Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 168

Elara’s POV

The curtain separating the fighter’s tunnel from the pit was just a strip of oiled leather. Thin. Flimsy. The roar of the crowd bled through it like water through cracked stone.

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

"Breathe," Zane said behind me. His voice was flat. Clinical. The voice of a man who’d watched people walk through that curtain and not walk back. "Guard up. Elbows tight. You eat a hit, you eat it with your forearms, not your face. We spent the past three weeks drilling these defensive techniques."

I nodded. My teeth were chattering.

"Ela." He grabbed my shoulder. Squeezed hard enough to hurt. "Look at me."

I turned. His face was carved from something harder than bone. Eyes like river stones—smooth, cold, unreadable.

"You go down, you get up. That’s it. That’s the only rule that matters tonight. Everything else is noise."

"And if I can’t get up?"

He didn’t answer that.

The leather curtain was pulled aside by a young boy. He had hollow cheeks and a fresh scar across his chin. He didn’t look at me. Didn’t look at anything. Just held the curtain and stared at the wall.

I stepped through.

The noise hit me like a wall of heat. The underground arena was a rough circle carved into bedrock, ringed by tiered wooden benches packed with bodies. Torch brackets jutted from the stone walls, throwing wild orange light across a crowd that looked half-human, half-shadow. The air reeked of sweat, cheap ale, and something metallic underneath. Old blood. Baked into the sand.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer stood on a raised platform at the edge of the pit. Thick neck, broken nose, voice like gravel dragged over glass. "In the east corner—making her debut—standing at... well..." He paused. Looked me up and down. The crowd laughed before he even finished. "Standing at not very much at all... Ela!"

Scattered applause. Mostly jeers.

"Ninety pounds soaking wet!" someone screamed from the stands. Laughter erupted.

"Fifty gold says she doesn’t last thirty seconds!" a man in a fur-lined coat bellowed, waving a coin purse above his head. The crowd howled in agreement.

"Twenty on fifteen seconds!" Another voice. More laughter. More coin purses raised.

I walked to the center of the pit. The sand was coarse under my wrapped feet. Stained in patches—brown, rust-colored, dark enough to be black in the torchlight. I tried not to think about how it got that way.

"And in the west corner—" The announcer’s voice dropped an octave. Reverent now. Theatrical. "Returning champion of the southern circuit—undefeated in his recent bouts—the one, the only—Cade!"

The opposite curtain ripped open.

The man who walked through it was a mountain given legs.

He stood at least two heads taller than me. Shoulders wide as a doorframe. Arms thick as my thighs. His skin was deep brown, gleaming with oil under the torchlight, and his shaved head caught the flame-glow like polished stone. He wore nothing above the waist except leather wraps on his hands. Every muscle on his torso was a topographical study in violence—ridged, scarred, built for one purpose.

He smiled. Perfect white teeth. The smile of a man who already knew the ending.

The crowd roared. They loved him.

Cade walked to center ring. Each step deliberate. Slow. Letting the crowd drink him in. When he reached me, he stopped. Looked down. Way down.

"Well now," he said. A thick southern drawl. Warm, almost friendly, the way a cat’s purr is warm before the claws come out. "What do we have here?" He tilted his head. "They send me a little sweetheart?"

I said nothing. My jaw was locked so tight my molars ached.

Cade extended his wrapped fist. A ritual. Fighters touched knuckles before the bell. I raised mine. Our wraps connected, the sheer, numbing force of his casual bump sending a shock up my arm.

He leaned in. Close enough that I could smell him—leather, sweat, something sharp like eucalyptus.

"I’m gonna enjoy this one," he whispered.

The bell rang.

I barely got my guard up.

His first punch came like a battering ram—a straight right that crashed into my crossed forearms with so much force it drove me backward several steps. My feet skidded in the sand. Pain exploded from wrist to shoulder.

Guard up. Elbows tight.

Zane’s voice in my head. Faint now. Fading under the roar.

Cade advanced. No rush. He moved like a man strolling through a garden, cutting off the angles with casual precision. Every time I shifted left, he was already there. Every time I tried to circle right, his massive frame blocked the path. He was herding me. Pushing me toward the ropes.

"Come on, little girl," he called out, loud enough for the front rows. "Give ’em a show."

His left hook caught me on the side of the head. The world tilted. I stumbled sideways and my shoulder hit the rope—a coarse hemp line strung between wooden posts. It burned against my skin.

Trapped.

He was on me before I could push off. A vicious jab to my jaw snapped my head back. I tasted copper. Then a crushing blow to my stomach folded me in half. All the air rushed out of my lungs in a single, violent gasp.

The crowd screamed. Not with concern. With delight.

I tried to clinch—wrap my arms around his torso, smother the punches the way Flint had drilled into me during those brutal footwork sessions. But Cade shrugged me off like a wet cloth. His forearm slammed into my collarbone and pinned me against the rope.

"Stay still, sweetheart," he murmured. Almost tender.

Then he hit me in the ribs. Once. Twice. Three times. Short, chopping punches that drove the breath out of me in sharp little bursts. Each impact sent a bright white flash through my vision.

I couldn’t think. Couldn’t plan. There was no strategy. There was only the next hit and the desperate animal need to survive it.

An uppercut.

It started at his hip and traveled upward with the force of something geological. His fist connected under my chin and my feet left the ground. For one suspended moment, I was weightless. Floating in a space where there was no pain, no noise, no crowd.

Then I hit the sand.

The impact drove whatever air remained out of my chest. I lay flat on my back, staring at the cavern ceiling. Torchlight flickered across rough stone. Shadows danced. Somewhere far away, a bell clanged.

Blood pooled in my mouth. Warm. Thick. I turned my head and spat a red streak across the sand.

The counting started.

"...one..."

The ceiling blurred. Doubled.

"...two..."

A sound like the ocean. The crowd. Cheering. Laughing.

"...three..."

You go down, you get up.

"...four..."

My fingers clawed at the sand. Grains dug under my nails.

"...five..."

I rolled onto my side. The world swam.

"...six..."

One knee. I got one knee under me. My arms shook so violently I could see them vibrating.

"...seven..."

Both knees now. I reached for the rope. Missed. Reached again.

"...eight..."

My hand closed around hemp. I pulled. My legs screamed. Every muscle in my core burned like it was being torn from the bone.

I stood.

The arena went quiet. Just for a heartbeat. A collective intake of breath from hundreds of throats. Then the noise returned, louder than before—confused, angry, entertained, electrified.

I swayed on my feet. Blood dripped from my lower lip and pattered onto the sand. My left eye was already swelling shut. Through my right, I could see Cade standing across the ring, his arms hanging loose at his sides. His expression had changed. Not concern. Not respect. Something closer to curiosity. The way a child studies a bug that keeps crawling after losing a leg.

I nodded. Once.

I’m still here.

The referee grabbed my face to check my eyes.

"Can you continue?"

Through my blurred vision, I nodded.

He stepped back and yelled, "Continue!"