Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce! novel Chapter 192

Chapter 192: Chapter 192

Aria’s POV

I made it to my car in under a minute.

That was probably a record. Considering my leg was throbbing with every step, and I’d had to say a rushed, barely coherent goodbye to Selene while grabbing my bag and my keys simultaneously. She’d tried to stop me at the door—something about looking at the cut first, about not driving in this state—but I was already halfway down the front steps by then.

"I’m fine!" I’d called back without turning around.

I wasn’t fine.

I got into the driver’s seat and let myself breathe for exactly three seconds. Then I started the car.

3:47.

Twenty-two minutes late. I replayed the school’s pickup policy in my head. Thirty-minute grace period before they started making calls. Before they—

I pulled out of the driveway too fast. The tires scraped the curb. I didn’t stop.

I drove.

My leg was bleeding again. I could feel it, that slow warm seep through the fabric of my slacks. The makeshift bandage Selene had insisted on before I’d even reached the front hallway—torn strips from an old kitchen towel, wrapped tight and efficient—had held so far, but the pressure of pressing my foot against the gas pedal wasn’t doing it any favors.

I pressed harder anyway.

The school was twenty minutes away under normal circumstances. I made it in fourteen.

I parked halfway onto the curb—I’d deal with that later, too—and got out. Moving fast. Not quite running because running with this leg was a specific kind of misery, but the closest thing to it I could manage.

The school day had officially ended forty minutes ago. The front of the building was quiet now. Most parents long gone. A few teachers standing near the entrance, talking. The crossing guard folding up his sign.

I went straight for the spot where we always waited.

The bench near the side gate. The one with the chipped blue paint that Lina liked to pick at while we waited for Lilith to finish saying goodbye to her new friends. Our spot. The spot they knew. The spot where I’d told them, a hundred times, *if I’m late, you wait right here, okay? Don’t move. Don’t go with anyone. You wait.*

The bench was empty.

I stopped.

Stood there for a second, looking at it. Like maybe I was seeing it wrong. Like maybe if I blinked they’d appear—Lina swinging her legs, Lilith sitting very straight the way she did when she was trying to seem older than she was.

Empty.

I turned around. Scanned the courtyard. The playground. The benches along the far wall.

No small dark-haired girl. No quiet auburn-headed one.

My heart did something uncomfortable inside my chest.

*They probably went inside.* A sensible thought. A reasonable thought. *The teachers probably brought them inside when pickup ran long. That’s procedure. That’s fine. They’re fine.*

I walked back toward the entrance. Faster now.

One of the teachers near the door glanced up as I approached.

"Hi—sorry, I’m late for pickup. My daughters—Lina Moon and Lilith Nightfang? They usually wait by the side gate but they’re not—"

The teacher’s expression shifted. I couldn’t quite read it. Something between surprise and something else.

"Ms. Moon," she said. And then she hesitated. That tiny pause that I would remember for a long time afterward. "They were picked up."

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