Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce!

Chapter 223

Aria’s POV

The house was too quiet.

That was the first thing I noticed when the security team walked me through the front door. Too still. Too orderly. The kind of quiet that happens when everyone is trying very hard to act normal and not quite managing it.

The soldiers posted at every entrance stood at attention when I came through. Eyes forward. Weapons visible. Faces carefully blank.

Selene met me in the hallway.

She took one look at my face and didn’t say anything useless. Didn’t tell me it would be fine. Didn’t offer reassurance she didn’t have. Just put her hand on my arm for three seconds, firm and warm, and then said: "The girls are in the sitting room."

I went straight there.

---

Lina had her blanket.

She was curled into the corner of the large sofa with it wrapped around her shoulders like a cape, her eyes tracking the doorway. When she saw me, she launched herself off the cushion and crossed the room at full speed.

I caught her.

Held her tighter than I should have, probably. Tighter than was comfortable. She didn’t complain.

Lilith came more slowly. She always did. But she came, and she pressed herself against my side, and for a long moment the three of us just stayed like that on the sitting room floor while the soldiers moved through the house outside and the night pressed against the windows.

Lina’s voice was small against my shoulder. "Where’s Kael?"

"He’s handling something," I said.

"Is it dangerous?"

I pressed my lips into her hair. Didn’t answer.

She took that as a yes.

"But he’s going to come back," she said. Not a question. The absolute certainty of a child who had decided something was true and was refusing to consider alternatives. "Right?"

"Right," I said.

Lilith made a small sound. Not agreement. Not disagreement. Something more careful than either.

She knew the difference between a real answer and a promised one.

She was five years old and she already knew the difference.

---

I got them to bed by nine.

Lina went through the whole routine with mechanical precision—teeth, face, water, story. She asked for the same one she always asked for when she was scared, the one about the mother wolf who crossed three mountains to bring her cubs home. I told it the same way I always did, same words, same rhythm, same ending.

By the time the mother wolf reached the third mountain, Lina’s eyes were closed.

I sat with her for a few minutes after. Just watching her breathe.

Lilith was already in her own bed when I came to say goodnight. Sitting up. Braid perfect. Hands in her lap.

She looked at me the way she always looked at me when she had something she wanted to say and wasn’t sure she should.

"Aria," she said.

Not Mommy. Aria. She’d started doing that recently. Testing it out. I didn’t know what it meant yet.

"Yeah?" I said.

She looked at her hands. "If something’s wrong—" She stopped. Started again. "If you feel like something’s wrong. With Kael." She looked up. "You should trust that."

I stared at her.

She stared back.

"Okay," I said quietly.

She nodded. Once. Then lay down and turned toward the wall.

I kissed her hair. Smoothed her blanket.

And left the room with her words sitting in my chest like a stone.

---

The next few hours were the longest of my life.

I sat in the kitchen with a cup of tea I didn’t drink. Then I moved to the sitting room. Then I tried to read something and retained approximately zero words. Then I stood at the window for fifteen minutes watching the guards move in the darkness outside.

Selene sat with me for a while. We didn’t talk much. She had her own quiet kind of worry, the maternal kind, the kind that had been running through her for decades. She knew what it was to love someone who walked into danger and couldn’t be stopped from it.

She brought me food I didn’t eat. Poured me water I didn’t drink.

Around eleven, she said goodnight. Squeezed my shoulder. Looked at my face with that expression she had.

"He knows what he’s doing," she said.

"I know," I said.

Neither of us said the rest of it.

I lay down sometime after midnight.

Didn’t sleep. Just lay in the dark with my hand on my stomach and my eyes on the ceiling and my heart doing that thing it had been doing all night—lurching forward and then catching, lurching forward and catching, like it kept expecting news that didn’t come.

I thought about what Kael had said before he left.

*I’m coming back. Always.*

I thought about Ronan’s link cutting out.

The silence on the other end.

The way Kael’s face had gone grey.

*If you feel like something’s wrong—you should trust that.*

Sleep found me anyway. Pulled me under without asking.

And then—

---

I was on the edge of a cliff.

Not standing. Pressed. Like something was holding me from behind, my back against something cold and hard, and below me the drop went straight down into dark water. Wind. Salt. The taste of sea spray on my lips.

And across from me, suspended in nothing—

Kael.

His feet weren’t on the ground. He was hanging. Upright, like something had him from above, and his hands were at his throat, prying at fingers I couldn’t see. His face was wrong—dark at the edges, eyes too wide, something desperate in them that Kael never showed.

His mouth moved.

No sound came.

His eyes found mine across the dark.

He was trying to tell me something.

His hands fell.

The fingers around his throat tightened.

I woke up screaming his name.

---

I was on my feet before I was fully conscious.

Not consciously, not planning. Just moving. My body already knew. Already decided. Jacket from the chair—I grabbed it as I went past, shoved my feet into shoes, yanked the door open—

The hallway was lit.

Two soldiers at the top of the stairs. They turned when they heard the door. Their eyes went to my face and something shifted in both of them—surprise first, then that professional blankness snapping into place.

"Luna—" the closer one started.

"Where is he?" My voice came out raw. Wrong. Still scraped from the dream. "Where is he right now? What’s happening at the front? Has anyone—"

"We haven’t received any new reports, Luna. Everything is—"

One of the soldiers got in front of me.

Not threateningly. Just—blocking. The way they were trained to. Hands up, placating, position deliberate.

"Luna." His voice was careful. Steady. "Alpha Blood Crown’s orders were very clear. You and the children are to remain inside the house. No one enters or leaves without his direct authorization."

"I understand his orders."

"Then you understand why I can’t—"

"I had a dream." The words came out before I could decide whether to say them. "I know how that sounds. I know." I stared at him. "But I’ve had dreams before that came true. About things happening before they happened. And this one—" My throat tightened. "This one felt different. This one felt—"

The soldier’s expression was trained. Careful. Not dismissive, but not moving either.

The other one had come down the stairs now. Both of them. Side by side. Two bodies between me and the door.

My heart was pounding.

Kael’s face. Hands at his throat. Eyes finding mine across the dark.

*His hands fell.*

"Please." My voice came out strange. Something I didn’t recognize. "Please. You know him. You’ve served under him. You know what he means to this pack. To these people." I looked at both of them. "If something is wrong out there—if he’s in trouble—and I can help—"

"We can’t let you leave, Luna." The first soldier’s voice was firm. But not unkind. "Those are the orders. We’re sorry."

The front door was two feet away.

The dream was still there. Still pressing. The image of his hands falling. His face going still. The cold water below.

Something in my chest ignited.

Not fear. Something hotter.

I grabbed the first soldier’s wrist and pulled his arm away from the door. He startled—genuinely startled, because I’d never done anything like that, never pushed, never moved with anything but compliance and quiet—

"Luna—"

"If you want your Alpha to live," I said, and my voice was ice now, every shred of please-and-sorry stripped out of it, standing there in bare feet and a jacket with the dream still burning behind my eyes, "then take your hand off that door and get out of my way."