Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Elara’s POV

"The children." The words left my mouth like stones dropping into still water. "Valerius and Lyra. Can I see them?"

I kept my eyes on the window. On the rooftops and spires of a city that had once been mine. I didn’t turn around. Didn’t need to. I could hear him behind me—the ragged pull of his breathing, the faint wet sound of blood still seeping from whatever damage he’d done to his own hands.

Good. Let him bleed.

The silence stretched. I counted heartbeats. Mine were slow. Mechanical. The steady tick of a clock that had forgotten why it was still running.

Then a sound I didn’t expect.

A chair scraping back. The heavy drop of a body into it. And then—nothing. Just breathing. Uneven. Broken.

I turned.

He sat at the small table near the hearth. Elbows on his knees. Head in his hands. His dark hair fell forward, hiding his face. His shoulders—those broad, powerful shoulders that could pin a woman down without effort—were curved inward. Collapsed. Like the scaffolding holding him upright had been quietly removed and he was just waiting to fold.

He looked like he had aged. Not in years. In something deeper. As though some vital thing had been scooped out of the center of him and the remaining structure was caving in around the absence.

I felt nothing.

No. That was a lie. I felt hatred. Pure and clean and steady as a pulse.

"Yes." His voice was raw. Barely above a whisper. He didn’t lift his head. "After everything I’ve done. After—" A breath that sounded like it cut him. "It’s the only thing I can give you."

I stared at the back of his bowed head. Searched for the trap. There was always a trap with him now. Every gesture of mercy had a hook buried inside it. Every kindness was currency, buying silence, buying compliance, buying the illusion that this arrangement between us was something other than captivity.

"You can see them," he said again. The words were thick. Clotted. "But you have to—Ela, you need to clean yourself up first. You have to look normal."

Normal.

The word hit like a slap.

"Valerius is eight now, and he’s sharp," he continued, still not looking up. "He notices everything. If something is off, even slightly, he’ll know. He’ll start asking questions neither of us can answer."

Neither of us. As if we were partners in this. Co-conspirators rather than captor and captive.

I swallowed the bile that surged into my throat.

"Fine," I said.

He lifted his head then. His dark gold eyes were bloodshot. Devastated. The look of a man surveying the wreckage he’d made and realizing, too late, that the ruins were irreparable.

I held his gaze and let him see nothing in mine. Absolutely nothing.

"There’s soup," he said. "On the table. You need to eat."

"I’m not hungry."

"You haven’t eaten in—" He stopped. Pressed his lips together. "The children will notice if you look ill. Eat. Please."

Please. The word sounded foreign in his mouth. Like a language he’d only recently learned and hadn’t mastered.

I looked at the bowl on the table. Steam curled from the broth in lazy spirals. My stomach was a closed fist. Every instinct screamed against putting anything into a body that already felt contaminated beyond repair.

But the children.

Valerius. Lyra.

Their names moved through me like a current. Electric. Agonizing. The only power source still connected to whatever was left of me.

I sat down across from him. Picked up the spoon. The first mouthful was torture—hot liquid hitting the raw walls of my throat, sliding into a stomach that convulsed in protest. I forced it down. Second spoonful. Third. Each one an act of violence against my own resistance.

For them. Only for them.

He watched me eat with an expression I refused to name. When I pushed the half-empty bowl away, he didn’t argue. Just stood and retrieved something from the wardrobe—a simple dress in deep navy blue. Conservative. Long-sleeved. High-necked. The kind of garment designed to conceal.

He laid it on the bed along with a small leather case.

"Foundation. Concealer. Powder." His jaw worked. He couldn’t look at the items he’d set down. "For the—for your neck."

For the bruises. For the bite marks. For the evidence of what he’d done.

He’d planned this. Prepared it. Known that I would need to bury the proof of his crimes beneath layers of cosmetics before facing my own children. The realization moved through me like slow poison.

I took the dress and the case without a word and walked into the bathroom.

