Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce! novel Chapter 199

Chapter 199: 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.

Maybe he was right. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify