Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 80

Kaelen’s POV

"You should have run."

The words came out before I could stop them. Rough. Barely a whisper. Directed at the woman lying motionless on the bed who couldn’t hear a damn thing I said.

I rubbed my thumb across the back of Elara’s hand. Still cold. Still limp. Still that terrible, waxy stillness that made her look more like a marble effigy than a living person.

"You should have taken Valerius and disappeared." My voice cracked on his name. "Gone somewhere I couldn’t find you. Somewhere no one could drag you into this."

The diagnostic crystals hummed their low, monotonous song around her bed. Unchanged. Always unchanged.

"I am so sorry for putting you in so much danger over the past week. I never gave you a chance to be happy." The confession tasted like ash. "From the moment you walked into my palace, all I’ve done is pull you deeper into this perilous life. Every threat. Every attack. Every scar on your body exists because of me."

I lifted her hand. Pressed my lips to her knuckles. They were ice against my mouth.

"I told myself I was protecting you. That keeping you close was the safest option. But the truth is—" My throat seized. I had to force the next words through it like swallowing glass. "The truth is I was selfish. I wanted you near me. I needed you near me. And I dressed it up as duty because admitting the alternative meant admitting I was willing to risk your life just to keep you in mine."

The bond whispered. That gossamer thread. Barely there.

I closed my eyes.

"Wake up, Ela. Please. I’ll do anything. I’ll let you go if that’s what it takes. Just wake up."

Nothing.

The silence pressed in from every side, heavy and suffocating. Outside the window, the sky was iron-gray. It had been gray for days. As if the weather itself had decided to mourn alongside me.

A knock. Light. Tentative.

I didn’t answer.

The door opened anyway. Cassian’s voice came first, low and careful. "Your Majesty. Lady Brenna is here. With the young prince."

I straightened. Wiped my face with the back of my hand. Composed myself the way emperors are taught to compose themselves—by locking everything behind the mask and praying the cracks don’t show.

"Let them in."

Brenna entered first. She looked wrong. The woman I’d grown accustomed to seeing—loud, fierce, perpetually ready to argue with anyone including me—had been replaced by someone smaller. Quieter. Her dark hair was pulled back in a hasty knot. Her eyes were swollen and rimmed red. She’d been crying. Not just today. For days.

She glanced at Elara on the bed and pressed her lips together hard. Looked away.

Then Valerius appeared from behind her legs.

My son.

He stood in the doorway clutching a crumpled piece of parchment in one fist. His dark curls were messy—someone had tried to comb them and failed. His uniform from the academy was slightly rumpled, one collar askew. But his eyes—those dark gold eyes, identical to mine—were filled with confusion as they swept the room.

They landed on me first. Then on Elara.

"Daddy?"

The word still hit like a fist to the chest every time. My five-year-old son, this small person with my eyes and his mother’s stubborn chin, calling me the name I’d only earned a short while ago.

"Come here, son."

He crossed the room with deliberate steps. Not running. Not hesitating. Measured, careful steps that belonged to someone much older. When he reached the bed, he stopped and stared at Elara’s face.

"Is Mommy sick?"

I pulled him onto my lap. He was warm and solid against me. Real. Alive. A counterweight to the cold stillness of the woman beside us.

"Mommy is sleeping," I struggled to explain, the words catching in my throat. "She’s just very tired, so she needs to rest for a while."

Valerius studied Elara’s face with unnerving intensity. Then he looked at me. Those gold eyes, sharp and clear and far too perceptive for a child his age.

"She’s been sleeping a long time, Daddy."

"I know."

"Can I talk to her?"

My chest constricted. "Of course you can."

He slid off my lap and climbed onto the edge of the bed with the careful agility of a child who had been told repeatedly not to jostle anything. He settled beside Elara’s arm, tucking his small body against her side, and leaned close to her ear.

"Hi, Mommy."

Brenna made a sound behind me. Small. Strangled. I heard her turn away.

