—bright, dim, bright, dim—steady as a tide.

I didn’t think.

There was no conscious decision. No calculation. No understanding of what I was doing or why. My body moved on its own, guided by something ancient and sure that lived in a place deeper than thought.

I placed my glowing hand over the wound on Cassian’s thigh.

The light flared.

White brilliance poured from my palm and sank into his torn flesh like water into dry earth. I felt the connection—felt it the way you feel a heartbeat, or the pull of breath. The damaged tissue was a landscape beneath my fingers.

The light found each break and filled it.

A miracle unfolded beneath my palm. Muscle knit together. Slow at first, then faster. I watched—we all watched—as the spilled blood reversed its flow, drawing back into his veins before the raw, exposed tissue sealed itself shut. New skin formed like frost spreading across a windowpane. The arterial tear closed.

I moved my hand to his arm. The shattered bone beneath the skin shifted. I felt each fragment find its neighbor, lock into place, fuse. The grotesque lumps smoothed. The limb straightened.

The medical wing had gone silent.

Not quiet. Silent. The kind of silence that happens when every person in a room forgets to breathe at the same time.

I could feel their eyes on me. Every physician. Every knight. Every groaning patient who had turned their head to stare at the commoner girl with moonlight pouring from her hands.

The light dimmed.

Flickered.

Went out.

Exhaustion hit me like a stone wall. My knees buckled, my body swaying. The room tilted sideways, and I grabbed the edge of the cot to keep from hitting the floor. My vision swam. My hand—my right hand—felt hollow, emptied of something vital that I couldn’t name.

On the table, Sir Cassian’s chest rose. Fell. Rose again. Steady. Strong. Color flooded back into his face like dawn breaking over gray hills.

His eyelids trembled.

Opened.

He blinked, hazy and confused. His gaze drifted across the ceiling, then found Leila standing over him with tears streaming down her face, her gloves soaked red, her composure in ruins.

“Leila?” His voice was hoarse. Bewildered. “What happened?” A slow frown creased his brow. “Why are you crying?”