Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother Chapter 66

Kaelen’s POV

The carriage swayed through the darkened streets. Neither of us had spoken for a while.

I watched Finnian across the dim cabin. He sat perfectly still, his brow furrowed, eyes fixed on sothing I couldn’t see. The lamplight from outside flickered across his face in uneven intervals. He was thinking. Piecing sothing together.

I couldn’t wait any longer.

"What did she look like?" My voice ca out rougher than I intended. "Back then. At the inn. Describe her exactly."

Finnian lifted his gaze. asured. Careful.

"Sa face," he said. "Thinner, maybe. Hungrier. But the sa sharp features, the sa calculating eyes." He paused, tilting his head as though confirming the image against the woman who had just pressed herself against my carriage window. "Her hair was different, though. It was gold. Bright gold—but wrong. The kind of color that cos from a cheap dye job at a market stall. Straw-like. Brittle. You could see the dark roots coming through at the temples."

My stomach turned.

"And her clothes?"

"An oversized cleaning maid’s uniform. One of the inn’s. Gray linen, white apron—both far too large for her fra. Wrinkled. Stained. She looked like she’d grabbed it off a hook without checking the size." He rubbed the side of his jaw. "And she was clutching your badge. Tight. Knuckles white around it, like it was her only card left to play."

I leaned back against the seat. The leather creaked beneath . I pressed my palm flat over my eyes and breathed—once, twice—but the air felt thin. Insufficient.

"Tell sothing, Kaelen." Finnian’s voice was quiet. Direct. "Why did you hire her?"

The question landed like a blade between my ribs.

I dropped my hand and stared at the ceiling of the carriage. The wood was dark oak, polished to a mirror sheen. I could see the ghost of my own reflection staring back at —hollow-eyed, jaw tight, the face of a man confronting the full scope of his own stupidity.

"She appeared at the palace a few weeks ago," I said. The words tasted like ash. "Unannounced. No appointnt. She talked her way past the guards by telling them she had urgent personal business with ."

Finnian’s eyebrow rose slightly but he said nothing.

"When she was brought before , she—" I paused. Ground my teeth together. "She had my badge. She held it up and claid she was the woman from that night. From the masquerade. She said she’d kept it all these years because it was the only thing she had left of ."

The silence thickened. Outside, the cobblestones humd beneath the wheels.

"And you believed her," Finnian said. Not accusatory. Just flat. Observational.

"No." The word ca out hard. Definitive. "I did not believe her. Not for a mont. She slled wrong. Everything about her slled wrong—cheap perfu and desperation, layered so thick it clogged my senses. My wolf rejected her on instinct. There was no recognition. No pull. Nothing."

"Then why—"

"Because she had the badge, Finnian." My voice cracked on his na. Just barely. Just enough. "That badge was handcrafted by my personal jeweler. One of a kind. I left it on the pillow beside the woman I—" I stopped. Swallowed the rawness that climbed up my throat. "I left it as a promise. A way back to . And this stranger walks into my throne room holding the only object in existence that connects to that night."

I turned my head toward the window. The city blurred past—lanterns, shadows, the occasional late-night pedestrian hurrying ho.

"I hired her as a lady-in-waiting. Kept her close. I thought if I watched her long enough, sothing would surface. So sign. So proof. I thought maybe the years had changed her—maybe I was wrong about the scent, wrong about the instinct." A bitter laugh escaped , low and joyless. "I was grasping at smoke. And I knew it. Every single day, I knew it."

Finnian was quiet for a long mont. Then he exhaled slowly through his nose.

"She’s a fraud, Kaelen. She stole that badge. Whether she took it from the room after your woman left, or found it, or pried it from soone else’s hands—it doesn’t matter. She wielded that stolen badge as a trophy. There was no sentint. No devotion. Just a deceptive maid spinning a lie to claim she was your lover."

The truth of it settled over like a physical weight. I had known. Sowhere beneath the desperate hope, beneath the obsessive need to find her, I had always known Seraphine was wrong. My wolf had told so from the first breath. But I had overruled my own instincts because the alternative—that the real woman was simply gone, vanished beyond all reach—was a reality I could not accept.

I reached for the communication stone in my coat pocket. My fingers were steady. My voice, when I spoke, was not.

"Cassian."

The stone pulsed once. Twice. A groggy, muffled grunt answered.

