Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 188

Chapter 188: Chapter 188

Kaelen’s POV

The numbers on the page had stopped making sense an hour ago.

I stared at the same column of figures multiple times, the ink blurring into meaningless shapes. Revenue from the eastern territories. Trade tariffs from the southern ports. Grain yields that were down again for consecutive seasons. The financial report was thick enough to serve as a weapon, and about as pleasant to deal with.

My third cup of coffee had gone cold an hour ago. I picked it up anyway and drank. The bitter, stale liquid slid down my throat like punishment. I deserved it. I’d been sitting in this chair since before dawn, and the candles on my desk had burned down to stubby, flickering nubs.

The door opened without a knock.

Only one person in this entire empire walked into my study without knocking.

"You look terrible," Cassian said.

"Get out."

He didn’t get out. He closed the door behind him, crossed the room, and dropped into the chair across from my desk like he owned it. His armor was dusty. There was a fresh scratch along his jaw that hadn’t been there yesterday. He looked like he’d ridden hard to get here.

My stomach tightened.

"What happened?" I set down the coffee. The financial report could rot.

Cassian leaned forward, forearms on his knees. His expression was the carefully controlled kind that meant the news was bad and he was deciding how to deliver it.

"Just say it," I said.

"The scouts picked up activity at three separate locations over the past seventy-two hours."

"Three locations." I processed that. "Simultaneously?"

"That’s what the reports say. But—" He held up a hand before I could speak. "The timestamps don’t line up. The descriptions contradict each other. One scout reported a large war party moving east. Another reported a small raiding group heading south at the same time. The third claimed a single figure matching Malak’s description was seen, completely throwing off the timeline."

I stood up. The chair scraped back across the stone floor. "They’re feeding us false trails."

"Yes."

"Deliberately."

"Without question." Cassian’s jaw tightened. "They’ve been doing this for a while now, Kaelen. Every time we get close, the trail splits. Every lead turns into smoke. Malak and Isolde—they’re not running. They’re playing with us."

I walked to the window. The courtyard below was gray in the late afternoon light. Guards patrolled the walls in precise formation. Everything looked orderly. Controlled. The way an empire should look from its tallest tower.

It was a lie.

We’d been hunting Malak and Isolde since the day everything fell apart. Since the day she—

I shut that thought down. Hard. Like slamming a door on a fire.

"We push harder," I said. "Double the scout patrols. Rotate the units so they can’t predict our patterns. I want—"

"That won’t work."

I turned. Cassian met my gaze without flinching. He was one of the few people alive who could do that when I looked the way I did right now.

"Explain," I said quietly. The word carried an edge.

"We’ve been chasing these bastards for three years, Kaelen. Three years. And we’re no closer than we were at the start. Malak has people embedded in the borderlands. Sympathizers. Maybe even informants inside our own territory. Every time we adjust our strategy, he adjusts faster. We need something different."

"Different how?"

Cassian leaned back. Something shifted in his expression—calculating now. Strategic. I recognized that look. It meant he’d been thinking about this for a while and had been waiting for the right moment.

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