Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce!-Chapter 203

Aria’s POV

Sophie’s face went through approximately fifteen different expressions in the span of three seconds.

Shock. Disbelief. More shock. Then something that could only be described as theatrical collapse.

"Again?!" she repeated, her voice pitching higher with every syllable. She dropped my hand and pressed both of hers flat against her cheeks like she was physically holding her own face together. "Aria. *Aria.* I leave you alone for like forty-eight hours—"

"You left me alone for significantly longer than forty-eight hours," I said.

"—and you’re PREGNANT? How? When? Who authorized this?"

"I think you know how," Kael said, very mildly.

Sophie pointed at him without looking. "You. Absolutely unhinged. Both of you." Then she grabbed my hand again, squeezing it with both of hers, and her eyes got wet all over again even while she was laughing. "Oh my God. Oh my GOD. You’re having a baby."

"So everyone keeps telling me."

"You’re having a *baby*, Aria!"

"Sophie—"

"A BABY!"

Lina, who had been watching this entire exchange with enormous interested eyes, turned to Lilith and stage-whispered: "Why does Sophie keep saying it like that?"

Lilith considered this seriously. "I think she’s having a moment."

"What’s a moment?"

"It’s when adults say the same thing over and over and cry about it."

Lina nodded like this was a completely satisfying explanation.

I laughed.

Actually laughed—full and real and slightly breathless, something loosening in my chest that I hadn’t even realized was wound tight. Sophie made a sound halfway between a sob and a giggle and smacked my shoulder lightly.

"Don’t laugh at me," she said. "I’m *processing*."

"I can tell."

"I had a very hard forty-eight hours, okay? Running around trying to keep your children calm and entertained while you were in there—" She waved a hand vaguely at the door. "Being dramatic and unconscious and very, very concerning—and now I come in here and find out there’s going to be a *third* child? Aria. *Aria.*"

Kael was looking at both of us with an expression I was starting to recognize. That particular calm, slightly incredulous look he got when Sophie went full Sophie and he couldn’t quite decide whether to be amused or alarmed. He usually landed on amused, eventually. Today he got there faster than usual.

She pointed at me. Then at him. Then back at me. "You two are insufferable. Do you know that? Actually insufferable." But she was smiling. Blotchy-faced and red-eyed and completely, unmistakably smiling. "I’m so happy you’re okay," she said, quieter now. "I was so scared."

"I know." I squeezed her hand. "Thank you. For staying with the girls."

She squeezed back. Hard.

---

It was Kael’s phone that broke the moment.

A single buzz. He glanced down at it. Something crossed his face—quick, professional, the Alpha-reading-a-situation expression—and then he looked up and set the phone face-down on the bedside table like he was putting the whole thing in a drawer.

Deliberately.

Decisively.

Like if he couldn’t see it, it didn’t exist.

I watched him do it.

"Who was that?" I asked.

"No one important."

"Kael."

"It can wait."

"Can it?"

The phone buzzed again.

This time it didn’t stop.

It just kept going. Short bursts. Over and over. The particular aggressive cadence of someone who was not going to stop calling until they got through.

Kael’s jaw tightened. He looked at me. Then at the phone. Then back at me, like he was trying to decide which one of us was more important to be dealing with right now, and the answer was extremely obvious to both of us and he was refusing to admit it.

"Go," I said.

"You just woke up."

"I’m aware."

"You’ve been unconscious for hours."

"I know that too." I raised an eyebrow. "I was there."

"Aria—"

"Kael." I looked at him steadily. "You’re doing that thing where you’re staring at your phone and pretending you’re not. Whatever it is, it matters. Go."

He exhaled through his nose. "I don’t want to leave."

Something warm moved through my chest. I didn’t let it distract me.

"We have time," I said. "We have so much time. You and me and the girls and—" I pressed my palm flat against my stomach, just briefly. "All of this. We have time." I tilted my head toward the phone. "That, on the other hand, is already waiting on you."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Those black-gold eyes, doing that thing they did. Reading me. Checking me. Looking for the crack in my composure where the real answer was hiding.

He wasn’t going to find one.

"I’ll be back tonight," he said.

"I’ll be here."

"Promise me you’ll actually rest."

"I promise."

He reached out. His hand curved around my jaw for a second, his thumb brushing along my cheekbone in that way he had. Then he leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead. Warm. Slow. Like he had all the time in the world even though his phone was still buzzing on the table beside us.

"I mean it about resting," he said against my hair.

"I heard you."

He pulled back. His eyes found Lina and Lilith in turn.

"You two," he said, "are in charge of making sure your mom doesn’t do anything ridiculous."

Lina sat up immediately, radiating purpose. "I can do that."

"I know you can."

Lilith glanced at me sideways. Something amused in her expression that she was mostly keeping contained. "We’ll manage."

Kael picked up his phone. Said something quiet into it as he walked toward the door. Whatever he heard back made his posture shift—that subtle straightening, the one that meant Alpha-mode was fully engaged and personal matters had been filed away for later.

He glanced back at me from the doorway.

One look. Just one. But it said everything.

Then he was gone.

---

The room settled into something easier without him.

Not worse. Just different. Quieter. The particular atmosphere that happened when it was just the four of us.

Sophie, who had settled into the chair on the other side of the bed, was watching them too. Her chin propped on her hand. A soft smile on her face that was nothing like her usual bright-grin energy. This one was quieter. More real.

She caught me looking.

"What?" she said.

I leaned closer.

"Tell me everything," I said. "Right now. Where exactly did you disappear to these days?"