Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 169

Elara’s POV

The bell for round one ended with my blood already painting the sand.

Cade hadn’t even broken a sweat.

I stumbled to my corner. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else—someone drunk, someone dying. The wooden stool appeared beneath me and I collapsed onto it so hard it creaked.

Zane was already there. He pressed a bundle of ice wrapped in cloth against my left eye. The cold was so sharp it felt like a second punch.

"Hold still." He tilted my chin up. His fingers were rough, clinical. He studied my face the way a butcher studies a carcass. "Nose is broken."

I knew. I’d felt the cartilage shift when Cade’s fist connected. A wet, grinding sensation that sent white fire through my skull.

"Lip’s split through. Gonna need stitching after." He wiped the blood from my mouth with a damp rag. It came away soaked red. "You hear me?"

I nodded. Or tried to. My neck didn’t want to cooperate.

"Good. Now listen." He crouched in front of me. Grabbed both my wrists. His eyes were hard. Not angry. Worse. Disappointed. "You’re fighting like a scared little victim in there. Taking hits. Covering up. Waiting for it to end. You know what that gets you?"

I didn’t answer.

"Dead. That’s what it gets you." He squeezed my wrists until the bones ground together. "Stop being prey. Start being the predator. You hear me? Fast. Dirty. Cruel. Go for the soft spots—throat, eyes, groin, knees. Forget everything about fighting fair. Fair is for people who can afford funerals."

The bell rang. Too soon. Way too soon.

Zane pulled the ice away and slapped my cheek—light, but enough to sting. "Get up. Move. Don’t let him corner you again."

I stood. The arena tilted. I blinked my one good eye until the world settled into something approximately level.

Round two.

Cade came out grinning. He rolled his neck. Popped his knuckles. The crowd was chanting his name, a rhythmic thunder that shook dust from the ceiling.

He advanced.

I tried what Zane said. Tried to be fast. Tried to be cruel.

I threw a jab at his throat. He batted it away with his forearm like swatting a fly. I aimed a kick at his knee. He shifted his weight and my shin glanced off his thigh. I tried to circle. He cut the angle and penned me against the ropes again.

His fist caught me in the temple.

The world fractured into shards of light and darkness. My legs buckled. The sand rushed up to meet me and I hit it face-first. Coarse grains filled my mouth, mixed with blood and saliva into a paste that tasted like rust and dirt.

I heard counting again. Far away. Underwater.

"...one..."

Get up.

"...two..."

Get up.

"...three..."

My arms pushed against the sand. They trembled so hard they nearly gave out.

"...four..."

The crowd was laughing. I could hear individual voices now—cruel, entertained, already counting their winnings.

"...five..."

And then—

Kaelen’s voice.

Not here. Not real. But present in that way that memory sometimes becomes more vivid than reality. His voice cutting through everything like a blade through silk.

Valerius needs his mother.

My fingers dug into the sand.

Your baby girl needs her mother.

Something ignited in my chest. Not warmth. Not hope. Something older. Darker. Hotter. A furnace door thrown open, and behind it—rage. Pure. Molten. Bottomless.

My children.

My son, with his dark curls and gold eyes, waiting for me. My daughter, who I’d carried through heartbreak and exile and hadn’t even gotten to hold long enough.

They needed me alive.

I was not going to die on this filthy sand for the entertainment of strangers.

"...six..."

"Stop the count." My voice came out broken. Barely a croak. But the referee heard it. He paused.

"Fighter, can you—"

"I said stop the count." I pressed both palms flat against the ground and pushed. My arms screamed. My ribs shrieked. My broken nose sent lightning through my skull with every heartbeat.

I stood.

The crowd went silent again. That same held breath. That same disbelieving pause.

Cade’s grin faltered. Just slightly. A flicker of something behind his eyes—not fear, not yet, but the first hairline crack in his certainty.

"Just stay down, sweetheart," he said. But the warmth was gone from his drawl. "You’re only making it worse."

I spat blood at his feet.

Something shifted in my body. Something animal. The fear didn’t disappear—it compressed, collapsed inward like a dying star, and what remained was dense and burning and utterly savage.

