Betrayed by My Ex, Marked by His Alpha Emperor Brother

Chapter 166

Elara’s POV

The training floor smelled like old blood and concrete dust.

I arrived at 5:55 the next morning. The underground space was cavernous. Low ceilings. Enchantment lamps casting a sickly yellow glow across stained mats and hanging bags patched with tape. Somewhere, a pipe leaked. Steady drip, drip, drip against the concrete.

Zane was already there, wrapping his hands with strips of cloth. He didn’t look up.

"Early," he said. "Good, Ela."

"You said don’t be late."

"I also said I don’t repeat instructions." He finished wrapping, flexed his fingers, and finally looked at me. His eyes swept from my boots to my face. Assessing. "The men will try to push you out. Not because you’re weak. Because you’re a woman. They’ll hit harder than they need to. Talk louder than they should. They want you to quit so they don’t have to look at you and wonder if they’re not as special as they think."

"I won’t quit."

"We’ll see."

At six sharp, they filed in.

Eight of them. Every one carved from violence. Thick necks. Scarred knuckles. Eyes that didn’t blink enough. They moved like predators entering a territory they owned, rolling their shoulders, cracking joints. The space shrank with them in it.

The first one through the door was impossible to miss. He was enormous—standing at six foot four and towering over everyone else, built like a siege engine given flesh. His nose had been broken so many times it sat crooked on his face, barely recognizable as a human feature. He scanned the room, saw me, and stopped.

"Zane." His voice was a low rumble. Gravel dragged over stone. "What the hell is this?"

"New recruit, Flint," Zane said flatly. "Treat her like anyone else."

Flint stared at me. Then his mouth split into a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. "Sure. I’ll treat her like anyone else. She’ll last a few minutes."

Behind him, a bald man covered in scars—each one like a line on a road map—folded his thick arms across his chest. His accent was heavy, Eastern European, vowels rolling like stones in a river.

"There is yoga studio," he said, jerking his thumb toward the ceiling. "Three blocks north. Very nice. Good for little girl."

A few of the others snickered.

I said nothing. Just stood there with my hands at my sides and my feet planted shoulder-width apart.

Zane clapped once. The sound cracked through the room like a whip.

"Ladies," he said. "Warm-up. Now."

The warm-up was designed to break people. Burpees. Sprints across the mat. Then more burpees.

By the third set, my vision was swimming. My lungs were on fire. I dropped to my knees on the mat, gasping, sweat pouring down my face and pooling in the hollow of my throat.

"Oh no," Flint called from across the room. He wasn’t even breathing hard. "Princess is tired."

I got back up. My legs shook so badly I could barely stand.

I got back up anyway.

Then came sparring.

Zane pointed at Flint first. Flint grinned again—that same dead-eyed grin—and stepped onto the center mat.

I stepped on across from him. He outweighed me by a massive amount. His reach was longer. His fists were the size of my face.

"Ready?" Zane asked.

I wasn’t.

"Go."

Flint came at me like a collapsing wall. No finesse. No hesitation. Just raw, crushing force. His first hit caught me in the ribs. I felt something shift. Pain exploded white behind my eyes.

I tapped the mat in twenty seconds.

"Again," Zane said.

Second round, I lasted thirty seconds. I managed to dodge his first swing, got under his guard, and landed one hit—a sharp jab to his floating rib—before he grabbed me by the collar and slammed me into the mat so hard my teeth rattled.

I tapped.

"Again."

Third round. I made it close to a minute. Not because I was fighting better, but because I was learning how to fall. How to roll with impact instead of bracing against it. How to cover my face when his fist came whistling down.

By the tenth round, my right eye was swollen shut. My nose was streaming blood. I could taste copper and concrete dust. The room was spinning in slow, lazy circles.

I hit the mat and didn’t get up.

Somewhere far above me, Flint’s voice drifted down like ash.

"She didn’t cry."

That was it. That was all.

But something in his tone had shifted. Just barely. Just enough.

---

Sir Marcus had taught me to fight with honor.

I remembered his voice, steady and measured, correcting my stance in the palace training yard. "We fight to protect, Elara. Not to destroy. Discipline is the sharpest weapon."

Zane’s world had no room for discipline. No room for honor. There was only survival—the willingness to bite, gouge, and claw when clean technique failed. Every morning at six, I dragged myself down those stairs and let these men take me apart piece by piece so I could learn how they did it.

The Eastern European man was the worst. Relentless. Mechanical. He hit with the precision of someone who’d been doing this since before I was born.

Three weeks in. He put me on the mat for the fifth time in a single session. I lay there, staring at the stained ceiling, tasting blood.

Then I pushed myself up.

He raised an eyebrow.

"Teach me," I said. My voice was ragged. Broken glass wrapped in cotton. "That thing you do with your shoulder. Before the hook. Show me how to block it."

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he laughed. Deep. Genuine. The first real laugh I’d heard from any of them.

"Little gladiator," he said, shaking his head. He dropped his guard and walked toward me. "Okay. Come. I show you."

He showed me how to angle my forearm so the impact rolled off instead of driving straight through. How to read the twitch of a shoulder before a hook came. How to turn a block into a counter in one motion.

Day by day, the bruises layered. Purple over yellow over green. My body became a canvas of damage and recovery. Every morning I woke up stiff, aching, certain I couldn’t do it again. Every morning I did it anyway.

Zane’s money rested in my landlord’s hands. The threat of eviction was gone. I had food. Equipment. Wraps that smelled like leather and sweat.

But I didn’t quit the grocery store.

Zane had told me to. I hadn’t listened. If the fights didn’t work out—if I broke something that wouldn’t heal, if Zane decided I wasn’t worth the investment after all—I needed a fallback. A safety net. Something.

So I kept my night shifts. Stocked shelves in the blue-white glow of enchantment lamps long after the store closed to customers. Dragged crates. Organized inventory. Moved like a ghost through aisles of preserved goods and dried meat.

The bruises were getting harder to hide.

I’d started wearing long sleeves. High collars. But the face was the problem. You couldn’t cover a swollen eye. Couldn’t explain away a split lip.

Gary noticed during a shift.

He was the store manager—a fussy, middle-aged man who liked to lean against the counter and comment on everyone’s business. Harmless enough, usually. Just nosy.

I was unloading a crate of grain sacks when he appeared beside me.

"Sarah," he said.

That was the name I’d given when I applied. Not my real one.

"What."

"Look at me."

I didn’t want to. But I turned my head. The bruise around my right eye was fading from purple to a mottled yellow-green. There was a fresh cut along my jawline from yesterday’s session. My lower lip was still swollen.

Gary’s face did something complicated. Concern warring with curiosity. That particular expression men wore when they were trying to seem sensitive but really just wanted the story.

"You look like you went ten rounds with Sir Tyson," he said.

I said nothing. Turned back to the crate.

"Sarah."

"I’m fine, Gary."

"You’re not fine. You look like hell, and it’s getting worse every week." He lowered his voice. Leaned closer. "Your husband. Boyfriend. Whatever you want to call him." Gary’s voice carried that tone men use when trying to appear sympathetic, while really just wanting the gossip. "Is he hitting you?"

"I don’t have a husband," I snapped through clenched teeth. My hands curled into fists at my sides.