Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Kaelen’s POV

My fingers opened.

Not deliberately. Not by choice. My hand simply stopped working, like a wire had been cut somewhere between my brain and my muscles. She slipped from my grip and crumpled downward.

I caught her before she hit the ground.

Both arms. Around her. Pulling her against my chest like she was made of glass and ash and everything breakable in the world. Her head fell against my collarbone. Her body weighed nothing. Absolutely nothing. Like holding a shadow.

"No."

The word tore out of me. Not a command. Not a roar. Something worse. Something small and cracked and human.

"No, no, no—"

I dropped to my knees. The frozen ground bit through my trousers, but I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything except the sharp angles of her ribs pressing against my forearms and the shallow, stuttering rattle of her breathing.

I held her back from me just enough to see.

Her face. Her face.

The elegant arch of her brow—the one I’d kissed countless times while she slept—was split open. And there, barely visible under the swollen skin, was the faint childhood scar on her left temple. Crusted with dried blood that had turned black. Her left eye was swollen completely shut, the skin around it a grotesque canvas of purple and yellow. Her lips—those lips that had whispered my name in the dark, that had smiled against my mouth—were cracked and caked in blood, the lower one torn nearly in two.

And her throat.

Purple fingerprints. My fingerprints. Overlapping older bruises that someone else had put there first.

I had been choking her. I had been killing her.

Elara. My inner wolf’s voice collapsed inside my skull. Not rage anymore. Something far more devastating. A howl that had no sound. Our mate. What have they done to our mate.

"Cassian." My voice didn’t sound like mine. Too quiet. Too controlled. The kind of control that comes right before total destruction.

Boots crunched through frost. Cassian appeared at my side. I didn’t look at him. Couldn’t take my eyes off her face.

"Your Majesty, is that—"

"It’s her."

Silence.

I heard his sharp intake of breath. Heard the way it caught and broke somewhere in the back of his throat.

"Moon Goddess," he whispered.

I leaned closer to her. Inhaled deeply, searching for it—that scent. Winter roses and parchment. The scent that was woven into my blood, that I could find across a battlefield, across an ocean.

Nothing.

Instead, something else flooded my senses. Sharp. Chemical. Like acid poured over silver and set on fire. The unmistakable burn of Sanctified Wolfsbane—but twisted, altered into some unknown, weaponized strain, distilled with dark alchemy to sever a wolf’s connection to their inner spirit.

And beneath that poisoned stench: death. The sweet, rotting smell of a body eating itself from the inside.

I reached for Moonlight. Elara’s wolf. In the bond between mates, I should have felt her—a distant pulse, a whisper of silver warmth threaded through the connection that tied our souls together.

There was nothing.

An empty space where Moonlight should have been. Like a room with the lights turned off and all the furniture removed. Hollow. Cold. Void.

She’s gone, my wolf whimpered. I can’t feel her wolf. I can’t feel Moonlight at all.

My chest caved in.

"...Kae...lan..."

Her voice. Barely a breath. Her cracked lips moved against my chest, forming syllables that cost her everything she had left.

"...Val...erius... where... is..."

She was looking for our son.

Something inside me shattered so completely I knew it would never fully reassemble. A sound ripped from my throat—half growl, half sob. I pressed my lips to her matted, blood-crusted hair and held her tighter.

"I’m here, baby," I whispered. "I’ve got you. You’re safe now."

Her fingers twitched against my arm. Not a grip. She didn’t have the strength for that. Just a flutter. Like a dying bird’s wing.

"...hurts..."

"I know. I know it hurts. I’m going to fix this."

I looked up. The world came back into focus—sharp, silver-edged, filtered through my wolf’s predatory vision. The knights were still kneeling. Cassian stood rigid beside me, his face drained of all color.

"Whoever did this," I said. My voice was low. Almost conversational. The most dangerous register I possessed. "Find them. Every last one. Bring me their heads."

"Your Majesty—"

"I said their heads, Cassian. Not prisoners. Not confessions. Heads."

"Understood." No hesitation.

But first—her.

