Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Kaelen’s POV

Three days.

Endless hours of silence where Elara’s heartbeat used to hum against my ribs like a second pulse.

The mate bond was fraying. I could feel it—thread by thread, unraveling somewhere deep inside my chest cavity. Not severed. Not yet. But thinning. Stretching across too much distance, too much absence, until each remaining strand vibrated with a tension that made my teeth ache.

She’s fading, Alex growled. He hadn’t stopped pacing since the first morning I’d woken to find her side of the bed cold. Back and forth, back and forth, claws scraping against the inside of my skull. We’re losing her.

"We’re not losing her."

I said it aloud. Cassian, riding half a length behind me, had the good sense not to respond.

The eastern border stretched before us in the pale, merciless light of early morning. Frost clung to the pine needles. The air smelled of cold earth and nothing else. No trace of her. No whisper of that scent—winter roses and something softer beneath, something that had lived in my lungs for months now and had become indistinguishable from breathing itself.

Gone.

The note she’d left was folded in my inner breast pocket, over my heart. A short message in her careful, elegant hand: I’m going to find you. Wait.

She’d written it before she disappeared. Before everything went wrong. Before whatever took her—

Don’t, Alex snarled. Don’t finish that thought.

"Your Majesty."

Cassian’s voice cut through the spiral. Steady. Measured. The tone of a man who’d learned exactly how close he could get to the edge of my temper without falling off.

"What."

"The detection hawks have returned. Northern corridor, roughly two miles out. Movement signatures. Could be wildlife, could be—"

"How many search parties are deployed?"

"Twelve squads currently active, Your Majesty. Plus the griffin riders covering aerial routes and magical couriers running communication relays. We’ve blanketed every direction from her last known position within a hundred-mile radius."

A hundred miles. Twelve squads. Griffin riders. Magical couriers. The full weight of an empire’s military apparatus bearing down on the task of finding one woman.

And still nothing.

I pulled my horse to a halt at the ridge overlooking the eastern tree line. Below, the forest spread like a dark ocean, endless and indifferent. Somewhere in that vastness—

My hand went to the breast pocket again. Not the note this time. The other thing I carried. A small wooden horse, crudely carved, one leg shorter than the others. Valerius’s favorite toy. I’d found it on the nursery floor the morning she vanished. He’d left it behind when Brenna took him to safety.

My son’s toy in my pocket. My mate’s note against my heart. And between them, the growing certainty that I was failing them both.

"The northern signatures," I said. "Send a scouting party. Fast riders. I want a report within the hour."

"Already dispatched, Your Majesty."

Cassian hesitated. I could hear it—the slight intake of breath, the careful selection of words.

"Speak," I ordered.

"The northern corridor borders Rogue territory, Sire. If she was... if someone took her in that direction—"

"Don’t."

The word came out wrapped in Alpha command. Involuntary. The air itself seemed to compress around us. Cassian’s horse shied sideways. Two soldiers flanking us dropped their gazes instantly, necks bowed.

Cassian held his ground, though a muscle jumped in his jaw.

"Forgive me, Your Majesty. I only meant—"

"I know what you meant." My voice was quieter now. Ragged at the edges. "You meant that if the Rogues have her, then every hour we waste patrolling borders is an hour she doesn’t have."

Silence.

"She’s alive," I said. "The bond is still there. Barely. But there."

Barely, Alex echoed, and the word tasted like ash.

We rode in silence after that. The forest swallowed sound. Even the horses’ hooves seemed muffled against the frozen ground, as though the world itself had decided to hold its breath.

I kept reaching for the bond. Pressing against it the way you press your tongue against a loose tooth—compulsive, agonizing, impossible to stop. Each time, the response was fainter. A distant flicker where there should have been a flame.

The wooden horse turned over and over between my fingers inside the pocket. Valerius had asked for his mother every morning. Three mornings now. Three times I’d looked into my son’s golden eyes—my eyes, staring back at me from a face that held so much of her—and lied.

Mama’s coming back soon.

