Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 67

Chapter 67: Chapter 67

Kaelen’s POV

I didn’t sleep.

After guiding Finnian to the guest chamber—second door on the left, up the main staircase—I locked myself in my study. The fire in the hearth had burned to embers. I didn’t bother relighting it.

I went straight for the crystal decanter on the sideboard. Poured three fingers of brandy. Drank it in one swallow. Poured another. This one I held, letting the burn settle into my chest while the pieces rearranged themselves behind my eyes.

Elara.

Silver hair that caught moonlight like water. Ice blue eyes—frozen lakes with sunlight trapped beneath the surface. A scent of winter roses and snow-dusted pine. Small. Slender. Stronger than she looked.

I had walked past her in the palace corridors. I had sat across from her in meetings. I had watched her work in the archives with quiet, fierce competence, and my wolf had clawed at my ribcage every single time, howling things I refused to hear.

You fool. You blind, arrogant fool.

And Valerius.

I set the glass down. My hand was shaking.

That boy. Those dark gold eyes—my eyes—staring up at me with a guarded intensity that no child his age should possess. The set of his jaw. The stubborn tilt of his chin when he was thinking. The way he positioned himself between his mother and any perceived threat, small fists clenched, shoulders squared.

My son.

The words detonated inside my skull. My son. He had been right there, living in a modest house on the edge of the city, eating simple meals, wearing patched clothes—while I sat on a throne surrounded by luxury, searching the entire empire for a woman who had been scrubbing palace floors beneath my feet.

Alex, my wolf, surged forward with a force that nearly buckled my knees.

She was ours. The boy is ours. And that thief—that lying, scheming thief stole them from us.

Seraphine.

I braced both hands on the desk and breathed through my nose. The brandy glass trembled where I’d set it. The amber liquid caught the faint light and threw distorted shadows across the wood.

I replayed it. All of it. From the moment Seraphine had appeared at the palace holding my badge—the badge I had placed on the pillow beside a sleeping woman whose face I couldn’t see in the dark—to every hollow, performative smile she had given me since. Every sugary endearment. Every fabricated memory of "that magical night we shared."

She had never been in that room with me. She had never worn an ice blue gown. She had never smelled like winter roses.

She smelled like cheap, cloying perfume and calculated ambition.

I should have trusted my wolf from the beginning.

I pulled a stack of sealed records from the locked cabinet behind my chair. Imperial archives. Personnel files. Intelligence reports from the household registry. I spread them across the desk and began reading by candlelight.

Elara Frostfang. I investigated all her records, from her time in the Valois barony to her arrival in the capital five years ago. Status at arrival: destitute. No family connections. No noble patron. She had taken work as a laundress, then a seamstress’s assistant, then a tutor for merchants’ children—all while raising Valerius alone. Every record painted the same portrait: a woman of extraordinary resilience surviving on the margins of society with nothing but her intellect and her refusal to break.

While I hosted banquets. While I reviewed military formations and signed trade agreements and allowed a fraud to sit at my table and call me "darling."

I shoved back from the desk. The chair scraped against stone. I stood and paced the length of the study. My wolf prowled beneath my skin, restless, furious, aching.

We abandoned her. We let her struggle alone. We let our son grow up without a father because we couldn’t see past a stolen piece of gold.

At dawn, the communication stone pulsed on the desk. I snatched it up before the first pulse faded.

"Kaelen." Cassian’s voice was ragged. Strained. The sound of a man who had been awake all night and was running on willpower and strong tea. "I have... something. It’s not much."

"Tell me."

"The Moonlight Inn preserved their magical recording crystals, but barely. Most of the recordings from that night are completely degraded—corrupted beyond recovery. I managed to salvage one fragment. A hallway recording. Duration: roughly two minutes."

Two minutes. Out of an entire night.

"What does it show?"

"The first thirty seconds are empty. Just an empty corridor. Nothing. Then, at exactly 6:23 in the morning—about two hours after you left the room—a woman enters the frame."

My grip on the stone tightened until my knuckles went white.

Cassian continued, his voice gaining a sharp, disbelieving edge. "She has distinctive blonde hair and a voluptuous figure. Wearing a cleaning maid’s uniform, gray linen with a white apron. She goes into your room."

The silence stretched. I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears.

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