Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 76

Isolde’s POV

The treehouse smelled like cedar and stolen perfume.

I uncapped the bottle of imported champagne and poured it into a chipped ceramic cup—the only drinkware available in this wretched forest outpost. The bubbles fizzed against the rough clay. Ridiculous. Champagne in a clay cup, served in a treehouse built from scavenged lumber and lashed together with rope.

And yet.

I lifted the cup and drank. The champagne was excellent. Dry, crisp, with that sharp bite of citrus that only the expensive bottles carried. I let it sit on my tongue before swallowing.

Below me, the camp sprawled across the forest floor like a living thing. Cookfires sent threads of gray smoke curling through the canopy. Wolves moved between the tents—sharpening blades, skinning game, sparring in the packed-dirt clearing near the eastern perimeter. Dozens of them. My wolves now. Well, Malak’s wolves. But they listened to me.

Weeks. That was all it had taken.

Weeks since I’d crawled into this camp on bleeding feet, stripped naked in the mud, and knelt before the Rogue King like a dog. Weeks since I’d traded my body and my secrets for the right to breathe.

Now I sat above them all. Literally.

The treehouse had been Malak’s idea—or rather, my idea that I’d made him think was his. A private quarters for his "queen," elevated above the filth and chaos of the camp floor. Large enough for a sleeping pallet, a crude table, and the growing collection of stolen goods that my wolves brought me like offerings to a shrine.

I casually filed my nails, surveying the latest haul spread across the table. A master-crafted handbag—premium leather, still wrapped in tissue paper. A strand of pearls with a broken clasp. Two bottles of champagne. A diamond bracelet that caught the dappled light filtering through the canopy and threw tiny rainbows across the hide walls.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

A heavy knock shook the platform. The trapdoor lifted, and Marcus hauled himself through the opening. His scarred face was flushed from the climb. He was massive—shoulders so wide he had to angle himself sideways to fit through the hatch—and he carried a canvas sack slung over one shoulder like it weighed nothing.

"My Lady." He dipped his head. Set the sack on the floor with a muffled clink. "From the village raid last night. Thought you’d want first pick."

I set my nail file aside and nudged the sack open with my toe. Clothing, mostly. A fine wool coat. Silk scarves. A pair of leather boots that looked close to my size. And underneath, a velvet jewelry box.

I picked up the box. Inside, a pair of sapphire earrings glinted against black satin.

"Acceptable," I said.

Marcus beamed. Actually beamed—this hulking brute who had terrorized frontier towns for years, grinning at me like a hound who’d fetched a stick.

"Anything else you need, my Lady? The boys caught a stag this morning. I can have them roast the best cut for you."

"Later. I’m dining with Malak tonight."

He nodded and retreated down the ladder with surprising grace for a man his size. The trapdoor thudded shut.

I slipped the diamond bracelet onto my wrist and examined my reflection in the small hand mirror Marcus had stolen for me. My eyes were sharper than they’d ever been. Harder. The softness that had once made me beautiful had been burned away, and what remained was something more useful.

I looked dangerous. Good.

If someone had told me months ago that I would be living in the wilderness with a tribe of Rogue wolves—eating game cooked over open fires, sleeping on animal hides, bathing in ice-cold streams—I would have laughed until I choked. Isolde de Valois, daughter of a baron, wife of a prince, reduced to a forest savage? Absurd.

But the truth was simpler than I expected.

Power was power, regardless of the setting. In the capital, it wore silk and spoke in whispers. Here, it wore scars and spoke with fists. The mechanics were identical. Find what people wanted. Offer it. Make yourself indispensable. And never, ever show weakness.

Malak had been crude with me that first night. Brutal. He’d treated me like something to be used and discarded. But I’d endured. And in the days that followed, I’d begun to feed him what he truly craved—not my body, but my mind. I knew the imperial court. I knew the patrol schedules along the border territories. I knew which noble families were weak, which trade routes were poorly defended, which outposts had been quietly abandoned.

I knew how civilized wolves thought. And Malak, for all his savagery, was smart enough to recognize the value of that knowledge.

Within days, he’d stopped treating me like a plaything. Soon, he was asking my opinion before raids. By now, I sat at his right hand during war councils, and not a single wolf in the camp dared to disrespect me.

A faint hum vibrated against my hip. I froze.

