Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 115

Chapter 115: Chapter 115

Elara’s POV

Weeks in a white room will hollow you out in ways you don’t expect.

Not the dramatic kind of hollowing—that had already happened. Moonlight was gone. That wound had scabbed over into something dull and permanent, a phantom limb I still reached for every morning before remembering. No, this was the slow, grinding kind. The kind that comes from counting ceiling stones. From memorizing the pattern of cracks in the plaster. From lying still so long your body starts to forget it was ever meant to move.

The medical wing smelled of dried lavender and bitter tincture. Always. The healers rotated fresh bundles every evening, but the sharpness underneath never faded. Antiseptic. Clean linen. The faint metallic tang of whatever salve they slathered across my bandages during the morning rounds.

I was healing. Physician Morgan told me so every single day with the same careful, measured optimism. My wounds were closing. My blood levels were stabilizing. My body, despite everything, was knitting itself back together with a stubbornness that seemed to impress him.

"Remarkable," he’d said earlier, adjusting the compress on my shoulder. "For a—well. For someone in your current condition, you’re recovering faster than I anticipated."

For a mortal. That’s what he meant. He was too professional to say it outright, but the pause did the work for him. Every healer who examined me now carried that same careful pause. The space where they swallowed the word human before it left their mouths.

I stared at the ceiling and pressed my palm flat against my belly.

Beneath my hand, the slight curve answered. Warm. Present. Still there.

Morgan called the baby a little miracle. Every morning he pressed the listening horn to my abdomen and nodded, his lined face softening. "Strong heartbeat. Steady. This child is a fighter."

A fighter. Like its mother used to be.

I closed my eyes and focused on the warmth beneath my palm. This was what I had left. This tiny, stubborn life growing inside me despite everything that had tried to destroy us both. Moonlight was gone. My wolf senses were gone. My strength, my speed, my place in the empire’s hierarchy—all of it, stripped away. But this remained. This small, defiant heartbeat drumming against my hand like a promise.

I’m still here, it seemed to say. We’re still here.

A knock at the door. Soft. Tentative.

Then a voice that cracked my ribs open every single time.

"Mommy?"

I pushed myself upright against the pillows. The movement pulled at the healing skin across my torso, but I didn’t care. I was already smiling before the door swung open.

Valerius stood in the doorway. Five years old and so achingly small against the massive oak frame. His dark curls were slightly mussed—Kaelen never managed to comb them properly—and his golden eyes were wide and searching. He clutched something in his fist. A dandelion. Half wilted, its stem bent from being gripped too tightly for too long.

"Baby," I breathed. "Come here."

He didn’t need to be told twice. He crossed the room at a run, his boots slapping against the stone floor, and scrambled up onto the edge of my bed with the graceless urgency of a child who had been waiting far too long for this moment.

"Careful with Mommy," I heard from the doorway. A deep voice. Quiet authority.

Valerius ignored it entirely and burrowed into my side.

I wrapped my arm around him and pulled him close, pressing my nose into his curls. He smelled like soap and grass and something sweet—honey cakes, probably. Brenna always snuck him treats.

"I brought you this." He thrust the dandelion upward without lifting his face from my ribs. "It was really yellow before. But it got tired on the way here."

I took it carefully. Twirled the drooping stem between my fingers. "It’s beautiful. It’s the best flower anyone’s ever given me."

"Really?"

"Really."

He tilted his head up. Those dark gold eyes—his father’s eyes, down to the exact shade—studied my face with a seriousness no child should possess.

"When are you coming home, Mommy?"

The question landed like a stone in still water.

"Soon, sweetheart. Very soon."

"How soon? Because Daddy reads the voices wrong." His brow furrowed—a perfect miniature of Kaelen’s expression when something displeased him. "He does the dragon voice too deep and the princess voice too squeaky. It’s not right."

A laugh escaped me. Small and raw and genuine. It hurt my ribs and I didn’t care.

"I’ll come home and fix the voices. I promise."

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