The door closed behind me. The lock turned. And for a moment I just stood there, gripping the edge of the sink, feeling the cold porcelain against my palms, breathing through the thing inside my chest that wanted to collapse.

Then I lifted my head and looked at the mirror.

The woman staring back was a stranger. Hollowed eyes sunk deep in their sockets, ringed with shadows so dark they looked painted on. Cheekbones too sharp. Lips cracked. The remnants of a body that had once been strong and capable, reduced to this—wasted, diminished, haunted.

And the neck.

I tilted my chin up slowly.

The bruises had aged from their initial black-purple fury into something worse—a sickly gradient of yellowed green and mottled violet, like fruit left to rot. Fingerprints were still visible. The distinct marks of his fingers pressed into my skin. A perfect map of his grip.

And there, just below my jaw, where the pulse ran close to the surface—his bite. Not the sacred claiming mark. Not the bond between mates. This was different. Deep puncture wounds surrounded by a spreading bloom of dark purple so vivid it looked like something alive. Something parasitic. A brand. His mouth on my throat, not in passion but in possession. In violence.

I stared at the mark and felt my fingers curl against the porcelain.

His proof of ownership. Stamped into me like a seal on a document. Property of the Emperor.

I opened the leather case. Foundation. Concealer. Setting powder. All in shades carefully matched to my skin tone. He’d chosen them with precision. Of course he had. He was meticulous in all things, including the erasure of his own sins.

I started with the concealer. Dabbed it over the fingerprint bruises with small, careful strokes, watching the yellowed green disappear beneath pigment. Layer by layer. Pat, blend, set. Pat, blend, set. The mechanical repetition steadied my hands.

The bite was harder. The purple was deep, almost black at the center where his canines had punctured skin. I built up the coverage in thin films—concealer, then foundation, then powder, then another layer of concealer. Over and over until the wound vanished beneath a mask of smooth, unblemished color.

I stepped back. Examined my work.

Gone. All of it. The map of his violence, painted over. Buried. As if it had never happened. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

I pulled the navy dress over my head. The fabric was soft. Good quality. The high collar sat perfectly against my throat, covering even the edges of the concealed bruises. Long sleeves hid the finger-shaped marks on my upper arms. The hem fell to my ankles.

I freed my hair from the collar and ran dampened fingers through it, coaxing the tangled strands into soft waves that framed my face. Tucked behind one ear. Falling gently over the other shoulder.

The mirror showed me someone I almost recognized. Not the hollowed captive of minutes ago. Not the woman with bruises like a necklace of shame. This woman looked... presentable. Put together. Almost like the mother who had once sung lullabies and braided wildflowers into her son’s hair.

Almost like the woman I’d been three years ago.

The disguise was perfect. And it made me want to scream.

I walked out.

He was standing by the door. Waiting. His posture tense, hands at his sides. When he saw me, his entire body went rigid. Something moved across his face—fast, complicated, immediately suppressed. His jaw tightened. His eyes tracked from the navy collar at my throat to the soft waves in my hair, and for an instant, one single unguarded instant, he looked like a man staring at a ghost.

Then the mask descended.

"You look—" He stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "The children will be glad."

A pause.

"Even Valerius," he added quietly. "He’s been saying he’s given up on you. That you made your choice." Something flickered in those dark gold eyes. Pain, perhaps. Or guilt. "But he hasn’t. He’s too much like you. He doesn’t know how to stop caring, even when he wants to."

I said nothing.

He opened the door. Led me down a corridor, through a courtyard, and out to where a gleaming black carriage waited. The horses stamped and shifted. He helped me in—his hand hovering near my elbow, not touching—and climbed up to the driver’s seat himself.

The carriage lurched forward.

I sat in the velvet interior and pressed my palms flat against my thighs to keep them from trembling. Through the small window, the city slid past in streaks of stone and sky.

I could see Kaelen through the small front window, gripping the reins tightly. His voice drifted back, quiet but piercing over the grind of wheels on cobblestone.

"Lyra hasn’t seen her mother for as long as she can remember."