Mama’s just away for a little while.

Mama loves you.

That last one wasn’t a lie. But it felt like one when I couldn’t prove it. When I couldn’t produce her, whole and safe, and place her back where she belonged.

We should have been here, Alex growled. We should never have left.

He was right. The patrol had been necessary—border tensions with the Rogue clans had escalated, and my presence was required. But I’d left her. Left her pregnant. Left her vulnerable. And something had reached in during my absence and plucked her out of my world like pulling a thread from cloth.

Suddenly, Alex went completely rigid inside my mind. A sharp, inexplicable jolt.

Before I could grasp the reason, a shout tore through the silent forest. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

"Your Majesty!"

Through the dense curtain of pine branches, a figure emerged at full gallop—one of the border patrol riders, his horse lathered and heaving.

I spurred forward. Cassian matched my pace instantly.

"Report."

The rider pulled up hard, saluting with a fist against his chest. "Sire, we’ve found something. A quarter mile inside our territory. Three of our border knights are holding position."

"Found what?"

"A woman, Your Majesty. Unconscious. Severely injured."

The world narrowed to a point.

Elara—

Alex lunged forward inside me, slamming against my restraint with enough force to blur my vision. I gripped the reins so tightly the leather creaked.

"Take me there. Now."

We crashed through the tree line at a pace that sent branches whipping across my face and arms. I didn’t feel them. Didn’t feel anything except the roaring in my chest and Alex howling beneath my skin.

The clearing opened suddenly. Three border knights stood in a loose triangle around a figure on the ground. Their hands rested on sword pommels. Their expressions held a mixture of professional wariness and barely concealed disgust.

I dismounted before my horse had fully stopped. Cassian was half a step behind me.

"Report," Cassian barked. "What have you found?"

The tallest knight—Matthias, I recognized—stepped forward and saluted.

"Your Majesty. We discovered her approximately a quarter mile inside the perimeter. Facedown. Unresponsive. She appears to have been crawling for some distance before she collapsed."

I looked down.

The woman lay crumpled on the frozen earth like something discarded. Filthy beyond recognition. Her hair was a matted tangle of dark clumps—mud, dried blood, and something fouler coating every strand. Her clothing, if it could be called that, was nothing more than shredded rags barely clinging to a skeletal frame covered in bruises, cuts, and what looked like burns.

Her face was invisible beneath layers of grime and crusted blood. One eye was swollen grotesquely. A deep gash above her brow still seeped sluggishly. Her breathing was shallow. Erratic. The wet rattle of damaged lungs.

I waited for Alex to react, for that earlier jolt to make sense. But there was nothing. No recognition. No pull. No scent.

She smelled of rotting earth. Of old blood. Of death. Nothing noble. Nothing familiar. No wolf signature at all.

Not her, Alex said. And the devastation in those two words nearly buckled my knees.

Not Elara.

The disappointment was physical. A blade driven between my ribs and twisted. For one single, blazing moment, I had allowed myself to hope—

I crushed it. Ground it to powder beneath the heel of my boot.

"Can you identify her?" I asked. My voice had gone cold. The emperor’s voice. Stripped of everything human.

Matthias shook his head. "No, Sire. The filth makes it impossible to see her features clearly. And there’s no noble aura. No wolf presence whatsoever. She carries no insignia, no identification."

"A Rogue," one of the other knights muttered. "Has to be. Found this close to the border, coming from that direction—"

"A Rogue who might know something," Cassian said quietly beside me.

I stared down at the broken body. This wretched, battered creature. If she’d come from Rogue territory—if she’d been among them—she might have seen something. Heard something. A whisper. A rumor. Anything.

The bond flickered again. Faint. Dying.

I had no time for mercy. No room for compassion. Not with Elara’s heartbeat fading hour by hour inside my chest.

"Shackle her," I commanded, my voice cold and authoritative. "With silver-forged manacles. When she regains consciousness, bring her to the dungeon for interrogation."

"Yes, Your Majesty." The knights moved immediately.