All Chapters of The Alpha's Betrayal-: Chapter 51 - Chapter 53

Not grief. Not relief, exactly, though relief was part of it. Something deeper and harder to name, the release of something she had been carrying since the moment she'd walked out of the Shadowpeak packhouse with divorce papers in her hand and two lives growing inside her and nowhere to go. The release of every sleepless night and every terrified morning and every moment she had doubted whether this was winnable, whether she was strong enough, whether love was enough to outweigh power and politics and the particular cruelty of a world that had tried very hard to tell her she was nothing.She pressed her fingers over her mouth and breathed.Landon's arm came around her, careful with the pregnancy, firm with everything else. His forehead dropped to her temple. She felt him exhale against her hair, slow and shaking, all that controlled steadiness finally releasing."You did it," he said, barely audible beneath the noise of the chamber. "Aria. You did it.""We did it," she corrected, her

"And we signed it," he said, not accusingly but with the rawness of someone still absorbing the full shape of what had just happened. "Because we didn't have a choice and because the alternative was worse and because Morgana is right that these conditions are manageable. I know all of that." He moved away from the window, crossing the room slowly. "I know all of it, Aria. And I still—"He stopped. Stood in the middle of the room with his hands loose at his sides, and looked at her with an expression that she had not seen on him before, not quite. Something past anger, past frustration, into a territory that was more personal and more difficult."I am going to have to share your children with the man who rejected you," he said. "I am going to have to watch them come home from visits with him and see his face in theirs and be—" He stopped again. "And be their father in every way that actually matters, every day, every moment, all the things that count and none of the things that are wri