Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 78

Elara’s POV

The imperial airship cut through low-hanging clouds like a blade through silk.

I sat near the porthole, watching the landscape below shift from green farmland to sparse, war-scarred terrain. Charred patches of earth marked old battle sites. Broken watchtowers rose from the treeline like rotting teeth.

Across from me, Kaelen stared at the communication stone in his palm. His jaw was clenched so tight the muscles in his neck stood out like cords. The stone pulsed with a faint amber glow—an incoming transmission.

"—river patrol. Two more critical. Requesting immediate evac—"

The voice was young. Shaking. The kind of voice that belonged to someone who had never seen real combat until it found him.

Kaelen pressed his thumb against the stone. "Hold your position. Medical reinforcements are en route with us."

"Yes, Your Majesty. But sir—they’re not healing. The wounds. They should be closing by now and they’re not. The flesh just keeps—"

The transmission crackled and died.

Kaelen’s dark gold eyes lifted to mine. Something in them I rarely saw. Not anger. Not command.

Worry.

He looked away before I could hold the gaze. Slipped the stone back into his coat.

"How far?" I asked.

"Soon."

That was all he gave me. One word. Tight. Clipped. He hadn’t wanted me on this airship. Had argued against it for a long time after Cassian’s report—pacing his study like a caged animal, listing every reason I should remain behind the palace walls.

Too dangerous. Too unpredictable. Too close to the front.

I’d refused. And he’d relented. Not because I’d convinced him. Because refusing me would have required physically locking me in our chambers, and we both knew what that would cost.

So here I sat. Watching him clench his jaw and pretend he wasn’t terrified.

Not of the enemy.

Of what I was going to do when we landed.

The eastern military base looked like something had chewed it up and spat it back out.

The airship descended into a clearing surrounded by hastily reinforced walls of sharpened timber and packed earth. Guard towers flanked the main gate—one of them leaning at a dangerous angle, its observation platform charred black. Smoke still curled from somewhere deeper in the compound.

Soldiers lined the landing area. They stood at attention, but the posture was wrong. Shoulders rounded. Eyes hollow. Some of them couldn’t be older than twenty-one or twenty-two—barely grown into their uniforms.

The gangplank lowered, and Kaelen stepped off first. I followed.

The smell hit me before anything else. Blood. Rot. Wolfsbane—that sharp, metallic tang that burned the back of the throat.

A man approached at a brisk pace. Mid-fifties. Hair gone white too early, cropped close to the skull. His uniform was pressed and immaculate—a stark contrast to everything around him—but his eyes told the real story. Sunken. Bloodshot. The eyes of a man who hadn’t slept in days and had stopped pretending he might.

"Your Majesty." He saluted. Crisp. Mechanical. "General Chen. Base Commander."

"Report," Kaelen said.

General Chen didn’t flinch. Didn’t soften. He delivered the information the way a surgeon delivers bad news—clean, fast, without mercy.

"Three coordinated strikes within two hours last night. North wall. East perimeter. River patrol. Seventeen casualties total." A pause. Not hesitation—calculation. "Three critical. Several others unable to walk. The rest are stable but not healing."

"Not healing," Kaelen repeated.

"No, sir. The wounds resist all conventional treatment. Our physicians have tried everything—herbal poultices, magical salves, even direct application of moonstone extract. Nothing takes."

"And morale?"

The General’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted behind his eyes. The faintest crack in the facade.

"Six transfer requests filed this morning, Your Majesty. Young knights. Good fighters. But they watched their comrades get torn apart and then watched the healers fail to put them back together." He let out a slow breath through his nose. "I can hold discipline. I cannot hold belief."

Kaelen nodded once. "Take us to the wounded."

The medical tent was a nightmare wearing the skin of an infirmary.

Rows of cots stretched the length of the canvas structure. The air was thick with the stench of infected flesh and herbal antiseptic that couldn’t mask it. Moans drifted from the far end—low, animal sounds that no conscious person would make by choice.

I saw him immediately.

Third cot from the entrance. A boy. Not a man—a boy. His face was smooth, unlined, still carrying the softness of youth. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen. His name was stitched on his torn uniform: WILLIAMS.

His left shoulder was gone.

