Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce!-Chapter 189

Aria’s POV

"Mrs. Blood Crown." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "It’s Aria. Kael’s not available right now. He’s in training. His phone is—"

A sharp inhale. Like she’d just heard me for the first time.

Then silence.

Long enough that I thought she’d hung up.

Then, quieter, more broken: "Please."

One word. But the way she said it. Like she wasn’t sure if I was real.

My chest ached. This woman had said terrible things to me weeks ago. Blamed my family. My blood. My name. She’d looked at me like I was poison.

And now she was crying into Kael’s phone, calling for her son, and I was the one who answered.

The world was genuinely cruel sometimes.

"Yes." I kept my voice calm. "What’s happening? Are you okay?"

"It’s Lucian." Her voice cracked on his name. "He’s—he won’t calm down. He’s been like this for—I can’t—I don’t know what to do. I called the doctor and he won’t pick up and I can’t—"

"Okay." I cut in gently. "Okay, I hear you. Is he hurting himself? Is anyone hurt?"

"Not yet but he—" A crash in the background. Something heavy. Breaking. "He keeps destroying things. I tried to talk to him but he pushed me away, he doesn’t even know where he is right now, it’s like—it’s like he’s not even Lucian anymore—"

My heart squeezed.

Lucian in a rage spiral. No Alpha instincts to pull him back. No wolf to anchor him. Just whatever was left of a man who’d lost everything, running completely off the rails.

"Where are you right now?" I asked. "Are you safe?"

"I’m in the hallway. He doesn’t know I’m here. He’s in the east wing—"

Another crash. Louder this time.

Selene made a small, frightened sound.

"Listen to me." My voice got firmer. "I need you to find a room with a lock. Lock yourself in. Don’t try to talk to him again until someone gets there. Can you do that?"

A pause.

"...Yes."

"Good. I’m coming."

The words came out before I’d thought them through.

But I didn’t take them back.

I hung up and stood there for exactly three seconds, staring at the phone in my hand.

*Okay. Think.*

Kael’s phone was off. Had been off all day—he’d told me that himself, standing at the school gate this morning, fixing Lina’s backpack strap. *Phone will be off. Don’t worry if you can’t reach me.*

I tried anyway. Straight to voicemail.

I tried the main training ground line. Busy signal. Of course.

I looked around the office. Most of the afternoon staff had already cleared out to the training grounds—there’d been some kind of coordination drill scheduled, something Kael had mentioned and I’d half-absorbed between meetings.

The place was practically empty. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

I did one full loop of the floor. Elara wasn’t at her desk. Marcus was gone. The two wolves who usually worked security on this level were both absent.

*Of course they are.*

I stopped in the middle of the hallway and pressed my hands against my thighs.

*Think, Aria. Think.*

Selene alone in a hallway. Lucian in a rage. No Alpha. No backup. No one to pull him back before he hurt himself or her.

And me. Standing in an empty office with no wolf fast enough, no contact reachable, no one else to call.

I looked at my car keys.

Then I closed my fingers around them.

*Fine.*

I wasn’t strong enough to physically restrain a grown wolf in crisis. I wasn’t an Alpha. I didn’t have the authority or the pheromones or the pack bond that might calm him down. I had nothing.

But I could get there. I could get Selene out. I could buy time until someone with actual power showed up.

That was something.

That was enough.

---

The drive was twenty minutes. I made it in fourteen.

The Blood Crown estate sat behind iron gates at the end of a long private road. I’d only been here twice before. Both times with Kael. Both times with the weight of his name and his presence as a kind of invisible shield.

This time I was alone.

The gates were already open. Selene must have done it from inside.

I pulled up the drive slowly. Every nerve in my body was wound tight. My hands were steady on the wheel—I forced them to be—but underneath that I could feel Artemis pacing, restless and alert, reading the air.

Something was off.

Even from inside the car, I could feel it. A kind of static. An absence where the usual pack warmth should have been. The estate felt wrong. Hollow. Like a house that was holding its breath.

I parked. Got out.

The front garden was perfectly maintained. Flowers. Trimmed hedges. The kind of beauty that required full-time staff and didn’t care whether the people inside were falling apart.

I stood on the front steps for a moment.

It was quiet.

Too quiet.

Maybe Lucian had calmed down. Maybe Selene had managed to reach him somehow. Maybe everything was already over and I’d driven here for nothing and I could just find Selene, make sure she was okay, and slip back out before anyone noticed that an Omega from Shadow Moon had walked uninvited into the Blood Crown family home.

*Maybe.*

I pushed the door open.

The entrance hall was dark. Expensive. Portraits on the walls. A chandelier overhead that I was pretty sure cost more than everything I’d owned combined before I came to Meridian Territory.

Silence.

I exhaled slowly.

*Okay. Which way is the east wing.*

I took two steps inside.

And then I heard it.

A sound that started low and built fast. Not words. Not anything that coherent.

A howl.

Not wolf. Human voice trying to be wolf and failing. The sound of someone whose animal was gone but whose body still remembered the shape of that kind of fury.

Raw. Ragged. Completely uncontrolled.

The hair stood up on my arms.

I pressed myself against the wall for a second, just breathing, just forcing my legs to hold still instead of running.

*Selene is in there somewhere. Selene locked herself in a room. She’s waiting. You said you were coming.*

I made myself straighten up.

Took one step toward the sound.

*You can get her out. That’s all. Just get her out.*

Two steps.

Three.

The sound was getting louder. Something crashing. Something dragging. Like furniture being shoved aside. Like a man with no anchor and no wolf and no way back to himself, destroying everything within reach.

I reached the east wing corridor.

Stopped at the entrance.

Took a breath.

The door at the far end was intact. That was probably where Selene was. I just needed to get past—

*Don’t think about it. Move.*

I gripped the wall and started down the hallway.

The sounds were coming from behind the third door on the right. Closed. But not locked—the frame was cracked, barely hanging in place.

I kept my eyes forward. Kept my feet moving.

*Almost there. Selene is right there. Just—*

Everything happened at once.

A roar. Guttural. Furious. The kind of sound that bypassed your brain entirely and spoke directly to your instincts, every one of them screaming *RUN.*

And then the door exploded outward.

And a table came with it.

Spinning. End over end. Crashing against the wall six feet from where I was standing, close enough that the air moved against my face.

I stopped dead.

My heart was slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat.

The doorway was open now. Smoke of plaster dust drifting through the ruined frame.

And from somewhere inside that room came another sound—

Furniture breaking. A crash. A howl.

A roar.