Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce! novel Chapter 203

Chapter 203: 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. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

---

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.

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