Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 95

Chapter 95: Chapter 95

Elara’s POV

The desk still smelled like him.

Cedar and smoke and something darker underneath—something that belonged only to Kaelen. I pressed my fingertips into the mahogany surface and reached through the bond again, the way I’d done countless times since he left.

Nothing.

Not a flicker. Not a whisper. Not even the faintest ember of warmth where his presence used to burn steady and constant, like a second heartbeat tucked beneath my ribs.

I pulled back. Exhaled. Tried again.

Kaelen.

The void answered. Cold. Absolute. A door shut against me from the other side—or worse, no door at all. Just endless, empty dark.

My hands trembled against the wood. I flattened them harder, pressing until my knuckles ached.

A knock. Three sharp raps against the study door.

“Enter.”

Sir Marcus stepped through. Same weathered face. Same gravel voice. Same expression carved from granite and duty. He carried the morning briefing folder under his arm, and his boots left faint wet prints on the stone floor.

“Your Majesty.” He set the folder on the desk. “Morning patrol report.”

I opened it. My eyes moved across the words, but my mind kept drifting sideways—reaching, reaching, reaching into that hollow place where Kaelen should have been.

“No Rogue activity along the eastern perimeter,” Marcus said. “No tracks. No scent markers. No territorial disruptions of any kind.”

I looked up. “Nothing?”

“Nothing, Your Majesty. The border is quiet. Unusually so.”

Unusually so. The words sank into my gut like stones dropped into still water. Quiet borders meant nothing good. Quiet borders meant something was being planned where eyes couldn’t follow. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

“And the Emperor’s unit?” My voice came out steadier than I felt.

Marcus’s expression didn’t change. But something shifted behind his eyes—a careful rearrangement. The kind soldiers learned when they had no good news to soften with.

“No communication, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you, Marcus. Continue standard rotations. Double the scouts along the tree line.”

“Already done, Your Majesty.”

He left. The door clicked shut, and the study swelled with silence again.

I stared at the briefing folder. Read every line. Absorbed none of it.

Days blurred together. Days without his voice in my mind. Days of reaching across the bond and finding only that terrible, yawning emptiness. Like pressing your hand against a wall where a window used to be. I pulled the next stack of documents toward me—supply requisitions, border dispatches, a petition from a minor lord about grain taxes. The machinery of empire didn’t pause for missing emperors. It ground forward, relentless, indifferent, and it needed someone sitting in this chair to keep the gears turning.

So I sat. And I worked. And I didn’t think about the silence.

By the sixth day, the fierce anxiety had completely destroyed my appetite.

The smell of food turned my stomach inside out—not morning sickness, not the baby. Just dread. Pure, corrosive dread pooling in my gut and rising like bile every time I tried to force a bite past my lips.

The study door opened without a knock. Only one person in this palace had that privilege.

Brenna set a tray on the desk. A bowl of soup, still steaming. A handful of soda crackers arranged in a neat semicircle beside it.

“Eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I didn’t ask if you were hungry.” She pulled a chair around to my side of the desk and sat. Her dark eyes were steady. Unflinching. The kind of steady that came from years of standing beside someone through every kind of storm. “Ela. Look at me.”

I looked.

“You have a baby growing inside you who needs fuel. You have a four-year-old son down the hall who watches everything you do with those ridiculous dark gold eyes and mirrors every emotion on your face. If you fall apart, he falls apart. You know this.”

My throat tightened. “Brenna—”

“Eat the soup. Eat the crackers. Then we’ll talk about whatever’s eating you alive, because I can see it from across the room and it’s scaring me.”

I stared at the soup. Steam curled upward, carrying the faint scent of herbs and chicken. My stomach clenched in protest.

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