Chapter 174

Kaelen’s POV

“Gone.”

The word left my mouth like venom. Low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that made men reach for their swords.

Marcus stood before my desk with his jaw locked tight and his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above my left shoulder. Smart. Looking me in the eye right now would be a mistake.

“Years.” I rose from my chair. Slowly. “Years of hunting. Years of burning their camps, tracking their supply lines, dismantling every fucking hideout across the borders. And you stand here—” I slammed both palms flat on the desk. The wood groaned. “—and tell me Malak and Isolde are gone after all these fucking years?”

Marcus didn’t flinch. But I saw it—the slight tightening around his mouth. The barest shift of weight onto his back foot.

Good. He should be afraid.

“Your Majesty.” His voice was steady but careful. Measured. “Our scouts confirmed the last known location was abandoned. No tracks. No scent trail. They vanished without a trace—”

“Vanished.” I let the word hang. Let it rot in the air between us. “People don’t vanish, Marcus. Not unless someone helps them.”

His silence confirmed what I already knew.

I turned away from him. Walked to the window. The capital sprawled below—rooftops and spires and the distant glitter of the river cutting through stone. Beautiful. Ordered. Everything in its place.

Everything except the one thing that mattered.

“There’s a traitor.” I said it without looking at him. My reflection stared back from the glass—hollow-eyed, unshaven, looking like a man who hadn’t slept properly in a long time. Because I hadn’t. “Someone inside these walls fed them information. Someone told them we were closing in.”

“I’ve already begun an internal—”

“Find them.” I turned. The alpha command rolled through my voice without effort—an involuntary thing now, like breathing. “Find whoever sold us out. Bring them to me alive. I want names. I want confessions. I want to look them in the eye before I rip their throat out.”

Marcus inclined his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“If Malak survives—” I moved toward him. Each step deliberate. Predatory. “If that bastard lives through this, then every soldier we’ve buried, every village they’ve burned, half the violence they’ve unleashed across my borders—all of it means nothing. Years of work. Wasted.” I stopped close enough that he had to tilt his chin up to hold his position. “Do you understand what that means, Marcus?”

“I understand, Your Majesty.”

“Then get out.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. The door closed behind him with a soft click that somehow echoed louder than a slam.

I stood alone in my study. The silence pressed in. Suffocating.

My hands were shaking.

I curled them into fists. Pressed my knuckles against the edge of the desk until the skin went white. Until the trembling stopped. Until the rage found somewhere to settle that wasn’t my chest, wasn’t my throat, wasn’t the place behind my ribs where something vital had been torn out and never put back.

Years. Years since she left. Years since I woke up in an empty bed with a letter on the pillow and a hole in my world that no amount of war could fill.

The door opened again without a knock.

I knew who it was before I turned. Only one person in this palace had the arrogance to enter my study uninvited.

“Emperor Kaelen.”

Elder Henry. Gray-haired. Sharp-eyed. Standing in my doorway with the posture of a man who believed his bloodline made him untouchable.

“Get out, Henry.”

He didn’t move. “We need to discuss your behavior.”

“I said—”

“Your erratic conduct over the past few months has not gone unnoticed by the council.” He stepped inside. Closed the door behind him. Folded his hands at his waist like a priest delivering a sermon. “The outbursts. The isolation. The refusal to attend state functions. It cannot continue.”

I turned to face him fully. Let him see what was in my eyes. Most men would have stopped talking.

Henry was not most men. He was worse. He was a man with convictions.

“This is about her, isn’t it?” His lip curled slightly. Not quite a sneer. Something colder. “Your missing… consort.”

The word hit like a blade between ribs.

“Choose your next words very carefully, Elder.”

“I’ll choose them honestly.” He clasped his hands tighter. “Elara—or whatever she truly is—abandoned this empire. She fled like a coward in the night. And even if she returns?” He lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “The empire cannot accept a mortal woman without a wolf as its Luna. She is—was—a liability. A weakness. The council agrees.”

The growl started low in my chest. Building. Rising.

Henry continued as though he couldn’t hear it. As though he had a death wish wrapped in parliamentary privilege. “Lady Sylvia possesses impeccable lineage. Pure Alpha blood. A noble background with extensive political connections. She would strengthen the empire rather than—”

The sovereign’s roar ripped from my throat before I could stop it.

The desk split down the center. A clean crack that ran through the oak like lightning through stone. The windows rattled in their frames. Something crashed in the hallway outside—a guard’s weapon, dropped. Every wolf within a hundred-foot radius would have felt that. Would have felt the primal, bone-deep terror of an Alpha’s unchecked fury.

Henry staggered backward. His face went white. His composure cracked—just for a moment—before he rebuilt it behind trembling hands.

I was in front of him in two strides. Close enough to see the pulse hammering in his throat. Close enough to smell the fear leaking through his expensive cologne.

“You.” My voice was barely human. “You and every council member who thinks like you—you are the reason she left.”

Henry pressed his back against the wall. His mouth opened. No sound came out.

“You made her life hell.” I leaned down. Into his space. Until my shadow swallowed him whole. “Every whisper. Every slight. Every cold shoulder and snide comment about her bloodline, her humanity, her worth. You made the woman I love feel like she was nothing—and I failed to stop it. I failed to protect her from you.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Your Majesty—”

“If you ever speak her name again.” I placed one hand flat against the wall beside his head. The stone cracked beneath my palm. “If you ever suggest replacing her again. I will strip your family’s seat from the council. Permanently. Your house will be nothing. Do you understand me?”

Henry’s lips moved. A thin, reedy whisper. “…understood.”

“Get. Out.”

He scrambled for the door. This time, I heard his footsteps—fast, uneven—retreating down the corridor.

I stood alone again.

The broken desk leaked papers across the floor. My hand throbbed where I’d struck the wall. The crack in the stone stared back at me like an accusation.

Years. And I was still destroying things instead of fixing them.

I closed my eyes. Breathed. Tried to find something steady inside myself. Found nothing but the same hollow ache that lived there now, permanent as bone.

Then—

A sound.

Light. Musical. Completely out of place in the wreckage of my study.

The communication stone on my belt rang with a cheerful magical chime. A sound I hadn’t heard in so long that for a moment, I didn’t recognize it.

I stared down at the small stone. It pulsed with soft blue light.

My hand moved on its own. Lifted the stone. Activated the connection.

And a voice came through. Small. Bright. Breathless with excitement.

“Daddy!”