Piss Off, Alpha! You Chapter 173 Almost Free

Chapter 173: Chapter 173 Almost Free

SOPHIA’S POV

Zade paused at the door.

Leaving through the front door felt ironic to him. He had usually co into Sophia’s house through the window, leaving the sa way.

This ti felt different.

He turned around.

Sophia was standing in front of him. The whole house was quiet.

Zade looked at her for a long mont - at her face, her loose hair, the way she stood. He felt his wolf stir inside him, responding to her.

He walked closer to her and kissed her forehead gently. He held it for one second, then two. He kept his eyes closed, breathing her in.

Then he pulled back.

"I’m not going to believe in your promises anymore," he said quietly. There was no accusation in it, no anger. His tone was flat. "I’ve been telling myself that you’ll co around, that if I wait long enough, if I get it right enough, if I show you enough-" He paused. "I’m done waiting for a promise you haven’t made. It hurts less, I think. Not believing."

Sophia said nothing. She looked at his face and her wolf sat heavy inside her chest.

Zade looked into her eyes for one more mont. Then he turned, took the rope, and went out without another word.

Sophia stood in the empty room and listened to the sound of his footsteps. She waited until the sound of his car starting and pulling away had faded completely.

Then she sat a near couch, pressed both hands flat against her knees, and breathed.

-

Damien ca ho to Stone Villa at eleven that night.

The house was mostly quiet. Franca had left dinner wrapped in the kitchen. Ashley was asleep upstairs. The only light still on was in the living room, where Tiffany was curled on the sofa with a dical textbook open on her lap.

She looked up when he ca in. She noticed that he had a worried look on his face.

"What happened?" she said.

Damien set his keys on the table and sat across from her. He leaned forward as he spoke.

"George is in the hospital," he said.

Tiffany closed her book. "How serious?"

"Serious." Damien sighed. "His heart. They’ve stabilized him for now, but the doctors are saying the stress level needs to co down significantly. They say he needs complete rest. He keeps asking for Sophia. He keeps asking how she is, whether we’re happy, whether the marriage is good." He paused. "He doesn’t know the divorce is about to be finalized. If he finds out-"

Tiffany was quiet.

"If he finds out," Damien said, more carefully now, "the doctors are concerned about what it would do to him at his age, with his heart in the state it’s in." He raised his eyes to Tiffany’s face. "I need to ask Sophia to co back, not permanently - just to visit him, to act the part, for however long it takes for him to stabilize properly."

Tiffany’s eyes went wide with shock as she realized what he was saying.

"You’re asking her to pretend to be your wife," she said.

"For George. Only for George."

For a mont, there was silence between them. Tiffany looked at the closed textbook in her lap for a long mont. Then she looked up at Damien.

"Ask her," she said simply.

-

Damien called Sophia the following morning and asked to et.

They sat across from each other in a small café.

Damien explained everything. He told her about George’s condition, the doctors’ warnings, the old man asking for them - asking to see them together, asking whether they were happy.

Sophia listened without interrupting.

When he finished, she was quiet for a mont. She looked at her cup in front of her. Her wolf processed the information carefully.

Sophia thought of George. George, who had sung alone at her birthday, who had called her the morning after the signed papers to say live well, who was lying in a hospital bed asking for her, not knowing that the marriage he was asking about no longer existed.

"I’ll cooperate," she said finally. "I’ll visit him with you. I’ll behave appropriately for his recovery." She raised her eyes to Damien’s face. "But I want the cooling-off period to begin now officially. No more delays on the legal process. We cooperate for George in person while the paperwork moves forward in parallel. I want it on record."

Damien looked at her. Sothing in his expression shifted. She was giving him what he asked for, and she was simultaneously making certain it cost her nothing of the progress she had already made.

Sophia had really changed. It shocked him.

"Fine," he said.

"Then we need to reissue the marriage certificate first," she said. "Since we still haven’t located the original. Without it, we can’t file officially."

"I’ll arrange it today."

"So will I. We do it together and file imdiately after."

He nodded.

They left the café separately and spent the rest of the morning at the civil registry office, sitting side by side in a governnt waiting room. A clerk processed their application without looking up from her desk. The certificate was issued within the hour.

From the registry office, they drove directly to the courthouse.

Sophia filed the papers herself. She handed the folder across the counter and watched the clerk stamp and register the docunts.

She stood on the courthouse steps afterward, thinking about everything.

It was official now. That was what the clerk said. It wasn’t finished yet - the cooling-off period had its own tiline, its own requirents. But it had begun. Legally, formally, it had begun.

Sophia was so relieved that she had to stand still for a mont and simply breathe it in. Her wolf exhaled with her.

Damien stood a few feet away with his hands in his pockets, watching the street below. He didn’t say anything. Whatever he was feeling, he kept it where he always kept things - contained, private.

After a mont he turned to her "I’ll pick you up this evening. Seven o’clock. We’ll go to the hospital together."

Sophia looked at him across the few feet of courthouse stone between them. She looked at her soon-to-be-ex-husband, the man she had loved completely and lost slowly and was now helping, one last ti, for the sake of an old man who was kind to her.

"Seven o’clock," she confird.

She walked down the courthouse steps and toward her car. For the first ti in the entire long journey of this marriage, the path ahead of her felt like sothing she had chosen rather than sothing that had happened to her.

The cooling-off period had begun.

She was almost free.