Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother novel Chapter 98

Chapter 98: Chapter 98

Elara’s POV

My back pressed hard against the rough bark of a massive pine tree, and I screamed, “Riley! Marcus!” into the dead forest.

My voice cracked against the silence. Swallowed whole. Not even an echo returned.

I spun my head, scanning the tree line. Every direction looked the same—towering pines, dense undergrowth, a canopy so thick it strangled the light into a sickly gray. The moss beneath my boots was undisturbed. No trail. No footprints. Nothing to suggest anyone had ever walked here.

Dead air. The kind of absolute silence that made me feel like anyone within a mile radius could hear the frantic beating of my heart. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

I pressed against the bark, steadying myself, forcing my breathing into a controlled rhythm. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Again. Again.

Something is wrong, Moonlight whispered from deep within me. Her voice was thin. Strained. Like she was speaking through water. This environment—it isn’t natural. I can’t sense the others. Can’t smell them. Can’t hear them.

I noticed it then. The heavy fog.

It hadn’t been there moments ago. Now it crept between the trunks like something alive, rolling in from every direction simultaneously. Thick. White. Impenetrable. Within seconds, it had swallowed everything, making it impossible to see in any direction beyond a few feet.

The fog is dampening sound, Moonlight said. And scent. I can’t catch anyone’s trail. Not Riley. Not Marcus. Not the knights.

“Can you sense anything at all?”

Wrongness. Chemical. There’s something in this mist that shouldn’t be here.

My heart hammered. I pressed harder against the tree, letting the bark bite into my shoulders through the fabric of my cloak. Grounding myself.

Think. Think.

I was separated from my squad. Disoriented. Surrounded by an unnatural fog that suppressed both sound and scent. My enhanced senses—the sharpened hearing, the amplified smell that had been a constant companion—were blinded. Useless.

A howl pierced the white. Distant. Then another. Closer. Then three more, overlapping, coming from different directions. Circling.

Rogues.

They were herding me.

The realization hit like cold water. I was trapped. This wasn’t an accident. The path hadn’t simply disappeared. The fog wasn’t a natural weather phenomenon. This was orchestrated. Deliberate. A trap designed with terrifying precision.

I had walked directly into it.

We need to signal the others, Moonlight urged. The retreat call. Now.

Right. The pre-arranged signal. The universal fall-back command we’d established before leaving the palace.

I tilted my head back. Drew the deepest breath my lungs could hold. And released it.

The howl tore from my throat—raw, primal, carrying every ounce of Alpha authority I possessed as I let out the pre-arranged retreat signal howl to alert my squad.

The fog swallowed it. Ate it whole. I couldn’t even hear the tail end of my own voice.

But I’d done it. If anyone was close enough—if the fog had limits—they might hear. They might come.

Or they might already be trapped in their own pocket of white nothing.

I waited. Counted heartbeats for a few moments.

No response came.

The Rogue howls circled tighter. I could feel them closing—not through scent or sight, but through some deeper instinct. The predator’s awareness of being prey.

I pushed off the tree. Staying still was death. Staying still meant waiting for them to find me.

I moved. Chose a direction at random—or what felt like random. The fog made navigation impossible. Every step forward looked identical to the one before. Pine trunks materialized from the white and vanished behind me. The ground was soft, muffled, giving nothing back.

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