Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 267

Chapter 267: Chapter 267

Elara’s POV

I stood on all fours, my enormous silver-white wolf form radiating a power I had never known. The truth finally slammed into me—the lie my adoptive parents had fed me all my life. My biological parents, who died years ago, weren’t the weak runts I was told they were. They were pure-blood Alphas.

I opened my jaws and let the Alpha’s roar tear free.

Not a howl. Not a growl. A command—raw, ancient, and absolute. It erupted from the deepest chamber of my chest and hit them like a wall of force. The trees shuddered. Leaves ripped from branches and spiraled through the air. The ground itself seemed to vibrate beneath my paws.

The command hit them, forcing Malakor and Isolde to their knees. Desperate to fight the submission, they shifted. Malakor exploded into a massive tawny-brown wolf, and Isolde took the form of a gray wolf. But it was useless. Malakor crumpled—forelimbs splaying, muzzle smashing into the dirt. A whine ripped from his throat. Involuntary. Primal. His body recognized what his mind refused to accept.

Isolde dropped a heartbeat later, collapsing sideways. Her paws scrabbled uselessly at the earth, her whole frame trembling as the Alpha command crushed her resistance flat.

Kneel.

They knelt.

The satisfaction that surged through me was savage and pure. Every year of being called nothing. Every sneer. Every blow. Every whispered insult about my worthless bloodline—burned away in that single, glorious moment of absolute dominance.

But it wouldn’t hold them forever.

Malakor recovered first. His muscles coiled, and he launched himself at me from the left—jaws wide, aiming for my throat. Isolde attacked simultaneously from the right, darting low, trying to hamstring me.

Coordinated. Practiced. They’d hunted together before.

I caught Malakor mid-leap. My jaws closed around his neck—not to kill, not yet—and I threw him. His body sailed through the air and hit an oak trunk with a crack that split the bark. He yelped, crumpled, scrambled to his feet. Slower now.

Pain exploded in my hind leg. Isolde’s teeth had found their mark, tearing through fur and muscle. I spun—faster than something my size should move—and my forepaw raked across her face before she could pull away.

Four deep gouges opened from her brow to her jaw. Blood sprayed across the dead leaves. She shrieked—a sound half-wolf, half-woman—and stumbled backward, half-blinded.

Malakor charged again. Reckless this time. Desperate.

I met him head-on. We collided and the impact shook the earth. His jaws snapped at my shoulder. I twisted beneath him, felt his teeth scrape uselessly against my thicker fur, and then I did what my blood was screaming at me to do.

I extended all five claws of my right forepaw—each one long as a hunting knife—and drove them upward into his exposed belly.

The sound was wet. Final.

I dragged my claws through soft tissue. His body seized above me. A strangled yelp escaped him, cut short by shock. Hot blood poured over my paw, my foreleg, pooling in the dirt beneath us.

I pulled free.

Malakor staggered sideways. His wolf form shuddered—shrinking—and the man emerged, hands clutching the ruin of his abdomen. Entrails bulged between his fingers. He dropped to his knees, then to all fours, and began to crawl.

I watched him drag himself toward the tree line. Slow. Pathetic. Leaving a smear of dark red across the forest floor.

He wouldn’t make it far. A matter of hours, at most. The forest would take him.

I let him go.

Behind me, the ember in the mate bond flickered. Weaker.

Kaelen. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

I turned.

Isolde had shifted back to human form. She crouched in the clearing, naked and bloodied, one hand pressed against the four gashes splitting her face. Her other hand fumbled at the ground. A leather pouch. She ripped it open.

A small glass bottle. A single arrow, crude but sharp, its tip glistening with the same dark substance.

Wolfsbane.

Isolde nocked the arrow against a short hand-bow I hadn’t seen before—hidden in the pouch. Her hands were shaking. Blood ran into her left eye and she blinked it away.

"You were always nothing," she hissed. Her voice was thick, distorted by the wounds across her face. "Just an adopted nobody—"

She fired.

The arrow hissed through the air—straight at my chest. For one frozen instant I saw its trajectory with perfect clarity. The poisoned tip spinning. Inches from my heart.

I shifted my weight. Barely. The arrow passed so close I felt the fletching brush my fur. It buried itself in the tree behind me and quivered there, humming.

Isolde’s face went blank with shock.

The shift happened between one heartbeat and the next. My bones compressed. My fur receded. The enormous silver wolf contracted inward until I stood on two bare feet, naked and drenched in blood—mine and theirs—my silver hair hanging in matted, gore-soaked ropes around my shoulders.

I walked toward her.

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