I looked down at Elara again. Memorized the damage with a detachment that would destroy me later, when the crisis passed and the adrenaline stopped holding me together.

Multiple contusions across her arms and torso. At least several ribs visibly misaligned under the thin, torn fabric. Ligature marks on her wrists—deep ones, infected, oozing. The strangulation bruises, old and new, layered on her throat like a nightmare painted in violet. Severe dehydration had pulled her skin tight against the bones of her face, making her almost unrecognizable.

And everywhere—that chemical smell. Wolfsbane in her blood. In her tissue. Saturating every cell.

I thought of Valerius. His face. Those dark gold eyes, so like mine, swollen and red every morning because he cried himself to sleep calling for her.

Mommy. Where’s Mommy. I want Mommy.

Every single night.

"Get me a carriage," I commanded, already rising with her in my arms. Carefully. So carefully. Like she might dissolve if I moved too fast. "Now."

A knight scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward the tree line where the convoy waited.

"Cassian." I didn’t slow my stride. "Contact Morgan. Tell her we’re incoming. Severe exposure to an unknown strain of Sanctified Wolfsbane. Multiple physical traumas. She’s been missing for days. I found her a short time ago."

Cassian pulled his communication crystal from his belt without breaking step. The pale blue stone flared as he activated it.

"Dr. Morgan, this is Sir Cassian of the Imperial Guard. Priority one medical emergency inbound to the palace infirmary. The patient is—" He glanced at me. I gave a curt nod. "—Her Grace, Lady Elara. Severe exposure to an unknown strain of Sanctified Wolfsbane. Estimated arrival in a few moments. Have trauma supplies ready."

A crackle of magic. Morgan’s voice, clipped and alert: "Understood. Treatment room three will be prepared."

The carriage appeared at the edge of the road. I climbed in first, refusing to release her, settling onto the bench with Elara cradled against my chest. Her head tucked under my chin. Her breathing was getting worse. Shallower. The gaps between inhales growing longer.

"Drive," I ordered. "As fast as this carriage will go."

The vehicle lurched forward. The wheels hammered over frozen ground.

Elara whimpered. Her body tensed against mine—not in response to me, but to something inside her own mind. Her brow creased. Her broken lips parted.

"...please... don’t... don’t hurt me anymore..."

A nightmare. A flashback. She was reliving it.

I pressed my mouth to her temple. Tasted salt and iron and poison.

"No one is going to hurt you again, Ela," I murmured against her skin. "I swear it on my blood. I swear it on our son’s life. No one will ever touch you again."

Her fingers twitched once more. Then went still.

The carriage rocked violently as it took the palace road at full speed. I braced my shoulder against the wall and held her steady, absorbing every jolt with my body so she wouldn’t feel them.

A few moments. Cassian had said a few moments. I counted each second like a man counting the last grains of sand in an hourglass.

The carriage skidded to a halt outside the palace infirmary. I kicked the door open before the wheels fully stopped.

Morgan was waiting. Silver hair pinned in a severe bun at the nape of her neck. White sleeves rolled to her elbows. Two nurses flanked her, a stretcher between them.

"Treatment room three," she said, already moving. "Put her down gently."

I laid Elara on the stretcher. Letting go of her felt like peeling my own skin off.

Morgan’s hands moved with clinical precision. She cut away what remained of Elara’s tattered clothing, exposing the full geography of damage. The nurses catalogued in low, urgent murmurs.

"Multiple contusions, torso and extremities. Suspected fractures—multiple ribs, left side. Severe dehydration. Ligature abrasion at both wrists, secondary infection present. Manual strangulation marks, layered—older injuries beneath fresh ones."

Morgan leaned close to Elara’s neck and inhaled. Her expression, already grim, went completely flat.

She straightened. Met my eyes.

"Kaelen," she said quietly. No title. No formality. Just my name, spoken the way a doctor speaks to a family member before delivering the worst news of their life. "This is the most severe case of Sanctified Wolfsbane poisoning I have ever seen—and the specific toxin is completely unknown. The fact that she is still breathing is nothing short of a miracle."