Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 165

Elara’s POV

"I’m in," I said again, louder this time. As if repeating it would make it feel less like swallowing glass. "I’ll fight for you."

Zane didn’t smile. Didn’t gloat. He just tilted his head, studying me the way a jeweler studies an uncut stone—calculating angles, estimating worth.

"I know," he said.

The crowd behind us was still roaring from the last match. Someone was announcing the next bout. The drums had started again, rhythmic and primal, pulsing through the concrete floor and up through the soles of my boots.

Zane turned and walked toward a side corridor without checking if I followed. I followed.

The corridor was narrow. Damp. The noise from the pit faded with every step, replaced by the low hum of enchantment lamps and the drip of condensation from overhead pipes. We passed closed doors—some padlocked, some marked with chalk symbols I didn’t recognize. At the end of the corridor, he pushed through a heavy iron door into a small office.

It was sparse. A desk. Two chairs. A shelf lined with ledgers and rolled parchment. A half-empty bottle of something amber. No windows.

He sat behind the desk and gestured to the chair across from him. I sat. My legs ached from standing. From walking. From everything.

"You want to know when I knew?" he asked, leaning back in his chair.

"Knew what?"

"That you’d say yes." He folded his arms. "It was the alley. The night I gave you my card. That drunk twice your size had you cornered, and you didn’t freeze. You didn’t scream. You went low, hit him in the knee, and when he buckled, you drove your elbow into the bridge of his nose." He paused. "Most people run from violence. You ran into it."

My stomach turned. I remembered the alley. The stink of cheap ale. The man’s hands grabbing for me in the dark. The crunch of cartilage beneath my elbow.

I hadn’t thought. I’d just moved.

"That’s not courage," I said quietly. "That’s survival."

"Same thing in my world." He unfolded his arms and leaned forward. "I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, Ela. Long enough to know the difference between someone who fights because they’re angry and someone who fights because they refuse to die. Angry fighters burn out. They get sloppy. They chase pain because they think they deserve it." His eyes held mine. "But the ones who refuse to die? The ones who are hungry? Those are the ones who fill arenas."

Hungry. The word landed somewhere deep in my chest and stayed there.

"You saw me for what—a few moments in a dark alley?"

"Didn’t need more." He shrugged. "Experience teaches you to read people fast. The ones worth betting on, they have a certain look. You had it."

A wave of nausea washed over me as I reflected on the drastic turn my life had taken in twenty-four hours. I didn’t want to think about what kind of person I’d become that a man who traded in violence could look at me and see a kindred spirit.

Instead, I said, "Training starts tomorrow?"

"Six in the morning. Sharp. I don’t wait for anyone, and I don’t repeat instructions." He pulled a leather-bound schedule from the desk drawer and slid it toward me. "Morning sessions are conditioning. Footwork. Breathing. Afternoon is technique. Evenings, you watch fights. Study them. Learn the patterns."

I glanced at the schedule. Every hour accounted for. Every day full.

"I’ll be here," I said.

"Good." He started to reach for the bottle on his desk, then stopped. Looked at me. Waited.

Something had shifted in the air. He could feel it. The thing I hadn’t said yet. The thing that was clawing at the inside of my throat.

I pressed my palms flat against my thighs. Steadied myself.

"There’s something else."

"Go on."

The words were acid. They burned coming up.

"I need money." My voice came out thin. Stripped. "Before I fight. Before I earn anything. I need it now."

Zane said nothing. He just watched me with those dark, patient eyes.

"My landlord—" I stopped. Started again. "I’m being evicted. Tomorrow. By noon. I have less than twelve hours before my things are thrown out onto the street. Everything I have." I swallowed hard. "I had savings. Not much, but enough to scrape by a while longer. My coworker at the grocery—she scammed me. Cleaned out my magic pouch while I was on shift. And the shop manager docked my wages for inventory that went missing. None of it was my fault, but it didn’t matter."

I could hear how pathetic it sounded. Every word a confession of failure.

"How much do you owe?" Zane asked. No judgment in his tone. Just calculation.

"Four hundred and fifty gold. That’s the back rent plus the penalty."

"And what do you have?"

"Forty-seven gold coins." I forced the number out like a splinter from beneath a nail. "That’s everything. My entire worth, sitting in that magic pouch in my coat."

The silence that followed was unbearable. I could hear the distant thrum of drums from the pit. The drip of water somewhere behind the wall. My own blood rushing in my ears.

I hated this. Hated sitting here with my hands pressed against my legs to keep them from shaking, begging a man I’d met once in an alley and once through a communication stone. Begging him to save me from sleeping on cobblestones.

Such a short time. That’s all it had taken. Such a short time since I’d stood in my cramped apartment and told myself I still had options. Now I was underground, in a room that smelled like sweat and iron, asking a stranger for money.

Zane reached into his coat.

He pulled out a communication stone—different from the one he’d given me. Larger. Darker. He pressed his thumb against it and spoke a name I didn’t catch. A brief exchange followed in low, clipped words. Numbers. An address.

Then he set the stone down and looked at me.

"Two thousand gold."

I blinked. "What?"

"Two thousand. I’ll have it transferred to your landlord’s registered account by morning. Whatever’s left over goes to you—for food, supplies, and training equipment. You’ll need wraps, sparring gloves, proper boots. Can’t have you showing up in those." He glanced at my worn shoes.

Two thousand gold.

The number didn’t make sense. It was too large. Too sudden. Like someone offering a drowning woman an entire ship when all she’d asked for was a plank of driftwood.

"That’s—" I shook my head. "That’s too much. I only need four hundred and fifty. I can manage the rest."

"No." His voice was firm. Not unkind. But final. "You can’t. You just told me you have forty-seven gold to your name and no job that pays enough to keep a roof over your head. You think you’re going to train properly while worrying about whether you can afford bread?" He leaned forward. "I’ve seen fighters try to split their focus. One foot in the pit, one foot in some miserable day job. They get distracted. They get slow. They get hurt."

"I can handle it—"

"This isn’t charity, Ela." His voice cut through mine like a blade through cloth. Clean. Precise. "This is an investment. I invest in fighters who will make me money. You will make me money. The two thousand covers your survival so that your mind and your body belong entirely to the work."

I stared at him. My throat was tight. My eyes burned. I would not cry. Not here. Not in front of this man.

"You don’t know me," I whispered. "You’ve seen me fight once. In an alley. Against a drunk."

"And I’ve watched countless fighters step into pits over the years." He didn’t blink. "I know what I’m looking at."

The silence stretched between us. I could feel the weight of the decision pressing down on my chest. Two thousand gold. Enough to pay the rent. Enough to eat. Enough to breathe for once without the constant strangling pressure of not enough, never enough.

But it came with chains. I could feel them already, invisible, tightening around my wrists.

"Fine," I said. The word tasted like surrender. "Fine. I’ll take it."

Zane nodded once. Then he reached for the leather schedule again and tapped the top line with one finger.

"Six a.m. Tomorrow. Don’t be late."

"I won’t."

He leaned back. Something shifted behind his eyes. He wasn’t done.

"One more thing."

I waited.

"That grocery store." Zane looked up again. "You need to quit. Today. Tonight. The sooner the better."