Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce! novel Chapter 196

Chapter 196: Chapter 196

Kael’s POV

She went limp in my arms so fast I almost didn’t catch it.

One second she was standing. The next she just... folded. Her weight shifted all at once, soft and sudden, and my arms were already moving before my brain caught up.

"Aria."

Nothing.

Her head fell against my shoulder. Her eyes were closed, her face pale, and there was a thin sheen of sweat along her hairline that hadn’t been there five minutes ago.

"Aria." I said it again, louder. Squeezed her arm. "Hey. Look at me."

She didn’t.

Lina made a small, frightened sound behind me. I turned just enough to see her—standing a few feet back with Lilith, both of them frozen, both of them staring at their mother with that particular kind of wide-eyed stillness that children get when something scares them but they don’t have words for it yet.

"It’s okay." I kept my voice level. "Come here." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Lina came immediately. She pressed herself against my leg and I felt her small hands grip the fabric of my pants. Lilith stayed a step back, watching, not crying, but her jaw was doing that tight thing it did when she was holding something in.

I crouched down, keeping Aria against my chest with one arm.

"Hey." I looked at both of them. "Your mom’s going to be fine. She’s just exhausted. She’s been running on empty all day." I kept my voice calm. Matter-of-fact. "But I need to get her to a doctor, okay? So I need you both to stay close and not panic. Can you do that?"

Lina nodded immediately, still gripping my leg like a lifeline.

Lilith’s eyes moved to Aria’s face. Something flickered there—something complicated and young and not quite the coldness she usually performed.

"Is she hurt?" Lilith’s voice came out smaller than usual. "Like, really hurt?"

"I don’t know yet." I didn’t lie to her. I’d learned by now that lying to Lilith always made things worse. "That’s why we’re going to the hospital."

I stood up. Got both arms around Aria properly. She was lighter than she should have been—she’d been pushing herself all day, that wound on her leg, the adrenaline finally crashing, probably hadn’t eaten since this morning.

Fenrir was very quiet inside my chest. Not calm. Just focused.

*Get her there*, he said simply. *Everything else later.*

Yeah.

---

Getting to the car was easier than it had any right to be.

Damon materialized out of nowhere—he had a talent for that—and took both girls without being asked, scooping Lina up with one arm and steering Lilith with the other. Neither of them argued. Lina reached back toward Aria once, fingers stretching out, and then seemed to decide she trusted me to hold her properly, and let herself be carried.

I had Aria in the back seat and we were moving before I fully registered the transition.

I sat with her in the back. Couldn’t put her in the front. Couldn’t be five feet away from her while she looked like this.

She was warm.

Too warm.

I pressed the back of my hand to her forehead, then her cheek, and the heat I felt there made my stomach drop.

"She’s running a fever," I said flatly.

Aria shifted slightly. A small sound escaped her—not words, just a soft exhale of discomfort, her brow creasing even in unconsciousness. Like even her body couldn’t stop bracing for things.

My jaw tightened.

She’d been doing that all day. Bracing. Holding everything up. Keeping it together because the girls needed her to, because she thought she had to, because that was just who she was—and now her body was cashing in every debt she’d refused to acknowledge for the past twelve hours.

I wrapped one arm around her. Kept her steady against my side.

"Drive faster," I said.

---

I put my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands and I stayed there.

Damon had settled the girls into the chairs beside me. Lina climbed up without being asked and immediately pressed herself against my side, one small hand wrapped around my arm. She didn’t say anything. She was doing that thing she did sometimes—the thing where she just attached herself to the nearest stable thing and waited.

Lilith sat across from us. Knees together. Hands in her lap. Her expression carefully blank in a way that was, I’d started to realize, not actually blankness at all.

It was bracing.

She’d learned it from Aria.

I watched her for a moment. The way she was holding herself perfectly still. The way her eyes kept flicking toward the inner doors and then away, like she was punishing herself for looking.

"She’ll be okay," I said.

I heard the doors before I saw them open.

I was on my feet before I consciously made the decision to stand. Lina stirred, blinked, reached up instinctively, but I was already moving.

The doctor came through—steady expression, file in hand, the careful look of someone who had delivered news before and understood the weight of it.

"You’re the partner?"

"Yes."

They looked down at the file. "The leg wound is serious but manageable. She’ll need proper rest and care, and we’ll need to monitor it closely—but nothing was severed that shouldn’t be." A brief pause. "The fever is what concerned us initially. We ran a full panel to rule out infection."

My chest was very tight.

"And?"

The doctor looked up.

Their expression was serious. Not grim. Just careful. The face of someone who understood that the next sentence was going to land hard.

"The fever isn’t from infection." Another pause. Then, steady and clear: "Mr. Blood Crown—your partner is pregnant."