Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 283

Elara’s POV

"Start from the beginning, or start from the end?"

Finnian sat across from me in the corner booth Brenna had secured. The tea house was small, warm, tucked away from the main street. Candles flickered in amber jars along the walls. The noise of the market was muffled here—just the clink of cups and the low murmur of other patrons who had no interest in us.

He still looked like he’d seen a ghost.

"I don’t know where to begin," he said. His golden hair was longer than I remembered, tied loosely at the nape of his neck. His hands—larger now, roughened with labor—wrapped around his cup but didn’t lift it. "I’ve imagined finding you a hundred times. Never once did I imagine you’d be standing in the capital, glowing, with—" His eyes dropped to my stomach. "Elara. Are you—"

"Pregnant. Yes." I smoothed my hand over the gentle swell. "Twins. And I already have two children."

His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Then, a warm smile spread across his face.

Brenna slid into the seat beside me, arranging our fifteen shopping bags into a precarious tower against the wall. "She’s also the Emperor’s mate, mother of two, survived a war, nearly died several times—but we’ll get to all that." She flashed Finnian a grin. "Tea?"

He blinked at her. Then at me.

"Maybe I should be the one talking," I said.

And I did.

I told him everything. Not the neat, polished version. The real one. How I’d fled the Valois household after they’d cast me out. How I’d struggled to survive, finding work where I could, until I eventually found my mate—Kaelen, the Emperor.

Finnian’s eyes widened, listening intently.

The harder part. I inhaled slowly.

"But there were people in the court who wanted us apart. Gareth—Kaelen’s half-brother—and a woman named Seraphine. They manufactured lies. Made it look like Kaelen had betrayed me." My fingers tightened around my cup. "I believed them. I shouldn’t have, but I did. So I ran. I crossed into the human territories with nothing."

"Where did you go?" Finnian asked softly.

"I fought in the underground pits for survival coin," I said.

Finnian’s cup froze halfway to his lips.

"Illegal ones. No rules, no mercy. You fought until someone couldn’t get up, and they paid you in coin that smelled like blood." I kept my voice even. Steady. I’d told this story before—to Kaelen, to the council—but telling it to Finnian felt different. He knew the girl I’d been before. The one who’d flinched at raised voices.

"And how did you end up back in the empire?"

"Kaelen tracked me down." The name still tasted like something sacred on my tongue. "He tracked me and brought me home. But by the time the truth came out and we were truly reunited, years had passed. And then there was Malakor."

Finnian went still. The name clearly meant something to him—everyone along the border knew that name.

"The Rogue leader," he said quietly.

"He brought an army against the empire. The war spilled across the border territories. Kaelen led the defense himself." I swallowed. "He nearly died. I went to the battlefield. I—"

How to explain what had happened? The blinding grief. The silver light ripping through me. The wolf that had erupted from my bones like something caged finally set free.

"I discovered what I truly am," I said simply. "And together, Kaelen and I ended it."

Finnian stared at me for a long, silent moment. Behind those warm brown eyes, I could see him reassembling the puzzle—the girl he’d known, the woman sitting before him now.

"You survived all of that," he said. Not a question.

"I did."

"More than survived." His voice was rough. "Look at you, Elara. Emperor’s mate. Mother. Warrior." He shook his head slowly. "Your parents would have been so proud."

The words hit somewhere deep. A place I kept locked. I pressed my lips together and breathed through the ache.

"I owe you an apology," I said. "I disappeared without a word. No letter. No message. Nothing. For years."

"You don’t need to—"

"I do." I met his eyes. "I was afraid. Malakor was hunting anyone connected to me. Anyone I cared about became a target. I couldn’t risk leading him to your family."

Understanding softened his expression. "You were protecting us."

"I was trying to."

He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Warm. Firm. A brother’s grip. "Then there’s nothing to forgive."

My eyes burned. I blinked hard. "How are they? Margaret and Robert?"

His face lit up with a tender smile. "They’re well. Strong as ever. Mother still runs the household like a general commanding troops." He paused. "She lights a candle for you, Elara. Every full moon. Has done since you vanished. She says the Moon Goddess will guide you home."

Something cracked open inside my chest.

"And your room—" He almost laughed. "She won’t let anyone touch it. Exactly as you left it. Father tried once to store grain barrels in there, and she nearly took his head off."

A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it. Brenna handed me a cloth napkin without a word.

"I’ll visit them," I whispered. "Soon. I promise."

"They’d like that more than anything in the world."

The silence that settled between us was warm. Full. Not empty at all.

Brenna cleared her throat. "So, Finnian." She leaned forward on her elbows, dark hair falling over one shoulder. "What brings you all the way to the capital? Long way from the border."

He turned to her, and something shifted in his posture. Subtle. A slight straightening of his spine. "I run a smithy near the border. Came here for specialty parts—alloys you can’t source out there."

"A smithy." Brenna tilted her head. "On the border. Where the Rogues were just waging war."

"Someone has to shoe the horses and mend the fences after they’re done burning things."

"Sounds dangerous."

"Only if you’re careless."

"And are you? Careless?"

His mouth curved. A slow, warm thing. "Not usually."

I took a long sip of my tea and said nothing. The air between the two of them had changed. Thickened. Brenna was leaning closer than she needed to. Finnian’s gaze kept drifting to her face like a compass finding north.

Interesting.

When the bill came, Finnian snatched it before Brenna’s fingers even reached the table.

"Absolutely not," she protested.

"Already done." He placed coins on the tray with casual finality.

"I’m perfectly capable of—"

"I’m sure you are. But my mother raised me a certain way, and she’d haunt me from across the empire if I let two ladies pay for tea."

Brenna opened her mouth. Closed it. Her cheeks flushed pink.

I had never—not once in all the years I’d known her—seen Brenna blush.

We gathered our mountain of bags. Finnian insisted on carrying the heaviest ones to the door. As Brenna stood, she fumbled with something from her pocket—a small card. It slipped from her fingers and tumbled to the floor.

They both reached for it at the same time.

Their hands met over the card. Knuckles brushing. Fingers tangling for one clumsy, electric moment.

Brenna jerked back as though burned. Finnian picked up the card slowly and offered it to her, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

"Charming," he said.

"What?"

"The clumsiness. It’s charming."

Brenna’s mouth moved soundlessly. The blush spread from her cheeks to her ears, down her neck, disappearing beneath her collar.

Finnian turned to me. His expression softened into something familiar—older, deeper. He opened his arms, and I stepped into a hug that smelled like iron and woodsmoke and home.

"Don’t disappear again," he murmured against my hair.

"I won’t."

He released me. Then he turned to Brenna and extended his hand with exaggerated formality.

"A pleasure, Brenna."

She took it. Held it a beat too long. "Likewise."

He nodded once, shouldered his own bag, and walked out through the tea house door. The afternoon crowd swallowed him in a moment.

I turned to Brenna.

She was standing exactly where he’d left her, hand still half-raised, eyes fixed on the door.

"So," I said.

"Don’t."

"Your face is the color of a sunset."

"I said don’t."

"And your hand is still in the air."

She dropped it. Collapsed into the nearest chair as though her legs had given out. Her palms pressed flat against her burning cheeks.

"He’s—" She exhaled. Stared at the ceiling. "He is quite the gentleman."