Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 74

Isolde’s POV

The horse screamed before I did.

"Move!" I yanked the reins hard to the left. The decrepit carriage lurched, one wheel catching a rut in the dirt road. The whole frame shuddered like it might split apart. "MOVE, you useless beast!"

In the past three hours, I had been trapped in a relentless spiral of panic. The animal obeyed. Barely. Its sides were lathered with foam, nostrils flaring, hooves hammering the packed earth with a rhythm that matched my own heartbeat—frantic, uneven, desperate.

I pressed my palm to my face. The wounds throbbed. Three parallel lines of fire, from my left temple down to the edge of my jaw. Deep enough that I could feel the torn flesh shifting every time I clenched my teeth.

This was all thanks to Elara, that filthy commoner, that worthless, gutter-born nobody I had tried to sell off. Elara, who I had spent years grinding beneath my heel. Elara, who was supposed to be weak and docile and grateful for the scraps I allowed her. That pathetic creature had clawed my face open like an animal.

And the wounds wouldn’t close.

I’d pressed my silk handkerchief against the gashes until the fabric was soaked through. The blood kept coming—sluggish now, but steady. Three perfect lines carved into my skin. Permanent. I knew they were permanent the moment I felt the depth of them.

My beauty. My one true weapon. Ruined.

The carriage hit another rut. I bounced hard on the wooden bench and bit the inside of my cheek.

Focus. Focus on surviving.

Behind me, somewhere in the distance I’d already put between myself and the capital, the emperor’s guards were certainly mobilizing. I knew Emperor Kaelen would ruthlessly hunt me down because I had kidnapped Elara’s bastard. His son. The heir he didn’t even know existed until recently. Yet, as I tried to accelerate toward the lawless Rogue territory, I found that this decrepit carriage was moving twenty miles slower than normal.

A shudder ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold.

I had seen what Kaelen did to people who merely disrespected him. What he would do to someone who had laid hands on his offspring—who had attempted to traffic the boy like livestock—

No. I couldn’t think about that. If I thought about it, I would stop the horse. I would curl up in the back of this wretched carriage and wait for death, because death from exposure would be kinder than what Kaelen Nightfire would devise for me.

The forest thickened around me. The road narrowed from a proper path to a rutted track, then to something barely wider than a game trail. Ancient trees pressed in from both sides, their branches intertwining overhead until the fading daylight became a dim, sickly green. Moss hung from the limbs like rotting curtains.

I knew where I was going.

The thought made my stomach clench, but I kept driving. Deeper. Further from the capital. Further from civilization. Further from any territory that recognized the emperor’s law.

Gareth’s carriage was falling apart beneath me. Of course it was. Everything that man touched turned to ruin. The axle groaned with every turn. The leather canopy had a tear in it that let the wind slice through. One of the lantern hooks had snapped off entirely.

My husband. My brilliant strategic choice of a husband. A disgraced prince with no title, no fortune, and no spine. I had chosen Gareth over Elara’s pathetic devotion because he was royal blood, because he was supposed to be my path to power. Instead he’d given me nothing but debt and humiliation and this rotting excuse for transportation.

The road disappeared entirely.

I pulled the horse to a stop. The animal stood heaving, steam rising from its back. Around us, the forest was utterly silent. No birdsong. No rustling of small creatures. Just the wind moving through dead branches and the wet, heavy smell of decaying leaves.

This was the border.

Beyond this point, no imperial patrol ventured. No tax collector. No messenger. This was where the civilized world ended and the lawless territory of the Rogues began.

I sat very still on the bench. My hands were shaking. My dress—a designer gown I’d worn to the reception, pale blue silk with pearl beading along the neckline—was streaked with blood and dirt and horse sweat. My heeled shoes were absurd out here. Useless.

I looked ridiculous. A painted doll dragged through the mud.

But I had nowhere else to go.

Back meant Kaelen. Back meant chains, and a trial, and whatever creative punishment the Wolf Emperor decided I deserved. Execution, probably. Or worse—being stripped of my wolf entirely and cast out as a shell. A nothing.

Forward meant Rogues. Exiled wolves. Criminals, murderers, and worse things that had been driven from polite society and left to rot in the wild places. Wolves who killed for sport and ate their own kind when food ran scarce.

My hands tightened on the reins.

Forward, then.

I urged the horse on. It resisted. Planted its hooves and tossed its head, ears flat against its skull. Animals could sense what lay ahead before their riders could. Smarter than people, sometimes.

