Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 90

Isolde’s POV

The throne room stank of pipe smoke and stale ale.

I pressed my bare back against Malak’s chest, tracing idle circles across the thick scar tissue that mapped his skin. His body was a landscape of violence—every ridge and groove a testament to the wars he’d survived. Beneath me, his breathing was deep. Satisfied. The furs beneath us were damp with sweat and reeked of cedar and iron.

“Again,” he growled. His massive hand gripped my hip, fingers digging into the flesh hard enough to bruise.

I smiled. Slow. Deliberate.

“So demanding, my king.”

From the far corner, one of his lieutenants let out a low whistle. “The Lady is insatiable tonight.”

I didn’t bother looking at him. Let them watch. Let them all watch. Every Rogue male in this crumbling stronghold knew who held the real power when the lights went low. Not the one with the crown of bones. The one who decided when to arch her back and when to bare her teeth.

“I have my pick of fine warriors,” I purred, loud enough for every man in earshot to hear. My fingers curled against Malak’s jaw, tilting his face toward mine. “But I keep choosing you. Doesn’t that make you the luckiest man in this wretched camp?”

Malak’s dark eyes glittered. Dangerous. Amused. He was not a man who was easily handled—I knew that. He tolerated my games because they entertained him, and because I was useful. The moment I stopped being either, his hands around my waist would find my throat instead.

But tonight, I felt untouchable. Invincible. The raids were underway. Two strike teams sent to exploit the Emperor’s weakened border. By morning, we’d have supply routes carved through the northern ridge and the western pass. The empire would bleed, and I would watch it happen from this throne of broken stone and stolen furs.

I stretched against Malak like a cat in sunlight. “When your scouts return with good news, I want to celebrate properly. A feast. Wine. Music. Something to remind these animals they’re fighting for more than scraps.”

Malak snorted. “You want a party.”

“I want morale.” I kissed the edge of his jaw. “Happy wolves fight harder.”

The heavy wooden door at the end of the throne room slammed open.

The sound cracked through the room like a bone snapping. I jerked upright. Malak’s body went rigid beneath me—every muscle locking into combat readiness in the span of a single heartbeat.

A figure staggered through the doorway.

He was barely recognizable as one of ours. His face was a mask of soot and dried blood. One arm hung limp at his side—bent at an angle that made my stomach turn. His armor, what remained of it, was scorched and shredded. He moved like a man running on nothing but terror and willpower, each step a controlled collapse.

He made it three paces into the room before his legs buckled. He dropped to his knees in front of Malak’s throne platform, pressing his forehead to the filthy stone floor.

“My Lord.” His voice was a ragged whisper. Broken glass and gravel. “Forgive me.”

The room went silent. Every lieutenant, every guard, every lounging warrior froze.

Malak shifted beneath me. I felt his weight redistribute—the predator emerging from beneath the lover. His voice, when it came, was terrifyingly calm.

“Speak.”

The messenger didn’t lift his head. “The mission. Both strike teams. It was a trap, my Lord.”

The word landed like a physical blow. Trap. I felt it ripple through the room—a collective intake of breath, a subtle shifting of bodies.

“Explain,” Malak said. Still calm. Still controlled. But I could feel his heartbeat against my spine. It had doubled.

The messenger raised his head. His eyes were wild. Glassy with shock.

“The Emperor’s border. It wasn’t weakened. It was staged. The empty camps, the withdrawn patrols—all of it was bait.” He swallowed. Blood trickled from a cut above his eyebrow. “They let us walk in. Both teams. The northern ridge, the western pass. We thought we were walking into abandoned positions.”

His voice cracked.

“Arcane charges. Buried in the canyon walls and along the retreat routes. Timed to detonate after we’d committed. The moment our teams entered the kill zones, the exits collapsed behind them. Flanking units emerged from concealment. We were boxed.”

My fingers had gone cold against Malak’s chest. I pulled my hand back slowly.

“How many?” Malak’s voice was barely above a whisper. The quiet before the earthquake.

The messenger pressed his forehead to the floor again. As if the stone could shield him from what came next.

“Forty of our finest, my Lord. All of them. Dead or captured. I only escaped because a charge misfired near the eastern edge and blew open a gap in the canyon wall.”

