Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 255

Kaelen’s POV

"Sire, movement in the eastern tree line. Hundreds of them. Coming fast."

I was out of the tent before the guard finished his sentence. The sword was already in my hand.

The camp erupted. Men scrambled from bedrolls, reaching for weapons with sleep-clumsy fingers. Torches guttered in the sudden rush of bodies. Someone knocked over a supply crate. Iron rations scattered across frozen ground.

"TO ARMS!" I roared.

Too late.

The first wave hit before half my knights had their blades drawn.

They came pouring through the gaps between the tents like water breaching a dam. Dozens. More. Eyes wild and foam-flecked, teeth bared in snarling faces that barely looked human anymore. Some were already shifted—twisted, half-formed wolves running on all fours with their spines arched wrong.

No formation. No discipline. Just raw, shrieking violence.

A rogue lunged at the supply wagon. Another barreled into a knight still fumbling with his sword belt. I watched him go down. Heard the wet sound of teeth finding flesh.

I didn’t think. I shifted.

The transformation was instantaneous—bones cracking and reforming, muscle expanding, silver-white fur erupting across skin. Alexius surged forward with a fury that burned like wildfire in my veins. Four legs. Claws tearing through frozen earth. The world sharpened into scent and instinct and the overwhelming need to kill.

Three rogues were on Marcus before I reached them.

He was fighting—one arm pinned, shoulder torn open, blood soaking through his armor in a spreading black stain. His blade swung wild and one-handed, catching the nearest rogue across the muzzle. Not deep enough.

I hit them like a siege engine.

My jaws closed around the first rogue’s spine. Snapped. Threw the body sideways into the second. The third turned toward me with a snarl—too slow. My claws raked across its throat. It crumpled. Done.

Marcus staggered upright, pressing his good hand against the shredded mess of his shoulder. Blood pulsed between his fingers.

"Get behind me," I growled in the low rumble of my wolf form.

He didn’t argue.

I turned back to the chaos. The camp was a slaughter. Rogues everywhere—more than I could count. They moved in packs of three and four, converging on clusters of my knights. No strategy. No coordination. Just overwhelming numbers thrown against us like a fist against a wall.

But they were converging on me.

I felt it. The subtle shift in the swarm’s direction. Every rogue within sight angle adjusted. Eyes locked. Snarling mouths turning my way.

They were targeting the leadership.

Four of them hit me at once.

Teeth sank into my left flank. Claws raked across my ribs. I twisted, snapping, throwing one off with a vicious shake of my body. Another latched onto my hind leg. Pain—white hot. I roared. Kicked. Bone cracked under my paw. The weight released.

But the other two pressed harder. One on my back. One at my throat.

I went down.

The ground slammed against my ribs. Air punched from my lungs. Weight crushed me from above. Jaws snapped at my neck—missing by an inch, then half an inch, then—

Elara.

Her face. Ice-blue eyes. That stubborn set of her jaw when she was angry. When she was trying not to cry. When she looked at me like I was the only thing standing between her and the dark.

Valerius. Lyra.

My son’s serious gold eyes. My daughter’s wild laughter.

The rage that erupted from somewhere beneath my ribs wasn’t born of battle. It was born of everything I had left to lose.

I opened my jaws and roared.

Not a sound. A command. Alpha’s Command—raw, unfiltered, dragged up from the marrow of my bones and hurled into the night like a thunderclap.

STOP.

Every wolf on that battlefield froze.

My knights. The rogues. Every creature with wolf blood in its veins locked rigid where it stood. The rogues on top of me went stiff—muscles seizing, ears flattened, bodies trembling against the primal compulsion to submit.

One heartbeat of perfect silence.

Then my knights broke free. Their training overrode the instinct. The rogues couldn’t.

"NOW!" Cassian’s voice cut through the night. Sharp. Controlled. "Form on the command tent! TIGHT FORMATION! MOVE!"

The knights surged. Blades flashed. Three rogues fell before the command’s hold shattered and the rest began to recover. But those precious seconds of paralysis had shifted the tide.

I threw the stunned rogues off my back and rose to my feet. Blood ran down my flank in hot streams. Pain was a distant thing—present but irrelevant.

