Sold to Bastard Alpha after My Divorce!-Chapter 210

Aria’s POV

Day nine, the doctor came in with a folder and a borderline cheerful expression that meant good news.

"Everything is looking excellent," she said, running through the list. "The leg is healing cleanly. No sign of infection. The fever is completely resolved." She glanced down at her notes. "And the baby—" She looked up, and her expression warmed. "Developing beautifully. Strong heartbeat. Exactly where we want to be at this stage."

I put my hand flat on my stomach. A habit I’d developed over the past week. I did it without thinking now.

"So I can go home," I said.

"Tomorrow morning," she confirmed. "With conditions. Rest. Proper meals. No excessive physical activity for the next two weeks."

"Define excessive."

She gave me the look. The one that said she’d heard that exact question before and knew exactly what it meant. "Nothing that would make me regret discharging you early."

"Fine." I smiled. "Tomorrow morning."

---

I texted Kael.

*They’re releasing me tomorrow.*

Three dots appeared almost immediately.

*I know. I talked to your doctor this morning.*

I stared at that for a second.

*You called my doctor?*

*She called me. I’m listed as your emergency contact.*

I had not done that. Someone had done it on my behalf, apparently, at some point during the days I’d been unconscious and not in a position to have opinions about things.

*I would have found out eventually,* I typed back.

*Tomorrow at ten,* he replied. *Be ready.*

---

Sophie arrived at nine forty-five with Lina’s hand in hers and Lilith walking alongside. Both girls had been informed of discharge day with great ceremony — Lina had made me a card. It had a drawing of what I believed was meant to be a wolf, though it looked more like a very enthusiastic potato with legs.

I kept it.

I was going to keep it forever.

I was dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed when Kael arrived. He walked in and immediately looked at my leg. Then at my face. Then seemed to determine something satisfactory from that assessment.

"Ready?" he said.

"I’ve been ready for nine days."

"You’ve been *recovering* for nine days."

"I can do both."

He had a wheelchair with him.

I looked at it.

"Kael."

"Doctor’s orders."

"My leg is *fine.*"

"Your leg has a healing wound and you’ve been horizontal for over a week." He gestured at the chair. "Sit."

I sat. Not because he told me to. Because Lina immediately climbed onto my lap the moment I was in it, and arguing from under a four-year-old was structurally difficult.

"This is undignified," I said.

"You look great," Sophie said, very sincerely.

"You’re lying."

"I’m being supportive."

Kael took the handles. Lina settled herself more firmly on my lap, apparently deciding that if I was getting a chariot, she was coming along. Lilith walked beside us, one hand resting lightly on the arm of the wheelchair — not holding on exactly. Just present. Just close.

We made it to the elevator.

The doors opened.

And standing in the hospital lobby, near the entrance, with a wrapped bouquet of pale flowers and matching expressions of carefully controlled emotion — were Selene and Lucian.

I stopped breathing for half a second.

Selene looked like herself. Elegant, silver-haired, that composed warmth she carried like a second skin. But her eyes were bright, and she was holding those flowers with both hands like she’d been gripping them for a while.

Lucian.

Lucian looked better than the last time I’d seen him — which had been unconscious on a sitting room floor, a fact I was choosing not to dwell on. He was upright. He was here. There were shadows under his eyes that probably weren’t going away anytime soon, and he was standing slightly apart from his mother in the way of someone who wasn’t entirely sure of their welcome in a given space.

But he was *here.*

Selene stepped forward first.

"Aria." She offered the flowers. Her voice was steady, but just barely. "We wanted to come."

I took them. The scent hit me — something soft, something that smelled like the kind of garden where good things happen. My throat tightened immediately.

"You didn’t have to," I said. And then, because that sounded wrong: "I’m really glad you did."

Selene’s composure held for about three more seconds. Then she reached out and cupped my face in both hands the way a mother does, and her eyes went bright, and she said: "You come home soon and let me cook for you. That is not negotiable."

I laughed. It came out slightly unsteady. "Okay."

She released me. Straightened up. Found her composure again with the efficiency of someone who’d been doing it for decades.

Then Lucian moved.

He came forward slowly. His hands were in his jacket pockets. His eyes — grey now, where they’d once been dark gold, and I wondered sometimes if that was something he’d gotten used to seeing in mirrors yet — were on the floor first, then came up to find my face.

He stopped a foot away.

Opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Tried again.

"I’m—" He stopped. His jaw worked. "I don’t know how to do this well," he said. Very quietly. Very honestly. "I don’t have a lot of practice with it."

"Neither do I," I said.

Something in his face shifted. Loosened.

"You came," he said. "To the house. When you didn’t have to. When nobody would have blamed you for staying away." He exhaled. "And whatever you did — I don’t know exactly what it was, I don’t remember much, but I know—" He stopped again. Pressed his lips together. "I know it was you. I know you’re the reason I woke up."

The lobby had gone very quiet.

"Lucian—"

"Just let me say it." His voice cracked slightly on the edges. "Please."

I waited.

"Thank you," he said. Simple. Unadorned. The kind of thank you that took everything someone had left. "Thank you for coming. Thank you for—" He made a gesture that took in everything, the whole impossible tangle of it, and gave up trying to put it in words.

Then he held out his arms.

Awkward. Uncertain. Like someone who had been told that this was the correct gesture for this moment and was sincerely trying to execute it correctly but had not done it enough to be sure.

I stood up from the wheelchair.

Lina slid off my lap with a small protest. Kael’s hand found my elbow, steadying.

I stepped forward.

And Lucian hugged me.

It was stiff at first — both arms around me, careful, like he was afraid of breaking something. Like he’d forgotten what it felt like to hold someone without it being about force or desperation.

Then something in him eased.

His grip settled. His shoulders dropped. He took one slow breath.

And for just a moment, he was just a person. Not a broken Alpha. Not a warning story. Not the ghost of the man he used to be. Just a person, standing in a hospital lobby, arms around someone who had shown up when it mattered.

It only lasted a few seconds.

He pulled back. Cleared his throat. Looked somewhere past my shoulder.

"Right," he said. His voice was back to even. Almost. "Good. That’s—" He nodded once. "Good."

He was not, as Selene had once told me in quieter circumstances, accustomed to displays like this.

He was trying anyway.

The flowers were still in my hands. The lobby smelled like antiseptic and those pale blooms both at once. Lina had migrated to Kael’s side and was examining Lucian with the unfiltered curiosity of someone who had absolutely no social filters. Lilith was watching me with that expression — the one that said she’d noticed everything and was filing it away.

Kael’s hand was still at my elbow. Warm. Steady.

I looked at Lucian’s face. At the awkward angle of his shoulders, the slightly too-bright eyes, the rigid line of someone who had just done something vulnerable in public and was now very loudly pretending he hadn’t.

I was overwhelmed. That was the honest word for it.

I hadn’t expected this. Either of them. The flowers, the words, the arms that had held me like I was something worth holding.

It was clumsy and imperfect and a little awkward, the way all genuinely felt things tend to be.

But it was real.