Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce!-Chapter 214

Aria’s POV

I stared at him.

He stared back.

Neither of us moved.

"Kael," I said. Carefully. The way you speak to someone who has just drawn a line in concrete. "I’m not asking to fight. I’m asking to be present. To use whatever this is—this gift, this ability—to help the people who are bleeding for your territory."

"Our territory," he corrected. Quietly.

"Then let me help protect it."

"You are helping." He turned away, pacing toward the window. His shoulders were tight, that particular rigid line I’d learned to read like weather. Storm coming. "You’re helping by being safe. By carrying our child. By being here when—"

"When what?" I stepped forward. "When you come home exhausted at two in the morning smelling like blood? When you sit in that chair and stare at the wall for ten minutes before you can even speak? When I watch you carry all of this alone and I’m supposed to just—what? Smile? Make tea?"

He turned around.

His eyes were dark. Not angry. Something worse than angry. Afraid.

Kael Blood Crown, who had taken his father’s title by force, who had fought in underground pits since he was barely old enough to shift, who commanded an entire territory with a voice that could buckle knees—was afraid.

Of losing me.

It was written all over him. In the tightness of his jaw. In the way his hands hung at his sides, fingers slightly curled, like he wanted to reach for me but was holding himself back. In the way his breathing had gone shallow and controlled, the way it did when Fenrir was pushing at the edges and Kael was pushing back.

"I watched them carry you into a hospital nine days ago," he said. His voice was low. Rough at the edges. "You were unconscious. Your leg was—" He stopped. His jaw worked. "I didn’t know if you were going to wake up. I didn’t know if the baby was—" Another stop. Harder this time. Like the words had physical weight and he couldn’t lift them.

My chest ached.

"Kael—"

"So no." He met my eyes. "You don’t go to the checkpoints. You don’t go to the front lines. You don’t go anywhere near the places where people are getting hurt and dying, because I cannot—" His voice cracked. Just barely. Just enough. "I can’t do that again. I won’t survive watching that again."

The room was very quiet.

I could hear the clock in the hallway. The faint hum of the house settling around us. The distant, barely-there sound of two small girls breathing in their beds down the hall.

I took a breath.

"I hear you," I said. "I do. And I understand why you’re scared."

"I’m not—"

"You are. And that’s okay." I moved closer. Close enough to touch him, but I didn’t. Not yet. "But Kael, I’m scared too. Every day. Every time you leave this house, every time your phone rings at three in the morning, every time I see that look on your face when you think I’m not watching." My voice was steady. Mostly. "You could die out there. Any day. Any mission. And I’m supposed to sit here and just—accept that?"

He didn’t answer.

"You’re asking me to let you carry everything," I said. "And I’m telling you I can’t watch you break under the weight of it. Not when I might be able to help."

"You can help from here."

"I healed someone today, Kael. With my hands. I stopped his bleeding just by touching him." I kept my voice low, but the urgency bled through anyway. "There are forty-two more people in that ward who are suffering because wolfsbane is eating through their systems faster than their wolves can fight it. If I can figure out how to do it again—if I can learn to control it—I could save them."

"Or you could overextend yourself and hurt the baby."

The words landed like a slap.

Not because they were cruel. Because they were true. Because I’d thought the same thing on the drive home and hadn’t wanted to look at it directly.

"I would never—"

"I know you wouldn’t mean to." His voice softened. Just a fraction. "But you don’t even know what this ability is yet. You used it once and it worked. You tried five more times and nothing happened. What if next time it takes something from you? What if it pulls from the pregnancy? We don’t know the rules of this, Aria. We don’t know what it costs."

I pressed my lips together.

He wasn’t wrong.

I hated that he wasn’t wrong.

"So what," I said. "We just—ignore it? Pretend it didn’t happen? I felt something today, Kael. Something real. Something powerful. And Moon Goddess told me—"

"Moon Goddess told you a lot of things in a dream." His tone was careful. Not dismissive—careful. "And I believe you. I believe every word. But believing doesn’t mean throwing you into a combat zone while you’re carrying our child."

"I’m not asking to be thrown into a combat zone!"

"You’re asking to go to the front lines. That IS a combat zone."

Our voices had risen.

Not shouting. We weren’t shouting. But the careful control we’d both been maintaining had slipped, and the words were coming out sharper now, faster, bumping up against each other like cars in too-tight traffic.

I caught myself first.

Glanced toward the hallway. The girls’ rooms were just down the corridor. Lina slept light—always had. The slightest noise could wake her, and once she was up, she was *up*, with questions and opinions and the boundless energy of a child who treated consciousness as a full-contact sport.

I lowered my voice. "We need to talk about this. Properly. Without—"

"Without what?" Kael dropped his voice too. Matching me. Both of us suddenly hyper-aware of the small humans sleeping thirty feet away. "Without me being concerned? Without me trying to keep you alive?"

"Without you deciding for me." I said it quietly. Firmly. "I’m not a child. I’m not fragile. I’m not some—some delicate thing you need to wrap in cotton and put on a shelf."

"I never said—"

"You’re saying it right now. Every time you say *absolutely not* without even discussing it. Every time you shut down the conversation before it starts." I pressed my hand against my chest. "I have something inside me that could make a difference. A real, tangible difference. And you want me to sit at a desk and pretend I don’t."

He ran both hands through his hair. A gesture I’d seen him make exactly twice before—both times when he was at the very edge of his composure and trying to haul himself back.

"I’m not trying to control you," he said. Low. Strained. "I’m trying to keep you safe."

"There’s a line between those two things and you’re standing on it."

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

The distance between us was maybe four feet, but it felt like a canyon. Two people who wanted exactly the same thing—to protect each other—and couldn’t agree on what that looked like.

"I can’t lose you," he said. Almost a whisper.

"And I can’t lose you," I whispered back. "So let me help make sure neither of us has to."

He closed his eyes. Exhaled through his nose. The muscle in his jaw ticked once, twice.

"Aria—"

"Just think about it. That’s all I’m asking. Don’t say no right now. Don’t shut it down. Just—think about it. Let us figure out what this ability is, what it can do, how to use it safely. And then we decide. Together."

His eyes opened.

He looked at me for a long time.

I held my ground. Kept my gaze steady. Let him see everything—the determination, the fear underneath it, the love underneath that.

He opened his mouth.

And then—

A small sound from the hallway.