Cassian fought with brutal efficiency. No wasted movement. Every stroke calculated to kill or cripple. He drove the rogues back from the command tent’s entrance, cutting them down methodically while shouting orders over his shoulder.

"Marcus! Shore up the right flank! You four—shields up! HOLD THAT LINE!"

Marcus, shoulder still pouring blood, picked up a fallen knight’s shield with his good hand and slammed it into the nearest rogue’s skull. Then again. Then a third time until it stopped moving.

I plunged back into the fray. Jaws and claws. Blood and fur. I lost count of how many I killed. The world narrowed to movement and response—threat identified, threat eliminated, next.

They kept coming.

Until they didn’t.

The surviving rogues broke. All at once, like a wave pulling back from shore. They turned and fled into the darkness between the trees, leaving behind their dead and the acrid stench of their fear.

Silence settled over the camp. Broken only by groaning. Ragged breathing. The wet sounds of wounded men trying to hold themselves together.

I shifted back. The cold hit my skin immediately. Blood ran from wounds I hadn’t felt during the fight—my side, my leg, my shoulder, my scalp. I pressed a hand to my ribs and felt something grinding that shouldn’t grind.

"Cassian." My voice came out hoarse. Damaged. "Count."

He was already moving through the bodies. Checking faces. Some he touched gently. Others he simply closed their eyes.

It took too long.

"Thirteen," he said finally. His voice was flat. Controlled. But I saw the muscle jump in his jaw. "Thirteen dead. Nine wounded. The rest are standing."

Sixty knights when we’d set camp. Forty-seven now.

Thirteen.

Thirteen men who’d followed me into this forest. Thirteen men whose families would receive sealed letters instead of fathers. Brothers. Sons.

My fault. My route. My command.

"Treat the wounded first," I said. "All medical supplies—distribute them now."

Cassian turned to me. His gaze dropped to the blood pooling at my feet.

"Sire—"

"The wounded. First."

"Kaelen." His voice shifted. Not a subordinate addressing his emperor. A friend addressing a stubborn fool. "You can barely stand."

"I can stand fine."

"You’re swaying."

Cassian grabbed my uninjured arm, firmly forcing my stubborn weight toward the chaotic healing tent. I was too exhausted to fight him.

"His Majesty needs treatment!" someone shouted over the din as we pushed through the flaps.

A stressed young physician appeared—barely more than a boy, hands already stained red from other patients. His eyes went wide when he saw me.

"Sire, please," the physician said, his voice strained. "You are bleeding from at least six wounds. If you don’t let me stop the bleeding, you’ll be useless to everyone by dawn."

Blunt. Disrespectful, technically. But honest.

I sank heavily onto a stool.

The physician worked fast. His hands shook, but his stitches were clean and tight. I counted the wounds as he found them. Side. Thigh. Left shoulder. Right forearm. Scalp. Lower back. Each one cleaned, closed, and wrapped in silence.

"These need proper attention at the main camp," the physician muttered. "These simple bandages won’t hold if you shift again."

"Noted."

Cassian crouched beside me when the physician finished. His voice was low. Steady.

"We pull back. Main camp. Regroup, resupply, and reassess. We’ve been fighting for five days straight with no rotation and no reinforcements. If they hit us again like this tonight, we won’t survive it."

I stared at the treeline. Somewhere in that darkness, more of them waited. Hundreds more. Maybe thousands.

The rogue attacks were savage and undisciplined. But targeting the emperor directly? That was strategy. That was someone’s plan.

"Fine," I said. The word tasted like ash. Like surrender. "We pull back at dawn."

Cassian nodded. Rose. Gripped my uninjured shoulder once—brief, wordless.

He helped me to the private command tent. My legs worked. Barely. The cot inside looked like the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

"I’ll post double guard," Cassian said from the entrance. "If anything happens, I’ll wake you."

I lowered myself onto the cot. Every joint screamed. The stitches pulled. Blood seeped through fresh bandages in small, warm blooms.

"You’d better do just that," I replied roughly. Then, letting my battered and scarred body finally rest, I closed my eyes and passed out on the cot.