Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 97

Elara’s POV

“You need to eat something, Ela.”

Riley held the wrapped energy bar toward me again. Her arm extended across the gap between us on the wagon bench. Steady. Patient.

I shook my head without looking at it. “Not yet.”

“You skipped breakfast. That was hours ago.”

“I’m aware.”

The wagon jolted over a rut in the trail, and I braced my hand against the sideboard. The mountain road had narrowed since we’d left the main highway. Pine trees pressed in from both sides, dark and ancient, their branches knitting together overhead like interlocked fingers. Patches of gray sky showed through the canopy. The air tasted of damp earth and resin.

Riley lowered the bar but didn’t put it away. She balanced it on her knee. A silent promise that it would be offered again.

I closed my eyes.

Kaelen.

I reached through the bond. Pushed past the noise of the wagon wheels, the creak of leather harnesses, the murmured conversation of knights riding behind us. Pushed until every shred of awareness I possessed was funneled into that fragile thread.

Silence.

Cold.

Emptiness.

But not nothing. Not absolute nothing. Somewhere in that void, buried deep beneath layers of distance and pain and whatever horror had befallen him—a pulse. Faint. Irregular. Like a moth’s wing brushing against glass.

Still there.

I opened my eyes. Exhaled through my teeth.

“Anything?” Riley asked quietly. She’d learned to read my face during these attempts.

“He’s alive. That’s all I know.” My voice came out flat. Controlled. The control cost me more than anyone on this convoy could possibly understand.

Riley nodded once. She didn’t offer comfort. Didn’t say he’ll be fine or don’t worry. She simply accepted the information and adjusted the sword belt on her hip.

That was why I wanted her beside me.

The convoy pressed deeper into the mountains. The trail climbed steadily, switchbacking through dense forest. I scanned every tree, every shadow, every break in the undergrowth. My senses had sharpened since the pregnancy—sounds clearer, smells richer, edges crisper. The baby’s Alpha bloodline amplifying what was already heightened.

Riley straightened suddenly beside me. Her hand moved to her weapon.

“There.” She pointed ahead and slightly to the right. “Something’s catching the light. Metal. Maybe fifty yards out.”

I followed her gaze. Through the trees, between the trunks, a dull glint. Barely visible beneath a tangle of fallen branches.

“Stop the wagon,” I ordered.

The driver pulled the reins. Behind us, the column ground to a halt with a chorus of snorting horses and clinking harnesses.

I was off the bench before Riley could protest. My boots hit the forest floor, and I moved toward the glint with my hand already drawing aside branches. Behind me, Riley’s footsteps followed fast.

The object was half-buried in dead leaves and mud. I crouched and pulled it free.

A breastplate. Imperial forged. The silver crest of the Royal Guard still visible beneath a thick smear of dried blood. The left side had been torn open—not cut, torn—by claws or teeth with enough force to shred reinforced steel like parchment.

My stomach lurched. I swallowed hard and turned the armor over. More blood. Dark. Crusted. Concentrated around the left side and shoulder. But the pattern—

“The blood trails off to the right,” I said. “See? Drag marks. Whoever wore this kept moving after they lost it.”

Riley crouched beside me. Examined the marks in the dirt. “Moving east. Deeper into the mountains.”

I stood. Turned to face the column of knights who had dismounted and gathered behind us.

“We go on foot from here. The wagons are too wide for the trail ahead, and we need to track these marks before the rain washes them.”

A murmur ran through the group. A young knight near the front—James, barely old enough for his commission—stepped forward. His face was flushed, and I could see the internal war playing out behind his eyes before he spoke.

“Your Majesty, with respect—should you be walking through rough terrain? In your condition?”

The silence that followed was absolute.

I turned to face him. Slowly. Deliberately.

Something ancient rose from the base of my spine. It climbed through my blood, my bones, my marrow. Not rage. Something older. Something inherited. The sovereign aura rolled off me like heat from a forge.

James’s face went white. His knees buckled involuntarily, and he took a stumbling step backward, his wolf yielding before he could stop it.

“I am carrying the heir to this empire inside my body,” I said. My voice was quiet. Devastatingly quiet. “I am also the only person in this convoy who can sense whether the Emperor is alive. If anyone else would like to suggest I wait in the wagon, speak now.”

No one spoke.

“Good. Leave a few guards with the wagons. Everyone else, on me. Move.”

We moved.

The forest swallowed us whole. Ancient pines towered overhead, their trunks wider than a man could wrap his arms around. The undergrowth was sparse beneath the dense canopy—mostly moss, fern, and the occasional cluster of pale mushrooms growing from rotting logs. The trail of blood was intermittent. A smear on bark here. A dark stain on stone there. Sometimes it vanished entirely for dozens of yards before reappearing on a broken branch or a scuff of disturbed earth.

