Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 74

Chapter 74: Chapter 74

Isolde’s POV

The horse screamed before I did.

"Move!" I yanked the reins hard to the left. The decrepit carriage lurched, one wheel catching a rut in the dirt road. The whole frame shuddered like it might split apart. "MOVE, you useless beast!"

In the past three hours, I had been trapped in a relentless spiral of panic. The animal obeyed. Barely. Its sides were lathered with foam, nostrils flaring, hooves hammering the packed earth with a rhythm that matched my own heartbeat—frantic, uneven, desperate.

I pressed my palm to my face. The wounds throbbed. Three parallel lines of fire, from my left temple down to the edge of my jaw. Deep enough that I could feel the torn flesh shifting every time I clenched my teeth.

This was all thanks to Elara, that filthy commoner, that worthless, gutter-born nobody I had tried to sell off. Elara, who I had spent years grinding beneath my heel. Elara, who was supposed to be weak and docile and grateful for the scraps I allowed her. That pathetic creature had clawed my face open like an animal.

And the wounds wouldn’t close.

I’d pressed my silk handkerchief against the gashes until the fabric was soaked through. The blood kept coming—sluggish now, but steady. Three perfect lines carved into my skin. Permanent. I knew they were permanent the moment I felt the depth of them.

My beauty. My one true weapon. Ruined.

The carriage hit another rut. I bounced hard on the wooden bench and bit the inside of my cheek.

Focus. Focus on surviving.

Behind me, somewhere in the distance I’d already put between myself and the capital, the emperor’s guards were certainly mobilizing. I knew Emperor Kaelen would ruthlessly hunt me down because I had kidnapped Elara’s bastard. His son. The heir he didn’t even know existed until recently. Yet, as I tried to accelerate toward the lawless Rogue territory, I found that this decrepit carriage was moving twenty miles slower than normal.

A shudder ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold.

I had seen what Kaelen did to people who merely disrespected him. What he would do to someone who had laid hands on his offspring—who had attempted to traffic the boy like livestock—

No. I couldn’t think about that. If I thought about it, I would stop the horse. I would curl up in the back of this wretched carriage and wait for death, because death from exposure would be kinder than what Kaelen Nightfire would devise for me.

The forest thickened around me. The road narrowed from a proper path to a rutted track, then to something barely wider than a game trail. Ancient trees pressed in from both sides, their branches intertwining overhead until the fading daylight became a dim, sickly green. Moss hung from the limbs like rotting curtains.

I knew where I was going.

The thought made my stomach clench, but I kept driving. Deeper. Further from the capital. Further from civilization. Further from any territory that recognized the emperor’s law.

Gareth’s carriage was falling apart beneath me. Of course it was. Everything that man touched turned to ruin. The axle groaned with every turn. The leather canopy had a tear in it that let the wind slice through. One of the lantern hooks had snapped off entirely.

My husband. My brilliant strategic choice of a husband. A disgraced prince with no title, no fortune, and no spine. I had chosen Gareth over Elara’s pathetic devotion because he was royal blood, because he was supposed to be my path to power. Instead he’d given me nothing but debt and humiliation and this rotting excuse for transportation.

The road disappeared entirely.

I pulled the horse to a stop. The animal stood heaving, steam rising from its back. Around us, the forest was utterly silent. No birdsong. No rustling of small creatures. Just the wind moving through dead branches and the wet, heavy smell of decaying leaves.

This was the border.

Beyond this point, no imperial patrol ventured. No tax collector. No messenger. This was where the civilized world ended and the lawless territory of the Rogues began.

I sat very still on the bench. My hands were shaking. My dress—a designer gown I’d worn to the reception, pale blue silk with pearl beading along the neckline—was streaked with blood and dirt and horse sweat. My heeled shoes were absurd out here. Useless.

I looked ridiculous. A painted doll dragged through the mud.

But I had nowhere else to go.

Back meant Kaelen. Back meant chains, and a trial, and whatever creative punishment the Wolf Emperor decided I deserved. Execution, probably. Or worse—being stripped of my wolf entirely and cast out as a shell. A nothing.

Forward meant Rogues. Exiled wolves. Criminals, murderers, and worse things that had been driven from polite society and left to rot in the wild places. Wolves who killed for sport and ate their own kind when food ran scarce.

My hands tightened on the reins.

Forward, then.

I urged the horse on. It resisted. Planted its hooves and tossed its head, ears flat against its skull. Animals could sense what lay ahead before their riders could. Smarter than people, sometimes.

I cracked the reins hard against its flank. It lurched forward with a pained whinny and plunged into the unmarked woods.

The trees swallowed us.

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