Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 261

Chapter 261: Chapter 261

Isolde’s POV

The great Kaelen Nightfire died in the dirt.

Not on a throne. Not on a battlefield surrounded by loyal soldiers singing his name. Not in the arms of his precious mate with her ridiculous silver hair and her pathetic ice-blue eyes.

In the dirt. Twitching. Bleeding. Choking on his own blood like a gutted animal.

And I watched every second of it.

"Is he—" Malakor started.

"Shut up." I held up one hand without looking away. "I want to see this."

The emperor’s massive wolf form had gone rigid. His dark fur was matted with blood and dirt. The jagged scratch Malakor had left across his flank was weeping dark, tainted blood. Just a single poisoned claw mark. That was all it took.

His legs jerked. Once. Twice. His claws scraped uselessly against the frozen ground, gouging shallow trenches that filled immediately with dark blood. A thick foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. Pink at first. Then red. Then almost black.

The wolfsbane was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

We had spent years perfecting it. Years. Living like rats in that crumbling fortress on the northern edge of nowhere, surrounded by the stench of failed experiments and dying test subjects. Rogues who had volunteered—or been volunteered—to let us inject them, poison them, record their deaths in careful detail. How long until the first tremor. How long until the lungs stopped. How long until the heart gave out completely.

Some died too fast. Some died too slow. Some didn’t die at all, just lost their wolves and wandered around like empty shells until Malakor put them down out of irritation.

But we kept refining. Kept adjusting. Silver powder for the initial paralysis. Wolfsbane extract for the organ failure. And Malakor’s father’s personal recipe—that ancient, forbidden compound that severed the connection between a wolf and its host, trapping the beast inside a body that was already dying. No shifting. No healing. No escape.

The perfect, slow-acting poison.

And now it was eating the most powerful Alpha on the eastern coast alive from the inside out.

"Kaelen." I stepped closer. Not too close. Even dying, an emperor’s jaws could still snap. I’d seen what those fangs had done before. "Can you hear me, my great king?" I mocked.

His dark gold eyes found me. Dimming. The light was going out of them like candles drowning in their own wax. But there was still something there. Still awareness. Still suffering.

Good.

"You could have had me," I said. I kept my voice pleasant. Conversational. The way I might discuss the weather with a lady at court. "Do you remember? I came to you. I knelt before the throne. I offered you everything—my bloodline, my loyalty, my body. I would have been the perfect empress. I would have given you heirs with pure blood, not the mongrel bastards that whore produced."

His mouth moved. The muscles of his jaw worked against the paralysis. A sound escaped. Barely a whisper. Broken. Wet.

"Ela—"

"Elara." I spat the name like rotten meat. "That’s what you want to say? With your last breath? Her name? That lowly bitch? That gutter trash? My parents’ charity case who couldn’t even keep her first betrothal?"

Something flickered in those dying dark gold eyes. Defiance. Even now. Even with his organs shutting down and his blood turning to poison.

Even now, he was thinking of her.

The rage came sudden and bright. I kicked dirt into his face. It stuck to the blood and foam around his muzzle. He didn’t flinch. Couldn’t flinch. His body had stopped obeying him entirely.

"She was nothing," I hissed. "A stray my father brought home out of pity. A weak, sniveling little thing who couldn’t even look people in the eye. And you chose her. The great king of the eastern coast chose a discarded orphan over me."

His paw twitched. Moved maybe half an inch in my direction. Those claws—still sharp, still deadly—scraped against frozen earth. He was trying to reach me, trying to protect her even as he perished.

I crouched down. Just out of range. Close enough to see the veins in his eyes bursting one by one. Close enough to smell the wolfsbane seeping through his pores.

"Reach for me, Kaelen. Try. I want to watch you fail."

His paw went still.

His chest heaved once. A terrible, rattling sound filled the clearing—the sound of lungs that had forgotten how to work. His ribs expanded. Contracted. Expanded again with visible effort.

Then stopped.

The gold in his eyes went flat. Like coins dropped into muddy water.

Silence.

I waited. The forest was quiet except for the wind through the pines and the distant call of a crow. Malakor’s breathing behind me was ragged, but even he had gone still.

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