Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce!-Chapter 199

Aria’s POV

The ceiling was white.

Plain white. Hospital white. The kind of white that had no warmth in it at all.

I stared at it for a long time.

My body felt strange. Heavy and light at the same time, like I’d been somewhere very far away and hadn’t quite finished coming back. The mattress beneath me was stiff. There were tubes somewhere—I could feel them at the back of my hand. Monitors beeping softly nearby.

Hospital.

I was in a hospital.

I blinked. Slowly. Once. Twice.

The ceiling didn’t change.

The flowers were gone. The mist was gone. The impossible soft light that came from no direction and every direction at once—gone. No pale grass under my feet. No warmth pressing against my side where silver fur had been.

Just white ceiling. Fluorescent light. The distant beep of a heart monitor.

*Was it a dream?*

The question formed slowly, like something surfacing through water.

Had all of it been—the clearing, the flowers, the woman in white with her ancient eyes and her patient smile—had that just been my brain, exhausted and terrified and running on fumes, building something beautiful out of nothing?

My chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with the wound on my leg.

Because if it was a dream, then Artemis was still gone. Still silent. Still that hollow space inside me where something living used to be.

I’d been so sure she was real.

Her fur under my hands. The warmth of her. The sound of her voice—not words, never quite words, but meaning, landing directly in my chest like it always had.

*I am always with you. You just couldn’t hear me.*

Real. It had felt so real.

I closed my eyes.

"Artemis," I whispered.

I reached for her. That internal space where she used to live. The place I’d been avoiding for months because reaching for it and finding nothing was worse than not reaching at all.

I reached.

And then—

Someone grabbed my hand.

Both hands, actually. Warm. Firm. Wrapping around mine like they’d been waiting there for exactly this moment.

My eyes snapped open.

I turned my head so fast the room tilted.

Kael.

He was half out of his chair, leaning over the bed, his black-gold eyes wide and urgent and fixed entirely on my face. Still in his training clothes. Hair disheveled. There was a smear of something on his sleeve that might have been dried blood and I couldn’t tell if it was his or mine.

He looked like someone who had not slept. Or eaten. Or breathed properly in quite some time.

"Hey." His voice came out rough. "Hey. I’m here. I’m right here."

I stared at him.

"Are you with me?" He squeezed my hands. "Can you hear me? Does anything hurt? Is—Aria. Talk to me. Say something."

I opened my mouth.

"My wolf," I said. "Did you—" I stopped. Tried again. My voice wasn’t working properly yet. "Kael. Did you feel anything? Just now. When I—" I shook my head. The words weren’t coming out right. "She’s here. Artemis. I felt her. She’s *here.*"

Kael went very still.

His expression did something complicated. Something careful. The look he got when he was trying to figure out how to say something without making it worse.

Then, slowly, he shook his head.

"No," I said immediately. "No, I’m not—I’m not confused, I’m not mixing things up, I felt her, Kael, she was—" My hands tightened around his. "In the place I was. The white place. She was there. She was real, she was solid, I touched her—"

"Okay." His voice was gentle. Steady. "Okay, I hear you."

"She was *there*—"

"Aria." He reached up. His thumb brushed along my cheekbone. Warm and careful. "You’ve been unconscious for hours. You had a fever. Your leg was infected and you ran yourself into the ground and—" He exhaled. "You were terrified. For the girls. For hours, you were carrying all of that."

I looked at him.

"Sometimes," he said quietly, "when we’re that scared. That exhausted. We dream things that feel more real than real. That’s not a weakness. That’s just—that’s just what people do."

"You think I was dreaming."

"I think you needed to rest." His hand was still on my face. "I think your brain gave you something you needed."

I wanted to argue. The words were right there.

But I looked at his face. At the exhaustion in it. At the tight set of his jaw that meant he’d been holding something together for a long time and was only barely managing.

I let out a long, slow breath.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe it had been a dream. A beautiful, devastating, devastating dream. The kind your mind builds when you’ve been running too long and you finally stop and it shows you everything you’ve been missing.

"The girls," I said. My voice came out thinner than I wanted. "Where are they? Are they okay? Did Serena—"

"They’re fine." The words were immediate. Certain. "They’re completely fine."

"They were here," he continued. "Both of them. Right in that waiting room the whole time." He glanced toward the door. "You were out for a while, though. Hours. The doctors wanted them to rest, so I—" He paused. "I had someone drive them home. Sophie stayed with them."

I looked at the ceiling for a moment. At the plain white nothing of it.

The dream—if it was a dream—was already fading at the edges. The flowers. The mist. The feeling of Artemis’s fur. The Moon Goddess’s eyes. All of it going soft and distant, the way dreams do.

*Go back to him. He’s waiting.*

I looked at Kael.

Said nothing.

Then he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against mine.

Just that. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. Just stayed there, his forehead against mine, his hands still wrapped around mine, breathing slowly.

I closed my eyes.

He let out a slow breath.

Then his hand moved from mine. And he reached over and pulled the blanket up slightly. Like tucking me in. Careful and quiet and completely unselfconscious about it.

I watched him do it.

"You know," he said. His voice had gone very gentle. Very deliberate. "Your only job right now is to rest."

"I know that."

"No, I mean—" He stopped. Let out a breath. "I mean *really* rest. Take care of yourself. Let people take care of you." His hand squeezed mine. "We need you in good shape."

"We." I looked at him. "You and the girls?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

And then he smiled. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

"You and me," he said. "And the girls." A pause. "And our little baby."

I blinked.

"What *little baby?!*"