Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 75

Chapter 75: Chapter 75

Isolde’s POV

They dragged me through the forest like a dog on a leash.

The scarred wolf gripped a fistful of my hair, hauling me forward every time I stumbled. I lost my expensive custom heels in the first mile of the trail—first the left, then the right—and after that it was bare feet on rocks, roots, and thorns. I felt my skin split open. Felt the warm ooze of blood between my toes. Didn’t scream. Screaming would give them satisfaction, and I refused to give them anything I didn’t have to.

Branches whipped across my arms. My silk gown caught on a low-hanging limb and tore from hip to hem, exposing my thigh to the cold air. I yanked the fabric free and kept moving.

The scarred wolf didn’t slow down. Not once.

"Keep up, princess." He didn’t look back. "Chief doesn’t like waiting."

The forest opened without warning.

One moment there were trees pressing in from every side, suffocating and dark. The next, I was standing at the edge of a clearing, and the smell hit me before anything else—smoke, rancid meat, wet fur, and underneath it all, the sharp copper tang of old blood soaked into dirt.

The camp sprawled across the clearing like something that had grown rather than been built. Tents of mismatched hide and stolen canvas sagged between crooked wooden poles. Fire pits dotted the ground, their flames throwing orange light across the faces of dozens—no, scores—of wolves. They crouched around the fires. Sharpened weapons. Gnawed on bones. Watched me with those flat yellow eyes.

Every single one of them watched me.

I straightened my spine. Lifted my chin. Blood was running freely from the wounds on my face again—Elara’s parting gift—and my ruined gown hung off me in strips. My feet left red prints in the mud.

I looked like a corpse someone had dressed up and thrown into a pit.

But I walked like I still mattered. Because the moment I stopped pretending, I was dead.

The scarred wolf led me to the center of the camp. The crowd parted for him—not out of courtesy, but out of instinct. The way lesser animals cleared a path for something bigger and meaner.

Then I saw the throne.

It sat at the far end of the clearing, elevated on a platform of packed earth. "Throne" was generous—it was a monstrosity welded together from scavenged carriage parts, broken wheels, rusted axles, and interspersed with bones. Some animal. Some... not. Pale, smooth bones that curved in ways only human or wolf anatomy allowed.

And on that throne sat the chief.

He was enormous. Not just tall—massive. Shoulders wide as a doorframe. Arms thick as tree limbs, roped with muscle and covered in scars that ran in every direction like a map of violence. His hair was black, but threaded through with premature silver streaks that caught the firelight. His jaw was square, brutal, shadowed with stubble. His skin was dark from sun and wind and years of living outside any walls.

His eyes were deep amber. Almost beautiful, in the way a blade is beautiful—cold, bright, designed to cut.

And his teeth.

When he looked down at me from that grotesque throne, his lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile, and I saw that his canines had been filed to points. Sharp. Deliberate. The teeth of a creature that wanted you to know it could tear your throat out before you finished screaming.

The scarred wolf shoved me forward. I stumbled, caught myself, and forced my legs steady.

"Boss." The scarred wolf jerked his chin toward me. "The one I sent word about. Says she has secrets about the emperor."

The chief said nothing. Just looked at me with those amber eyes. Slow. Thorough. The way a butcher examined meat.

Silence stretched. The fires crackled. Somewhere behind me, a wolf laughed low and ugly.

I spoke first. Because waiting for permission would make me prey, and prey didn’t survive here.

"I know Emperor Kaelen Nightfire’s weakness." My voice carried across the clearing. Steady. Clear. I’d practiced steadiness my entire life. "I know the one thing he would burn the world to protect. And I’m offering it to you."

The chief tilted his head. Slightly. Like a predator catching an unfamiliar sound.

"You." His voice was deep. Not a rumble—a vibration. The kind you felt in your sternum before you heard it in your ears. "A little noble bitch in a torn dress. Bleeding all over my dirt." He leaned forward on the bone throne. "Tell me why I shouldn’t have my men eat you and save myself the trouble."

"Because what I know is worth more than my weight in flesh."

He stared at me. One heartbeat. Two. Three.

Then he laughed.

It was a terrible sound. Low and genuine and utterly devoid of warmth. The wolves around the fires laughed with him, though most of them probably didn’t know why.

"I like that." He settled back into the throne. Spread his massive arms across the bone armrests. "Alright, little princess. Talk."

I swallowed. Tasted blood from where I’d bitten the inside of my cheek.

"Kaelen Nightfire has a mate."

The laughter stopped.

Every yellow eye in the clearing sharpened. The chief’s amusement dissolved like smoke. He leaned forward again, slowly, and the bones of his throne creaked under the shifting weight.

"A mate," he repeated.

"Confirmed. Bonded. A woman named Elara Frostfang." I let the name sit in the air. Watched his face for the reaction. "She’s his weakness. His blind spot. She and the child she bore him."

Something shifted in those amber eyes. Something predatory and calculating and deeply, violently interested.

"Frostfang," he said. Quiet. Rolling the name across his tongue like he was tasting it. "That’s a bloodline I haven’t heard spoken in a long time."

My pulse spiked. He knew the name. He knew it.

"That little bitch is a nobody," I said quickly. "A commoner. Weak. Pathetic. Easily taken."

"Is she." It wasn’t a question. The chief’s gaze was distant now, focused on something I couldn’t see—some memory, some plan already taking shape behind those amber eyes. "A little peasant bitch from the Frostfang line."

He said it softly. Almost to himself. Then his focus snapped back to me, sharp as a blade.

"And what do you want in return for this... intelligence?"

This was my moment. I straightened. Drew myself up to my full height, ignoring the blood on my feet, the ruins of my dress, the claw marks screaming across my face.

"An alliance," I said. "Your army. Your strength. I want Elara Frostfang destroyed. I want her stripped of everything she’s stolen from me—her position, her mate, her child, her life. And I want to be there when it happens."

He studied me. Those amber eyes moved across my face—lingered on the wounds, the torn silk, the bare feet caked with mud and blood.

"An alliance," he echoed. The word sounded absurd in his mouth. Like a child’s toy placed in a bear’s paw. "You come to me. Bleeding. Alone. In a stolen dress. With nothing but a name and a grudge." He paused. "And you propose an alliance."

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