Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 193

Chapter 193: Chapter 193

Kaelen’s POV

The warehouse stank of sweat, cheap ale, and old blood.

I shouldn’t have been here. An emperor in a pit-fighting den buried beneath the border district, surrounded by drunks and gamblers and men who’d slit your throat for a handful of copper. But the intelligence report had been specific. Rogue activity. Possible recruitment channels running through the underground fighting circuit. And I was done trusting secondhand information.

Cassian stood beside me, arms crossed, jaw tight. He hadn’t said a word since we’d entered, but his disapproval radiated off him like heat from a forge.

"Relax," I muttered.

"I’ll relax when we’re out of this cesspit."

The crowd was a seething mass of bodies packed shoulder to shoulder against wooden barriers that groaned under the pressure. The pit below sat maybe fifty feet from where we stood, elevated slightly on a makeshift platform near the back wall. Lanterns swung from the rafters on rusted chains, throwing lurching, uneven light across everything.

A fight was already underway.

I barely glanced at it. Some brute hammering at a smaller opponent who kept slipping sideways. Standard fare. I scanned the crowd instead—looking for tattoos, insignias, anything that marked rogue affiliation.

Then the sound hit me.

A growl. Low. Guttural. Rising from somewhere deep in the chest cavity, a place where sound became something more than sound. It cut through the noise of the warehouse like a blade through silk—not louder, but different. Primal. Feral. The kind of sound that bypassed the ears entirely and went straight into the spine.

Every hair on my body stood on end.

Inside me, Alex—my wolf—went absolutely still. Then he erupted.

Claws raking the inside of my skull. A howl so violent it rattled my teeth. He was thrashing, tearing, slamming against the walls of my consciousness with a force I hadn’t felt in years. His voice was a scream inside my head.

MATE. MATE. THAT IS OUR MATE.

My hands found the railing. Locked around it. My knuckles went white.

"No," I whispered.

HER. IT’S HER. CAN’T YOU FEEL IT—CAN’T YOU—

"Kaelen?" Cassian’s hand closed on my arm. "What is it? What’s wrong?"

I couldn’t answer. My eyes had found the pit.

The smaller fighter—the one I’d dismissed—was a woman. She was down. One knee in the sand, arm clutched against her ribs. Blood covered her mouth, her chin, the front of her fighting wraps. Her opponent towered over her. Twice her size. He was grinning.

She looked broken.

She looked finished.

Then she rose.

Not slowly. Not hesitantly. She came up like something uncoiling from the earth—fast, explosive, every muscle firing in a sequence I recognized so deeply it stopped my heart.

She drove her fist into the man’s jaw, shattering the bone. The impact was savage, destroying the man who was twice her size. He staggered backward with blood pouring from his nose and mouth. The crowd screamed.

But I couldn’t hear them.

I could only hear Alex, howling, howling, howling.

Because I knew those movements. I knew the pivot of her hips. The angle of her elbow. The way she chambered her strikes from the center of her body rather than the shoulder. Sir Marcus had drilled that technique into every member of the Imperial Knight Guard. I’d watched him teach it a thousand times. Feet grounded. Core rotation. Strike from the root.

Imperial technique. In a border pit-fighting warehouse. Coming from a woman who moved like she’d been forged in the training yards of the palace itself.

"Kaelen." Cassian’s grip tightened. "You look like you’ve seen a ghost."

A ghost. Yes. That was exactly what I was seeing.

She hit the man again. And again. Ribs. Liver. Temple. Every blow precise and devastating. He staggered. His guard collapsed. She brought her knee into his face, and his nose burst open like rotten fruit. The spray painted the sand red.

I was already moving.

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