Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce!-Chapter 215

Aria’s POV

We both froze.

Footsteps. Tiny ones. The particular uneven patter of a child who had just woken up and was navigating the world on autopilot, not fully conscious but moving anyway, drawn by sound and instinct toward the source of whatever had pulled her out of sleep.

The bedroom door pushed open.

Lina’s face appeared first. Round cheeks flushed with sleep, silver eyes barely open, her hair a bird’s nest of dark tangles that said she’d been tossing. She was clutching the edge of her blanket in one fist and dragging it behind her like a cape.

Behind her—Lilith.

Lilith was more awake. More composed. She always was. Where Lina stumbled through wakefulness like a baby deer on ice, Lilith emerged from sleep with that particular alertness she’d inherited from—well. From Finn’s side, probably, though I tried not to think about that. Her dark hair was neatly braided, because she braided it herself before bed every night, and her expression was the specific one she wore when she’d been listening to something she wasn’t supposed to hear and had opinions about it.

They both climbed onto the bed.

Lina went straight for my lap, burrowing in with the single-minded intensity of a small animal seeking warmth. Lilith sat beside me, legs crossed, back straight, hands folded. Watching us.

"Are you fighting?" Lina mumbled into my stomach.

My heart squeezed.

"No, baby." I smoothed her hair back. "We weren’t fighting. We were just—"

"Yes," Kael said.

I looked at him.

He looked right back at me. Unapologetic.

"We were arguing," he said, crossing his arms and leaning against the dresser. "Your mother wants to go to the front lines where there are dangerous people and actual fighting happening." He pointed at me. "She is currently pregnant. There is a baby in her tummy right now. A very small baby that needs her to be safe."

"Kael," I said. A warning.

He ignored me entirely. His attention was on the girls. Both of them.

"So," he continued, in the tone of a man presenting a very reasonable case to a jury of his peers, "I told her no. Because it’s dangerous. Because she could get hurt. Because the baby could get hurt." He spread his hands. "Am I wrong?"

"You’re involving our children in an adult conversation," I said flatly.

"They have excellent judgment."

Lina had fully woken up now. She was sitting upright on my lap, looking between me and Kael with the wide-eyed fascination of someone watching a very interesting tennis match.

"Mommy wants to go see the fighting?" she asked.

"Not see the fighting," I corrected quickly. "I want to go help the hurt soldiers. I can do something—a special thing—that might help them feel better."

"Like magic?" Lina’s eyes went enormous.

"Something like that."

"She wants to go to the place where people are actively being attacked," Kael said. Helpfully.

I shot him a look.

He met it with absolute calm. The look of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and had no intention of stopping.

"Is that true, Mommy?" Lilith asked. Quiet. Careful. That assessing look she had—the one that always made me feel like she was seeing more than a five-year-old should.

"There are people who are hurt," I said. I chose my words carefully. "A lot of people. They’re in a hospital, and they’re not getting better fast enough. Today I found out I might be able to help them heal. But the hospital is in a place that’s... not completely safe right now."

Lilith processed this. I could practically see the gears turning.

"And Kael doesn’t want you to go because of the baby," she said.

"Yes."

"And because you could get hurt."

"Yes."

Lilith looked at Kael. Then back at me. Then at my stomach, where the barely-there curve of early pregnancy was just starting to show.

She seemed to be thinking very hard about something.

Lina, meanwhile, had no such contemplative delay.

"But don’t you think it’s cool?" she said. She bounced once on my lap, sending a jolt through my still-healing leg that I managed not to wince at. "Like—going to the front lines with a baby? That’s SO cool. Like a superhero movie! The hero is always pregnant or hurt or something and they STILL go fight the bad guys!"

"This isn’t a superhero movie, Lina—" Kael started.

"My mommy has always been cool," Lina said firmly. With the absolute conviction of someone stating a universal truth. She turned to face Kael fully, sitting up as tall as a four-year-old could manage, chin raised. "She’s the coolest person I know. She saved people before. She can do it again. She doesn’t need to stay home."

I pressed my lips together hard.

Something warm and fierce bloomed in my chest.

Kael blinked.

"And," Lina continued, apparently not finished, "the baby probably WANTS to go. Because the baby is Mommy’s baby. And Mommy’s babies are brave." She patted my stomach gently. "Right, baby? You want to go on an adventure?"

No response from the baby, obviously. But Lina seemed to take the silence as agreement.

I looked at Lilith.

She was quiet. Still sitting with that careful, measured posture, hands in her lap.

Then she nodded.

Small. Definite. The Lilith version of a standing ovation.

"Mommy always helps people," Lilith said quietly. "Even when it’s hard. Even when nobody asks her to." She looked at Kael. "That’s just what she does."

The room went still.

I felt my eyes sting. Blinked it back. Blinked hard.

Kael was staring at them.

Both of them. His face had gone through something—surprise first, sharp and genuine, the kind that actually reached his eyes. Then something softer. Something that cracked through the rigid composure he’d been holding all night like light through a fracture.

He looked at Lina, bouncing on my lap, fierce and small and absolutely certain.

He looked at Lilith, quiet and steady and so much older than five.

He looked at me.

And then he laughed.

Not a big laugh. A soft one. The kind that escapes before you can catch it, pulled out of you by something you didn’t see coming. He shook his head slowly, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck, and the tension that had been holding his whole body rigid just—released.

"Unbelievable," he murmured.

He looked at the girls again. At the two small faces watching him with matching expressions of absolute certainty.

Then back at me. At whatever he saw in my face—the hope, the stubbornness, the love I wasn’t even trying to hide.

He smiled. Helpless. Warm. Defeated in the best possible way.

"Like mother, like daughters," he said, shaking his head again. That quiet laugh still in his voice, still in his eyes. "I should have known."