I cracked the reins hard against its flank. It lurched forward with a pained whinny and plunged into the unmarked woods.

The trees swallowed us.

For a long stretch, there was nothing. Just darkness and the creak of the carriage and the muffled thud of hooves on soft earth. I strained my eyes against the gloom. Every shadow looked like a crouching figure. Every snapping twig sounded like a footstep.

Then I saw them.

Eyes. Dozens of them. Glowing a dull, sickly yellow in the darkness between the trees. Watching. Unblinking. Arranged at varying heights—some low to the ground, some at standing height, some perched in the branches above.

The horse stopped dead. No amount of rein-cracking would move it.

I climbed down. My heels sank immediately into the soft earth. I stumbled, caught myself on the side of the carriage, and straightened. Blood from my face dripped onto the pearl beading of my dress.

They emerged from the trees.

Six of them. All male. All massive—broader and wilder-looking than any wolves I’d seen in the capital. Their clothes were mismatched rags and animal hides. Their skin was weathered dark from years in the open. And their teeth—

I saw the blood on their teeth before I saw their faces.

They surrounded me in seconds. Casual. Practiced. The way predators surrounded cornered prey—without urgency, because they knew there was nowhere for me to run.

One of them stepped forward.

He was the largest. Grizzled gray hair hung past his shoulders in matted ropes. A scar ran diagonally across his face, splitting his left eyebrow and continuing down through the bridge of his nose. His eyes were a flat, dull yellow—like dirty coins. When he smiled, gaps showed where teeth should have been.

"Well, well." His voice was a low rumble, like gravel shifting at the bottom of a well. "What do we have here?"

He circled me. Slowly. His gaze traveled from my ruined heels to my blood-stained gown to the wounds on my face. The other five watched in silence, lips curled.

"Pretty little noble princess." He stopped in front of me. Close enough that I could smell him—unwashed skin and raw meat and something sour underneath. "Lost your way, have you?"

"I’m not lost." My voice came out thinner than I wanted. I forced steel into it. "I came here on purpose."

Laughter. All six of them. The sound bounced off the trees like something feral.

"On purpose," the scarred leader repeated. He leaned closer. "Nobody comes here on purpose, princess. Not unless they want to die."

A younger one—lean, with a jaw like a hatchet—stepped up beside the leader. He sneered at me, showing bloodstained canines.

"Look at her dress. Look at those shoes." He spat on the ground near my feet. "She thinks we’re some kind of inn. Thinks she can just waltz in and—"

"I have information!" I yelled desperately, pressing my back hard against the carriage.

The young one paused. His sneer wavered.

"Information," the scarred leader echoed. Flat. Unimpressed.

My heart hammered so hard I was certain they could hear it. "About Emperor Kaelen Nightfire!"

The name landed like a stone dropped into still water. The laughter died. The casual menace in their postures shifted to something sharper. More alert.

The scarred leader’s flat yellow eyes narrowed. "What about him?"

"His weaknesses! His plans!" I shouted, the animal panic clawing at my throat. "And I know about his expansion into your territories. He’s been hunting your kind. Picking off scouts. Burning camps. You know this. Everyone in these woods knows this."

Silence. The wind moved through the dead branches above us.

The young wolf with the hatchet jaw scoffed. "You think we care about palace politics? You think we—"

"Quiet." The scarred leader didn’t raise his voice. Didn’t need to. The younger wolf’s mouth snapped shut like a trap.

The leader studied me. His gaze was different now—less predatory, more calculating. Weighing me. Measuring what I might be worth against the effort of keeping me alive.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Someone who was close enough to the imperial court to know things that could destroy Kaelen Nightfire." I held his gaze. Willed my voice not to shake. "And someone who has nothing left to lose."

He stared at me for a long moment. The scar on his face seemed to deepen in the failing light. My chest tightened. I had no idea who their chief was, what his temperament was like, or what he truly desired. This entire proposition was a desperate bluff, a frantic act of self-preservation after my crimes against Elara. My continued survival now rested entirely in the hands of this unseen, unpredictable leader who might value my secrets, or who might simply prefer me dead.

Then, he turned to one of his men.

"Go tell the chief we have a visitor. One who claims to know the emperor’s secrets." He turned his head to look at me, his smile revealing too many teeth. "You’d better pray you’re not wasting our time, princess. Our chief doesn’t like disappointment."