"Kaelen?" Cassian’s voice was thick with interrupted sleep. "It’s the middle of the night. What’s—"

"Listen carefully." I straightened in my seat. The Alpha command bled into my tone involuntarily—hard, absolute, brooking no argunt. "I need you to retrieve the magical surveillance recordings from the Moonlight Inn. The night of the masquerade ball. The exact date is the fifteenth day of August, five years ago."

A pause. I heard rustling—Cassian sitting up, no doubt.

"Kaelen, that was five years ago," he said carefully. "Inn surveillance recordings degrade over ti. The magical residue alone—"

"I am aware of the difficulty."

"The inn may not even have preserved them. Most establishnts overwrite their crystals periodically. And even if the originals exist, the image quality after this long—"

"Cassian." I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, my reflection in the carriage window stared back—haunted. Resolute. "I am not asking. I am commanding you as your Emperor. Locate those recordings. Whatever the cost. Whatever strings need pulling. Whatever archives need unsealing. Find them."

The silence on the other end lasted a long mont.

"Understood," Cassian said quietly. "I’ll begin at first light."

"Begin now."

Another pause. Then—softer, with the careful tone of a man who had served long enough to read the anguish beneath the authority—"Yes, Kaelen. I’ll begin now."

The stone went dark.

I held it in my palm for a mont, feeling the fading warmth of the magic. Then I tucked it back into my coat and let my head fall against the seat.

The carriage rocked gently. The horses’ hooves maintained their steady, patient rhythm.

"The woman," Finnian said.

I opened my eyes.

"The real one. From that night." He was watching with a look I hadn’t seen from him before. Not suspicion. Not rivalry. Sothing closer to quiet compassion. "What do you actually rember about her?"

The question peeled sothing open inside my chest. Sothing I had kept sealed behind iron doors and imperial discipline for years. I felt my composure waver—not collapse, not yet—but tremble at the edges, like a wall bearing too much weight.

"She was small," I said. My voice dropped to sothing barely above a whisper. "Delicate. Slender—but not fragile. There was strength in her. In the way she held herself. In the way she looked at through the mask."

I stared at my own hands. Large. Scarred. The hands of a warrior and a ruler.

"Her hair was silver. True silver—not dyed, not bleached. It caught the moonlight like water. Like liquid starlight. When I touched it, it was softer than silk."

My throat tightened. I pressed on.

"Her skin was pale. As soft as silk, ward from within. And her scent—" I exhaled slowly. The mory hit with such force that for a mont I was back in that room, in the dark, breathing her in. "Winter roses. And snow-covered pine forests after a storm. Clean. Pure. Intoxicating. Nothing artificial. Nothing perford. Just her."

Finnian had gone very still.

"She wore a gown," I continued. "Ice blue. The exact color of—" I stopped. Sothing flickered across my mind. A connection I hadn’t consciously made until this mont. "The exact color of her eyes."

I turned to Finnian. The rawness in my own voice startled .

"Her eyes, Finnian. Ice blue. Vivid. Alive. Like a frozen lake in winter with sunlight trapped beneath the surface. I have never seen eyes like hers on another living soul. Not before. Not since. I have searched ballrooms and courts and entire provinces, and I have never found those eyes again."

The words hung in the air between us. Naked. Unguarded. The confession of a man who had spent half a decade chasing a ghost—and only now understood that the ghost might have a na.

Finnian’s expression shifted. The compassion was still there, but sothing else had overtaken it. Recognition. A slow, dawning awareness that tightened the skin around his eyes and parted his lips.

"Silver hair," he said slowly.

"Yes."

"Ice blue eyes."

"Yes."

"Small. Slender. Stronger than she looks."

"Yes."

"Slls like winter roses."

My breath caught. "You know her."

Finnian leaned forward. His hands were gripping his knees. His voice had changed—no longer calm, no longer asured. There was an urgency in it now, an almost frantic energy, as though the pieces were slamming together inside his skull faster than he could speak them.

"Kaelen. Listen to ." He fixed with his sharp blue gaze. "You just described Elara. Every detail—the silver hair, the ice blue eyes, the build, the scent—you just described Elara perfectly."

The na struck like a thunderclap.

"And Valerius," Finnian pressed on, his words tumbling over each other. "Her son. Think about it. He is a five-year-old child. Count backward from now to that night five years ago, Kaelen. The tiline matches perfectly."

The carriage suddenly felt airless. My lungs seized. My heart slamd once—violently—against my ribs, and then seed to stop entirely.

Silver hair. Ice blue eyes. Winter roses.

A five-year-old child. The tiline matched perfectly.

"Elara," I breathed. Her na left my mouth like a prayer ripped from a dying man.