I tracked it with a focus that bordered on obsession. Each drop, each mark, each sign of life was a breadcrumb leading me closer to Kaelen. My boots found steady purchase on the uneven ground despite the growing ache in my lower back. The baby pressed against my pelvis with every step, a constant reminder of how much I was risking.

We trekked through the ancient pine forest for nearly two hours. The light filtering through the canopy shifted from gray to pale gold and back to gray again. No one complained. No one fell behind.

Riley stayed at my shoulder. Quiet. Watchful.

Then she stopped walking.

I felt the change in her posture before I heard the word.

“Smoke.”

I drew a deep breath through my nose. She was right. Faint, threading through the clean pine scent like a dark vein through marble. Wood smoke. But not just wood smoke.

Underneath it—sharp, acrid, unmistakable—the pungent musk of Rogues.

My blood ran cold.

I raised my fist. The column halted.

“I smell it too,” I whispered. “Rogue scent. Strong. Recent.”

We crept forward. Slowly. Every footfall placed with deliberate care. The smoke thickened. The musk intensified until it coated the back of my throat.

The trees thinned. We emerged at the edge of a clearing.

What lay before us was a nightmare wearing the skin of a campsite.

Tents—or what remained of them—hung in shreds from their poles like flayed skin. Fabric fluttered in the wind, dark with stains I didn’t want to identify. A fire pit at the center still smoldered, sending thin columns of gray smoke into the heavy air. Crates of supplies had been smashed open, their contents scattered and trampled. Weapons lay half-buried in churned mud—swords, broken spear shafts, a dented shield bearing the Imperial crest.

And the ground. The ground was the worst part.

Dark stains everywhere. Pooled in low spots. Splashed across rocks. Smeared in long, desperate streaks that led in every direction and no direction. The soil was saturated with it. The air reeked of iron and old violence.

But there were no bodies. Not one. Not a single fallen soldier, not a single dead Rogue. Just the wreckage and the blood and that terrible, accusatory silence.

“Moon Goddess,” Riley breathed.

I stepped into the clearing. My boots squelched against the wet earth. I crouched beside one of the blood pools and touched it. Still tacky. Not completely dry.

“This happened recently,” I said. “Very recently.”

James appeared at the edge of the clearing, his face the color of raw dough. “Where are the bodies? There should be—with this much blood, there should be—”

“They took them.” Sir Marcus’s voice was granite. He stood at the opposite edge, scanning the tree line. “Rogues don’t leave bodies behind. They drag them. Trophies. Leverage.”

Leverage. The word clawed at my insides.

I straightened. Pressed my palm against my chest.

Kaelen. Please. Answer me.

I pushed harder than I’d ever pushed. Threw everything into the bond—fear, love, desperation, fury. Sent it screaming into the void like a flare launched into endless dark.

Nothing came back.

But the thread held. Fragile. Trembling. Refusing to snap.

And then—

A howl split the forest. Long. Resonant. Coming from the north. A second answered from the east. Then a third from somewhere behind them.

Every knight in the clearing drew their weapon simultaneously.

“They know we’re here,” Sir Marcus said, his hand steady on his sword. His eyes cut to mine. “Your Majesty, our position is exposed. We need to move. Now.”

Riley pressed close to my side. “Ela—”

Another howl. Closer. Much closer.

My eyes swept the tree line. There—to the west. A narrow break in the undergrowth. A hunter’s path, barely wider than my shoulders, cutting through the dense pine and disappearing into shadow.

“This way,” I said. “Follow me. Single file. Stay close.”

I moved. The path was tight and winding. Branches snagged my cloak, scraped my arms. I pushed through. Behind me, boots crunched and armor clinked as the column squeezed through the gap. The howls continued, circling, probing, but the dense trees muffled them, made them harder to place.

The trail twisted. Dipped into a shallow ravine. Climbed again through a thicket of young birch.

I ducked under a low branch. Pushed through a curtain of hanging moss.

And stopped.

Silence.

Not the tense, loaded silence of soldiers moving behind me. Not the controlled breathing of Riley at my shoulder. Not the clink of Marcus’s armor or the whispered curse of James tripping over roots.

Absolute silence.

I turned around.

The path behind me was empty. The moss curtain hung motionless. No footsteps. No shadows. No movement at all.

Just trees. Ancient, indifferent pines stretching in every direction, their trunks identical, their branches interlocking overhead until the sky was nothing but fragments.

I didn’t recognize this part of the forest. Nothing looked familiar. The hunter’s trail had vanished—or had never existed. The ground beneath my feet was unmarked. No boot prints. No broken branches. As if I had materialized here from thin air.

One moment I had been leading the squad down the narrow hunter’s path, and the next, I was completely alone in an unfamiliar section of the forest.

I called out softly. “Riley? Sir Marcus?”

Only the wind answered.