"I went to the academy today," Valerius continued in his earnest, solemn little voice. "Master Aldric said my handwriting is getting better. But I still can’t do the loops right on the capital letters. He says I hold the quill too tight." A pause. "Auntie Brenna made pancakes this morning but they weren’t the dinosaur kind. She tried but they just looked like blobs. She said she’d practice."

From somewhere behind me, Brenna let out a watery laugh. Then immediately pressed her hand to her mouth.

Valerius reached out and touched Elara’s cheek with one small finger. Gentle. Almost reverent.

"Daddy said we can go on a trip to the zoo when you wake up. They have the big wolves there. The gray ones. I want to see if they’re as big as Daddy’s wolf." He leaned closer. Whispered something I couldn’t quite catch. Then pulled back and looked at me.

"She didn’t wake up."

"Not yet," I managed.

"But she will?"

I looked at my son. At the trust in those golden eyes. The absolute, unshakeable faith that his father could fix anything.

"She will," I said.

He nodded. Satisfied. As if my word settled the matter entirely.

"Valerius." I reached for him. Lifted him off the bed and set him on his feet. "Why don’t you go with Auntie Brenna and have your supper? Daddy needs to talk to Mommy about grown-up things."

His brow furrowed. That stubborn crease between his eyebrows—pure Elara. "Will you tell her I love her?"

Something inside me broke. Quietly. Cleanly. Like a bone snapping beneath the skin where no one could see.

"I will tell her."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

He looked at Elara one more time. Then turned and walked to Brenna, who took his hand with fingers that trembled visibly. Cassian held the door for them.

As they left, Valerius glanced back over his shoulder.

"Tell her about the dinosaur pancakes too," he said. "So she knows what she missed."

Then the door closed, and I was alone with her again.

I leaned forward. Pressed my forehead to the mattress beside her arm. The grief hit in waves—slow, crushing, relentless. Each one worse than the last.

"He comes every day," I murmured into the sheets. "Every day after the academy. Sits right there and talks to you like you’re just taking a nap." My voice splintered. "He believes you’re coming back because I told him you would. If you make a liar of me, Ela—"

I couldn’t finish.

The days blurred after that. Valerius came each afternoon. Same routine. Same earnest monologues about the academy and his classmates and whatever creature he’d read about in his bestiary. Same gentle touch on her cheek. Same question: She didn’t wake up? Same answer: Not yet.

Each visit carved another groove into my chest.

Then came the tenth day.

The door didn’t open. It slammed.

I was on my feet in an instant, every protective instinct flaring white-hot. My hand went to the blade at my belt before I even registered who had entered.

The Court Physician stood in the doorway, breathless and ashen-faced. But it wasn’t her presence that stopped me.

It was the man beside her.

An elderly werewolf. Impossibly old. His hair was sparse and white as bone, clinging to his spotted scalp in thin wisps. His hands—gnarled, rough-knuckled, the hands of someone who had spent a lifetime working with them—hung at his sides, trembling faintly. Not from weakness. From something else entirely.

"Your Majesty." The Court Physician’s voice came out in a rush, words stumbling over each other. "Forgive the intrusion. This is Physician Whitmore. He specializes in rare supernatural conditions. I sent word to every medical institution in the empire. He arrived within the hour."

Physician Whitmore did not bow. Did not salute. He walked past me as if I weren’t there, his clouded eyes fixed on Elara with an intensity that bordered on hunger. He moved to her bedside, and without asking permission, placed one weathered palm flat against her forehead.

He closed his eyes. Went still.

The room held its breath.

Then his hand drifted downward. Hovered over her abdomen. Not touching. Suspended just above the blanket.

His eyes opened. Wide. The cloudiness in them seemed to clear, replaced by something raw and startled. He turned to me, awe writing plainly across his wrinkled face as he addressed me, his Emperor.

"She is not just in a coma," he whispered. "She is protecting something. There are two distinct life signatures within her body.""