Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 207

Chapter 207: Chapter 207

Elara’s POV

The floor tilted beneath me.

Forest eyes.

The words hit like a fist to the sternum. I heard them, processed them, and still my brain refused to accept what they meant.

The bakery.

The little girl in the bakery.

The one with mismatched shoes and dark braids who had tugged at my sleeve and called me Mommy. The one I had gently corrected. The one I had smiled at and walked away from because she wasn’t—she couldn’t have been—

She was.

The room narrowed to a single point. Lyra’s face. Those wide, bright eyes—green as deep forest, exactly the shade Kaelen’s voice had described. Her messy braids. Her mismatched shoes. The same child.

My daughter had found me in a bakery, called me Mommy, and I had told her she was mistaken.

I had looked into my own child’s face and said no.

My knees gave out.

I didn’t catch myself this time. I went down hard, both knees hitting the floor with a crack that I barely registered. The impact jolted up through my spine, but the pain was nothing—nothing compared to the thing splitting open inside my chest.

"No," I whispered. Then louder. "No, no, no—"

My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking. I pressed my palms flat against the floor to keep myself from collapsing entirely, and a sound came out of me that I didn’t recognize. Something between a gasp and a moan. Something animal.

I had rejected my own daughter.

She had called me Mommy, and I had walked away.

"Lyra." Her name came out broken. Wet. I lifted my head and looked at her through a blur of tears. "Lyra, baby—"

She was still holding Kaelen’s hand. Still bouncing slightly. But the excitement on her face was beginning to falter. Her gaze moved between me on the floor and her father standing rigid above her, and something careful crept into her expression. Something no child that young should know how to wear.

Wariness.

"Lyra." I stretched my arms toward her. My fingers trembled violently. "Come here, sweetheart. Please. Please come here. Mommy is so sorry—"

The word Mommy landed like a stone dropped into still water.

Lyra stopped bouncing.

Her small face went very still. Very serious. She tilted her head—a gesture so like Kaelen’s that fresh pain lanced through me—and stared at my outstretched hands.

"You said you weren’t my mommy," she said.

The words. Delivered in a high, clear voice. Completely matter-of-fact.

They destroyed me. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"I didn’t know." The tears were falling now, fast and hot, streaking down my cheeks and dripping off my jaw. I didn’t wipe them. I couldn’t let go of the air in front of me, as if holding my hands out long enough could erase what I’d done. "Baby, I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t recognize—Mommy didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know."

Lyra’s lower lip pushed out. Not in a pout. In something harder. A defense being built in real time, brick by tiny brick.

"You said your babies were far, far away."

I choked.

Because I had. I remembered it now with sickening clarity—kneeling in that bakery, smiling at this beautiful, insistent little stranger, and telling her gently that my children were somewhere else. Far away. That I wasn’t her mother.

Every word a lie. Every word a knife I hadn’t known I was holding.

"I was wrong," I said. My voice cracked down the middle. "I was so wrong, Lyra. You are my baby. You’ve always been my baby. I just—I couldn’t see—"

"Then why did you go away?"

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