Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 32

Chapter 32: Chapter 32

Kaelen’s POV

“Are you my daddy?”

The words hit me like a blade between the ribs. For a moment I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The boy’s gold eyes stared up at me, shimmering with tears and desperate, fragile hope.

Alex roared inside me. Yes. YES. Ours. He is OURS.

I shoved him down. Hard.

“No,” I said quietly. The word tasted wrong. Bitter. “I’m not your daddy, little one.”

Something crumbled in the boy’s face. His chin dropped. His small shoulders caved inward, and a fresh sob tore from his chest—raw, animal, the sound of a child who had used up his last scrap of courage on a single question and gotten the wrong answer.

“But I know your mommy,” I added quickly. “I’m her... I’m her lord. She works for me. Do you understand?”

He sniffled. Wiped his nose with the back of a filthy hand, leaving a smear of mud across his upper lip. Those gold eyes studied me with a sharpness that didn’t belong on a face so young.

“You’re Mommy’s boss?”

“Yes.”

“The king boss?”

Despite everything—the cold creeping through the trees, the rogue markers stinking up the underbrush, the fact that a four-year-old child was sitting alone in the most dangerous stretch of forest in the empire—I almost smiled.

“Something like that.”

Valerius wiped at his cheeks. His fingers were trembling. The scratches on his forearms had crusted over, but the skin around them was angry and swollen. He was pale beneath the dirt. Too pale. And so thin I could see the knobs of his wrists jutting out from his torn sleeves like small stones beneath silk.

He’s malnourished, Alex growled. Underweight. Whoever is supposed to be feeding this child is failing.

I knew. The observation sat in my gut like poison.

“I know you,” Valerius said suddenly.

I went still.

“You’re the tall man.” He pointed one grubby finger at me, his brow furrowed in concentration. “You carried Mommy. She was sleeping and you carried her home. I saw you from the window.”

The memory surfaced—sharp, vivid. That night after the festival. Elara had fainted from exhaustion. I’d carried her back to her quarters myself because no one else was going to do it properly. I hadn’t realized anyone had seen.

“That’s right,” I said. “I carried your mommy home.”

Valerius nodded slowly. Something in his posture loosened. Not much. But enough.

“Is Mommy coming?”

“I’m going to make sure she knows where you are. But first—” I kept my voice low, steady. “Can you tell me how you got here, Valerius? Who brought you to this forest?”

The change was instantaneous.

His entire body went rigid. The color that had barely begun returning to his cheeks drained away again. His gaze dropped to the ground. His small hands curled into fists against his mud-caked knees.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell.” His voice had shrunk to almost nothing. A whisper pressed thin by terror. “She said... she said if I tell anyone, Mommy will get hurt. Bad hurt. She said they’ll make Mommy go away forever.”

The acid in my veins ignited.

She.

Someone—a woman—had dragged this child into rogue territory. Left him. Threatened him with his mother’s life to guarantee his silence. A four-year-old boy, terrorized into muteness by someone who understood exactly which nerve to strike.

Alex slammed against the walls of my control. Find her. Hunt her. Tear her apart.

I held steady. Barely.

“Listen to me.” I lowered myself further until I was at his eye level. Close enough to see the dried tear tracks cutting through the dirt on his face like tiny rivers. “No one is going to hurt your mommy. I won’t let them. Do you believe me?”

Valerius looked at me for a long time. His lower lip quivered.

“She was really scary,” he whispered. “She smiled but her eyes were mean.”

“I know scary people,” I said. “I’m scarier than all of them. And I promise you—I’m not going to leave you. Not tonight. Not ever while you’re with me.”

His chin wobbled. Then he lunged forward.

Small arms wrapped around my neck. Thin. Trembling. His face buried against my shoulder, and the sobs came again—not the terrified wailing of before, but something quieter. Deeper. The sound of relief so enormous it had nowhere to go except out through tears.

He weighed nothing.

That was the thing that nearly broke me. When I gathered him up and stood, he weighed nothing. Like holding a bundle of dry sticks wrapped in cloth. I could feel every rib through his torn tunic. Every knob of his spine pressed against my forearm.

Alex whimpered. A low, wounded sound I’d never heard from my wolf before. Protect him. Feed him. Keep him warm. Ours to guard.

“You’re all right,” I murmured against the boy’s tangled curls. “I’ve got you.”

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