Not wounded. Gone. The flesh had been ripped away in jagged strips, exposing muscle and the white glint of bone beneath. The skin around the wound was black-veined and swollen, spreading outward in dark tendrils like ink dropped into water. His breathing was shallow. Rapid. His eyes were closed, and his lips moved in soundless words.

I pressed my hand over my mouth.

A woman stepped forward. The chief physician. She looked exhausted, with deep lines around her eyes and hands that trembled slightly when she wasn’t holding them behind her back. Exhaustion hung on her like a second skin.

"Your Majesty. My Lady." She inclined her head. "The Rogue claws carry something we haven’t seen before. A toxin. It bonds to the tissue and actively prevents the natural regeneration process. Every healing method we’ve applied has been neutralized within minutes."

"What’s the source?" Kaelen asked.

"Unknown, sir. We’ve sent samples to the capital for analysis, but—" She shook her head. "These soldiers don’t have time to wait for answers."

I moved down the row. Cot after cot. The same wounds. The same black veins. A woman with her ribs exposed. A man whose leg was bent at an angle that made my stomach lurch. Another boy—barely older than Williams—with bandages wrapped around his abdomen, already soaked through with dark, clotted blood.

Seventeen. All of them.

General Chen appeared at my shoulder. His voice was grim. "My Lady, the morale here is shattered. If you attempt anything and fail, or collapse in front of them, it will break the men completely. It is too dangerous."

"He is right. You won’t do this."

Kaelen’s voice cut through the tent like a blade.

He was behind me. Close. I could feel the heat of his body at my back. When I turned, his face was granite. Unyielding.

"A few weeks ago, you healed two people." His eyes locked onto mine, and I saw it—raw, undisguised fear beneath the authority. "Two. And it nearly killed you. Your body shut down. Your heart stopped. The physicians had to revive you." His voice dropped. "You are carrying our child."

I looked at Kaelen, then at the General. To prove I was worthy of the title of Empress, I had to save them.

Ignoring General Chen’s bleak warning about the plummeting morale, and deaf to Kaelen’s stern caution, I turned to Williams first. Knelt beside his cot. Laid my hands over the ruined shoulder.

The toxin hit me like swallowing fire. My palms burned white-hot. The corruption in his tissue fought back—writhing, resisting, clinging to the damaged flesh like something alive. I pushed harder. Poured the light into him until I felt the poison buckle, crack, dissolve.

Williams gasped. His eyes flew open. The black veins receded like a retreating tide. New tissue bloomed pink and whole beneath my fingers.

Murmurs rose around me. I barely heard them.

Second. Third. Fourth. Each healing pulled something essential from my core—like a thread being drawn from a spool, faster and faster. The tent blurred at the edges.

By the fifth, a crowd had gathered outside the tent flap. Soldiers. Physicians. Guards. Watching in silence.

The seventh was the worst. A man whose lungs had been punctured, his spine fractured in two places. I pressed my hands to his chest and felt the full weight of it—the damage so catastrophic that my body screamed in protest. My knees buckled completely, hitting the dirt floor.

Before I could push more magic, Kaelen’s hands clamped around my arms. He hauled me back, trying to physically force me to stop.

"Enough!" Kaelen’s voice was raw, wrecked. "Ela, enough. I am not watching you destroy yourself!"

I fought his grip, turning my face to look into his terrified dark gold eyes. "I want to deserve the title you’re trying to give me," I rasped, tears of strain blurring my vision. "Trust me," I begged him, my voice breaking. "Please, Kaelen. Just—trust me."

His hands shook against my skin. The great Alpha Emperor, trembling. Slowly, agonizingly, he released his grip.

I turned back, the light pouring out of me. The spine knitted. The lungs sealed. He drew a full breath and sobbed.

I moved to the eighth.

Ninth.

Tenth.

By the eleventh—a young woman knight whose leg had been nearly severed—my vision had narrowed to a tunnel. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore. Couldn’t feel much of anything except the relentless pull of the healing magic draining me hollow.

"Your Majesty, please—she must stop—" The chief physician.

Twelfth. Thirteenth. My ears were ringing.

Fourteenth. Fifteenth. I tasted copper.

Sixteenth. My legs gave out completely. Two physicians caught me, held me upright. Their hands were the only things keeping me from the floor. I couldn’t see their faces. Couldn’t see anything except the last cot.

One more.

I reached out. My fingers found skin. The light left me in a final, blinding rush.

Then the world tilted sideways, and everything went black.