I lunged.

Not at his chest. Not at his face. I drove my fist straight into his throat.

The strike landed clean. His eyes bulged. A choked, gurgling sound escaped his mouth and he staggered back, one hand flying to his neck. Before he could recover, I stomped down on his foot—hard, the way you stomp on a snake. The bones of his toes crunched through his thin-soled boots.

He buckled forward.

I slammed my shoulder into his right knee. The one I’d noticed him favoring. The one with the old scar tissue wrapped around the joint like a white vine. I hit it from the side with everything I had.

Cade screamed.

Actually screamed. A raw, shocked sound torn from a man who didn’t know he could make that noise. He stumbled sideways. Caught himself on the rope. His face was twisted—pain, yes, but underneath it something uglier. Humiliation.

The bell rang. End of round two.

I made it back to my corner on legs that felt like water. Zane caught me before I collapsed off the stool.

"There she is," he said. Something new in his voice now. Not quite pride. Close to it. "That’s the fighter I trained." He pressed fresh ice to my eye. "Now listen. He’s angry. Humiliated. A man like that—big, used to winning easy—he’s gonna come at you stupid in round three. Wide swings. Sloppy. Let him burn himself out. Keep moving. Make him chase you."

"And then?"

"Then you finish it. Whatever it takes." He leaned close. "He’s going to leave himself open. When he does, you don’t hesitate."

The bell rang for the final round.

Cade came out different. The easy grin was gone. His face was tight, jaw clenched. He was limping slightly on the knee I’d hit, and his breathing sounded wet and ragged from the throat strike.

But he was furious. And fury made him reckless.

He charged. A wild right hook that whistled past my ear as I ducked beneath it. The momentum carried him forward and he stumbled. I danced back. He whirled. Threw another haymaker. Missed.

"Stand still!" he roared. His voice was hoarse. Damaged. "Stand still and fight!"

I didn’t. I moved. Circle left. Circle right. Let him swing at air. Let him chase me around the ring like a bull chasing a scrap of red cloth. Each missed punch burned more of his energy. Each stumble on his bad knee widened the cracks.

The crowd’s chant shifted. Not his name anymore. Something else. Confused. Uncertain.

Time bled. I couldn’t count seconds. Could barely think. My body was operating on something beyond thought—instinct, adrenaline, the incandescent memory of my children’s faces.

As we entered the final thirty seconds of the third round, it finally happened.

Cade wound up for a massive, looping overhand right. The kind of punch that could end a life. But it was wide. Telegraphed. His whole body committed to it, torso twisting, feet planted.

Open.

I ducked low. Below his arm. Below his guard. I planted my feet and drove my knee upward with every last scrap of strength in my body.

It connected with his groin.

The sound he made was not a scream. It was something beyond sound—a silent, airless convulsion of agony that locked every muscle in his body rigid. His eyes rolled back. His mouth opened but nothing came out. He dropped to his knees. Then to his side. Then flat onto the blood-soaked sand, curled around himself like a child.

He didn’t get up.

The referee’s count seemed to come from another world.

"...seven... eight... nine... ten!"

A pause. The entire arena held its breath.

Then the referee grabbed my wrist and raised my arm to the ceiling.

"Winner! Ela!"

The eruption was deafening. Every voice in the arena converged into a single, primal roar. Coins arced through the torchlight like falling stars—gold pieces in denominations of five, ten, twenty, and one hundred raining down onto the sand around my feet.

My legs completely gave out.

Zane caught me before I hit the ground. His arms hooked under mine, holding me upright. In the chaotic swirl of the crowd, someone shoved five thousand gold in cash straight into my bloody hands.

"Medic!" Zane shouted over the roar, his voice laced with panic. "I need a medic over here, now!"

I gripped the cash tightly, the heavy coins slippery against my bloodstained palms. My vision was rapidly narrowing, darkening at the edges like a tunnel closing. As the darkness finally swallowed me whole, one last, triumphant thought burned in my fading mind:

I am a warrior again.