Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 188

Kaelen’s POV

The numbers on the page had stopped making sense an hour ago.

I stared at the same column of figures multiple times, the ink blurring into meaningless shapes. Revenue from the eastern territories. Trade tariffs from the southern ports. Grain yields that were down again for consecutive seasons. The financial report was thick enough to serve as a weapon, and about as pleasant to deal with.

My third cup of coffee had gone cold an hour ago. I picked it up anyway and drank. The bitter, stale liquid slid down my throat like punishment. I deserved it. I’d been sitting in this chair since before dawn, and the candles on my desk had burned down to stubby, flickering nubs.

The door opened without a knock.

Only one person in this entire empire walked into my study without knocking.

"You look terrible," Cassian said.

"Get out."

He didn’t get out. He closed the door behind him, crossed the room, and dropped into the chair across from my desk like he owned it. His armor was dusty. There was a fresh scratch along his jaw that hadn’t been there yesterday. He looked like he’d ridden hard to get here.

My stomach tightened.

"What happened?" I set down the coffee. The financial report could rot.

Cassian leaned forward, forearms on his knees. His expression was the carefully controlled kind that meant the news was bad and he was deciding how to deliver it.

"Just say it," I said.

"The scouts picked up activity at three separate locations over the past seventy-two hours."

"Three locations." I processed that. "Simultaneously?"

"That’s what the reports say. But—" He held up a hand before I could speak. "The timestamps don’t line up. The descriptions contradict each other. One scout reported a large war party moving east. Another reported a small raiding group heading south at the same time. The third claimed a single figure matching Malak’s description was seen, completely throwing off the timeline."

I stood up. The chair scraped back across the stone floor. "They’re feeding us false trails."

"Yes."

"Deliberately."

"Without question." Cassian’s jaw tightened. "They’ve been doing this for a while now, Kaelen. Every time we get close, the trail splits. Every lead turns into smoke. Malak and Isolde—they’re not running. They’re playing with us."

I walked to the window. The courtyard below was gray in the late afternoon light. Guards patrolled the walls in precise formation. Everything looked orderly. Controlled. The way an empire should look from its tallest tower.

It was a lie.

We’d been hunting Malak and Isolde since the day everything fell apart. Since the day she—

I shut that thought down. Hard. Like slamming a door on a fire.

"We push harder," I said. "Double the scout patrols. Rotate the units so they can’t predict our patterns. I want—"

"That won’t work."

I turned. Cassian met my gaze without flinching. He was one of the few people alive who could do that when I looked the way I did right now.

"Explain," I said quietly. The word carried an edge.

"We’ve been chasing these bastards for three years, Kaelen. Three years. And we’re no closer than we were at the start. Malak has people embedded in the borderlands. Sympathizers. Maybe even informants inside our own territory. Every time we adjust our strategy, he adjusts faster. We need something different."

"Different how?"

Cassian leaned back. Something shifted in his expression—calculating now. Strategic. I recognized that look. It meant he’d been thinking about this for a while and had been waiting for the right moment.

"There’s an underground fighting pit," he said. "In the old warehouse district. Unregulated. Unsanctioned. The kind of place where people go to disappear—or to prove they’re too dangerous to ignore."

I stared at him. "You want to recruit from a pit."

"I want to recruit fighters who have no allegiance. No pack ties. No political baggage. People who fight because it’s all they know, and who are good enough to survive in a place where the rules don’t exist."

"They’re unstable. Uncontrollable. You’d be bringing wolves into the den who answer to no one."

"I’d be bringing wolves who are hungry for purpose." He paused. Let that land. "And we need them."

"We have soldiers. We have an army."

"We have an army that’s stretched thin across three false fronts because Malak keeps dividing our attention." Cassian’s voice hardened slightly. "And our knight training program has been struggling. Badly."

I said nothing. The silence in the room thickened.

Cassian pressed forward. Carefully now, the way a man approaches a wounded animal. "Laeli is pulling back from training duties. She has to. The baby—"

"I’m aware."

"—which means we’ve lost our primary combat instructor for the foreseeable future. And since Elara left—"

The name hit me like a blade between the ribs.

Something hot and vicious surged through my chest. Not grief. Not anymore. It had curdled past grief a long time ago into something darker. Something with teeth. I felt it rise and I crushed it. Buried it beneath layers of ice and iron discipline until my face showed nothing.

Cassian watched me do it. He saw everything. He always did.

"Since Elara left," he continued, his voice deliberately steady, "we’ve had no strong female presence in the training program. The female recruits are dropping out at alarming rates. They need someone to look up to. Someone who fights. Someone who proves that power isn’t exclusively male."

"And you think you’ll find that person in an illegal fighting pit."

"I think we won’t find them anywhere else. Not in time."

I braced my hands on the window ledge. The stone was cold beneath my palms. Below, a pair of young soldiers sparred in the training yard with the clumsy enthusiasm of puppies. They had no idea what was coming. None of them did.

"This is reckless," I said.

"This is necessary." Cassian stood. "There’s a major bout tomorrow night. The kind that draws serious talent. Let me take you. You see the fighters for yourself. If nothing impresses you, we leave. You lose one evening. That’s all."

"And if they’re nothing but brawlers with death wishes?"

"Then I’ll buy you a drink and never mention it again."

I turned from the window. Cassian stood with his arms loose at his sides, his posture easy, but his eyes were sharp. Watchful. He knew he was pushing. He knew exactly which nerve he’d struck by invoking her name, and he’d done it anyway because he believed in this plan enough to risk my temper.

That was either bravery or stupidity. With Cassian, it was usually both.

The silence stretched. I thought about the scouts chasing phantoms across three fronts. About Malak’s mocking, invisible presence. About the training yard full of soldiers who weren’t ready. About the empty space in my empire that no report or strategy session could fill.

"One evening," I said. "If the fights are a waste of my time, I walk."

"Fair enough."

"And if a single one of those pit fighters so much as looks at me wrong—"

"I’ll handle it personally."

I held his gaze for a long moment. Then I sat back down and pulled the financial report toward me. Dismissed him without a word.

"Deal." Cassian rose, looking far too pleased with himself. "Trust me. You won’t be bored."