Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce! novel Chapter 72

Chapter 72: Chapter 72

Aria’s POV

I’d been here three weeks now, and every single day felt like drowning in slow motion. The cheap motel room with its water-stained ceiling and cockroach problem had become my entire universe. Four walls. One lumpy bed. A bathroom where the hot water worked maybe half the time.

And a stack of job applications that kept growing, even as my hope kept shrinking.

I spread the newspaper across the wobbly desk, my eyes scanning the "Help Wanted" section for the hundredth time. Most of the listings were already crossed out in red pen. Rejected. Not qualified. Position filled. Come back when you have experience.

The words blurred together until they all meant the same thing: You’re not good enough.

My hand drifted to my stomach without thinking. Still flat. Still nothing to show for the life growing inside me. But I knew it was there. I could feel it in the constant nausea that plagued my mornings, in the bone-deep exhaustion that never went away, in the way my body felt foreign and strange without Artemis to guide me through it.

I grabbed my jacket and headed out before I could talk myself out of it. The morning air was crisp, biting at my cheeks as I walked. My shoes were falling apart—the soles worn paper-thin from all the walking I’d been doing. Every step sent a dull ache through my feet.

But I couldn’t afford new shoes. I couldn’t afford anything.

The first place on my list was a diner called "Sunny’s." The name was a cruel joke. The building looked like it hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint since the eighties, and the neon sign flickered pathetically in the gray morning light. But they were hiring, and that was all that mattered. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

I pushed through the door, and the smell hit me like a wall—grease and burnt coffee and something that might have been bacon three hours ago. My stomach lurched violently. I pressed my hand against my mouth, breathing through the wave of nausea until it passed.

"Help you?"

The woman behind the counter was in her fifties, with gray hair scraped back in a severe bun and deep lines around her mouth that spoke of decades of disappointment. She looked at me the way everyone looked at me now—with suspicion, with pity, with the kind of judgment that made me want to crawl out of my own skin.

"I’m here about the waitress position," I said, forcing my voice to sound steady and confident. "I saw your ad in the paper. I have five years of experience, and I can start immediately."

Her eyes traveled over me slowly. Taking in my worn clothes. The shadows under my eyes. The way my collarbones jutted out too sharply because I’d been eating one meal a day to make the money last.

"References?"

My heart sank. "I... the restaurant I worked at closed down. The owner passed away, and I lost contact with everyone else. But I’m a hard worker. I’ll prove it if you just give me a chance."

The woman sighed heavily, like I was wasting her time. Like she’d heard this story a thousand times before.

"Look, honey. I appreciate you coming in, but I can’t hire someone off the street with no way to verify anything you’re telling me. For all I know, you could be some junkie looking to steal from the register."

The accusation burned through me like acid.

"I’m not—I would never—"

"There’s a shelter three blocks east," she continued, cutting me off like I hadn’t even spoken. "They help people like you get on their feet. Find paperwork, that kind of thing."

The words echoed in my skull long after I walked out the door. The bell jingled cheerfully overhead, mocking my humiliation.

I made it half a block before the tears started falling.

I ducked into an alley, pressing my back against the cold brick wall, and let myself cry. Really cry. The kind of ugly, gasping sobs that shook my whole body and made my chest feel like it was caving in.

Three weeks. Three weeks of this nightmare, and I was no closer to finding work than the day I arrived.

The shelter? Begging on street corners? Selling my body like my mother had taught me, like everyone always expected Shadow Moon women to do?

No.

NO.

I pressed both hands against my stomach, feeling the warmth of my own body heat through the thin fabric of my shirt.

"I won’t," I whispered fiercely. "I won’t become that. I won’t let them be right about me."

But the words felt hollow. Empty promises to a baby that couldn’t hear me yet.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and stepped out of the alley. There were more places on my list. More chances to be told I wasn’t good enough.

By noon, I’d tried seven more places.

A laundromat where the owner pretended not to speak English even though I’d heard him chatting fluently with a customer moments before. A hair salon where the receptionist looked at my ragged clothes and told me they "weren’t hiring at this time" while the Help Wanted sign sat prominently in the window. A fast food restaurant where the teenage manager said I needed to fill out an online application—but I didn’t have a phone or a computer or an email address.

Each rejection carved a little deeper into my soul.

I found a bench in a small park and collapsed onto it, my legs trembling with exhaustion. The morning sickness had passed, but hunger had taken its place—a gnawing, desperate ache in my stomach that I’d learned to ignore.

When was the last time I’d eaten? Yesterday morning. A stale bagel from the day-old bin at a coffee shop. That was... almost thirty hours ago.

The baby needed food. I knew that. Every rational part of my brain screamed that I was hurting my child by starving myself. But the money was almost gone, and I needed it to last as long as possible.

What was I supposed to do?

I pulled out my wallet and counted the bills again, even though I already knew exactly how much was there. Forty-three dollars. That was it. My entire net worth. The sum total of everything I had in this world.

A bitter laugh escaped my throat.

I used to dream about escape. About getting away from my mother, my sisters, the suffocating expectations of the Shadow Moon pack. I used to imagine what freedom would feel like.

Nobody told me freedom would feel like starving.

"Excuse me, miss? Do you need help?"

I looked up, startled. A man stood in front of me—middle-aged, wearing a worn jacket and carrying a paper bag from the convenience store across the street. His face was weathered but kind, the kind of face that had seen hard times and come out softer instead of harder.

"I’m fine," I said instead. The lie tasted like ash on my tongue. "Just resting."

The man nodded slowly, his eyes full of a kindness that made my chest ache. He reached into his bag and pulled out a granola bar.

"Here." He held it out to me. "For the road. And there’s a community center a few blocks that way—they do job training, help people find work. Might be worth checking out."