Silence.

Not the comfortable, smug silence of moments ago. Something else entirely. The silence of a graveyard at midnight.

Forty warriors. Forty of Malak’s elite—the ones he’d handpicked, trained, armed with stolen imperial steel. Gone. In a single coordinated strike that we never saw coming.

I sat up straight. The furs slipped from my shoulders. I didn’t care.

“Who planned this?” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “The Emperor doesn’t think like this. His commanders are predictable—brute force, direct engagement. This was surgical. Deliberate. Who designed this trap?”

The messenger flinched at the edge in my tone. “My Lady, our intelligence says... it was the new queen.”

The words didn’t register immediately. They hung in the smoky air like sparks from a dying fire.

“The new queen,” I repeated. Flat. Hollow.

“Yes, my Lady. The Emperor’s mate. She was recently elevated. Our sources inside the capital say she’s the one who proposed the strategy. Pulled back the visible patrols. Planted the bait camps. Timed the charges.” The messenger’s voice trembled. “They say she is... unusual. Silver hair. Blue eyes like winter ice. She possesses healing abilities—Moon Blessed, they call her. A commoner who became a queen.”

The blood drained from my face.

Silver hair. Blue eyes. A commoner turned queen. Moon Blessed.

No.

No, no, no—

“Seraphine.” My voice was a blade. I turned my head toward the shadowed alcove where Seraphine lounged on a pile of stolen cushions. Her wildly dyed hair spilled across the silk, lips still smudged with crimson. She looked up at me through half-lidded eyes—lazy, catlike—but I saw the flicker of attention sharpen behind her carefully constructed indifference.

“Seraphine, did you hear that?”

“I heard, Sol.” Seraphine pushed herself upright slowly. Her brow creased. “Silver hair. Blue eyes. Healing abilities. Commoner blood. It could be anyone—”

“It’s not anyone!” The scream ripped from my throat before I could stop it. Raw. Savage. Every carefully cultivated mask of control shattered in a single violent exhale.

I was on my feet. Naked. Trembling. Not from cold.

“It’s Elara!”

The name echoed off the crumbling stone walls. Seraphine’s eyes widened—genuine shock cracking through her practiced composure for the first time since I’d known her.

Malak’s hand caught my wrist. His grip was iron.

“You know this queen.” Not a question.

“She’s my stepsister.” The words tasted like venom. “A worthless nobody. A pathetic, groveling commoner my parents took in out of obligation. She had nothing—no power, no blood, no status. She was supposed to be nothing.”

My chest heaved. My vision blurred with fury so intense it felt like drowning.

“She stole everything from me.” My voice dropped to something raw and wounded. “She was supposed to crawl in the dirt forever. And now she’s a queen? She’s commanding armies? She destroyed forty of our warriors?”

“Isolde.” Malak’s voice was ice. He pulled me down until I was kneeling before him. His scarred face was inches from mine. “If this woman has the strategic mind to design a trap that slaughtered forty of my best fighters, then she is far more dangerous than a worthless nobody.”

His grip on my wrist tightened. Painful. Deliberate.

“Tell me everything.”

I told him. Every poisonous detail. The orphan taken in by my parents. The pathetic creature who used to flinch when I raised my voice. The girl who had once been engaged to Gareth—Gareth, who now rotted in his own failures. The girl who somehow, impossibly, had clawed her way from the mud to the Emperor’s bed and now sat on a throne that should never have been within reach of someone like her.

Malak listened in absolute stillness. When I finished, he released my wrist.

“Then we kill her,” he said. Simple. Cold. Inevitable.

I crawled back against his chest. Pressed my face into the crook of his neck. My body was still shaking, but the tremor had changed. No longer rage alone. Something darker. Something that lived in the hollow between my ribs where shame and hatred had fused into something monstrous.

Seraphine watched me from across the room. Silent now. Her smudged lips pressed into a thin line.

I closed my eyes. Breathed in the smoke and blood and sweat of this ruined throne room.

She took everything from me. But I will take from her something she can never get back.

My fingers curled into Malak’s scarred flesh.

Her son. Her mate. Her life. All of it.