The communication stone. The small enchanted crystal Seraphine had given me before I’d fled the capital—our only link between the civilized world and this lawless forest. It pulsed with a pale blue glow, warm against my skin.

I pulled it from the fold of my belt and pressed my thumb to its surface.

"Seraphine."

The voice that came through was nothing like the composed, calculating woman I remembered. It was ragged. Wet with tears. Shaking so badly that the words came out in fractured pieces.

"Isolde—oh Goddess—Isolde, it’s over. It’s all over."

I sat down slowly. Set the champagne aside.

"What are you talking about?"

"He knows!" A sob cracked through the stone. "Kaelen—he found out. About the brooch. About everything. He knows I wasn’t the woman from that night. He knows I just found the brooch and lied about it."

My fingers tightened around the crystal. "How?"

"I don’t know! Someone must have—there was an investigation—his guards, they—" Another sob. Her breathing was ragged, panicked, the sound of someone unraveling completely. "He called me into the throne room. In front of everyone. He said he had proof that I never attended the masquerade ball, that I fabricated the entire story. He said the brooch was found, not earned."

I closed my eyes. Drew a slow breath through my nose.

"And?" I kept my voice flat. Controlled. One of us had to be.

"He dismissed me. Stripped my title. Banished me from the palace grounds." Her voice pitched higher, thinner. "I have nothing, Isolde. Nothing! No position. No income. No protection. I’m hiding in an inn outside the city walls and I barely have enough coin to pay for another night."

I opened my eyes and stared at the canopy above me. Leaves shifting in the wind. Dappled light. The distant sound of wolves sparring below.

"Where exactly are you?"

"Some filthy roadside inn. I don’t even know the name. Everything happened so fast—the guards escorted me out of the palace like a criminal. They threw my belongings into the street." Her breathing hitched. "But that’s not the worst part."

Something cold settled in my chest. "What’s the worst part?"

Silence. Just the sound of her ragged breathing through the stone.

"Seraphine. What is the worst part?"

"Elara." The name came out like poison. "That lowborn slut is living in the palace now. Her and her bastard child. I saw them—before the guards removed me—I saw her walking through the east corridor with that smug, self-satisfied look on her face, like she owned the place. Like she belonged there."

The crystal cracked in my grip.

Not literally. But I felt something crack inside me—something that had been holding the rage in check, keeping it contained, manageable. That crack split wide open, and what poured through was black and hot and absolute.

Elara. In the palace. With Kaelen. With her brat. Living the life that should have been mine. Walking those marble halls with that look on her face—

"SHUT UP!"

The scream tore out of me before I could stop it. Birds exploded from the branches overhead in a panicked rush of wings. Below, wolves looked up, startled. The treehouse shuddered.

I was standing. I didn’t remember standing. The crystal was clenched in my fist, my knuckles white, my whole arm shaking.

"Isolde—"

"I said SHUT UP."

Silence from the stone.

I forced myself to breathe. In. Out. In. My jaw ached from clenching.

I should have killed that child when I had the chance.

The thought was clear and cold and perfectly rational. When I’d had Elara’s brat in the forest, squirming and crying—I should have wrapped my hands around his throat and squeezed until he stopped. One small body. One quiet death. And everything would be different now.

But I’d hesitated. Kept him alive as leverage. Tried to be strategic when I should have been ruthless.

Never again.

I brought the stone back to my lips. My voice was steady now. Quiet. The kind of quiet that came after the screaming stopped and the real decisions began.

"Listen to me carefully, Seraphine. Are you listening?"

A sniffle. "Yes."

"You’re going to stop crying. You’re going to stop panicking. And you’re going to do exactly what I tell you." I paused. Let the silence press down. "Stay in the inn and don’t leave until someone comes for you."

"Someone—what do you mean? Who—"

"I’m sending wolves to collect you. They’ll find you."

"Wolves? Rogue wolves?" Horror bled through the crystal. "Isolde, I can’t—those creatures are—"

"Those creatures are under my command." I let that land. "You have no money. No title. No protection. What you have is me. And right now, I am your only option."

The silence that followed was thick with fear and desperation. I could almost hear her calculating—weighing the terror of Rogue wolves against the certainty of starvation and exposure.

"Alright," she whispered. "Alright."

My eyes dropped to the diamond bracelet on my wrist. A new, far more violent plan was already taking root in my mind.

"Pack. Immediately. I’ll send someone for you."