Alphas' Indecent Proposal

Chapter 1

Kate's POV

2:45 p.m. on a Tuesday.

The kind of hour that made everyone in the office look like they were slowly decomposing at their desks.

I glanced around—yep, dead eyes everywhere—then pulled my earbuds back in with the quiet confidence of a woman who was absolutely, definitely not watching a lingerie livestream at work.

"Ladies, if your man hasn't ripped this off you with his teeth—" The host paused for dramatic effect, holding up a scrap of black lace that probably cost more than my weekly grocery budget. "—then you need a new man."

Her voice was pure theater: breathy, commanding, dripping with the kind of confidence that only came from selling crotchless lace to a hundred viewers on a Tuesday afternoon.

"This is our Midnight Obsession collection. Black mesh, hand-stitched straps, and a front clasp that opens with one finger." She snapped it open on camera. "One. Finger. Sixty-two percent of our customers report their partners were literally speechless for the first five seconds. The other thirty-eight percent? Their partners didn't even make it through the bedroom door."

I bit down on my pen, my eyes bouncing between the HR spreadsheet I was supposed to be formatting and the tiny livestream window on my phone, which was propped against my coffee mug at an angle I'd spent a solid three minutes perfecting.

The products were cycling fast. One set gone, the next already on display.

And I was spiraling.

Ronald's birthday was next month. One year married. Five years together total. And the man still made my heart skip every time his name lit up my phone. If that didn't justify dropping a hundred and sixty dollars on underwear I'd be too embarrassed to wear for longer than thirty seconds—well, I didn't know what did.

"Now, for you shy wolves out there—yes, I see you, don't you dare swipe away—this set comes with a matching silk robe, so you can walk out looking like a lady and let him unwrap you like a—"

Ding.

The elevator.

Priya's head shot up from the cubicle next to mine like a meerkat sensing a predator. "Damian's here!" she hissed.

I didn't even look up. My finger hovered over the Add to Cart button. "It's end of quarter. Probably headed to the finance briefing. He won't come near us. Relax."

Survival at Voss Capital was simple: Don't get noticed.

Don't be the intern who microwaved fish in the break room. Don't be the intern who accidentally hit "Reply All" on a company-wide email. And above all—above all—don't be the intern who made eye contact with the CEO in the elevator.

Damian Voss didn't take our elevator. He had a private one that ran from the underground garage straight to the forty-second floor, bypassing all of us like we were part of the furniture. But on the rare occasions he descended to the mortal floors—usually to terrorize Legal or personally glare at quarterly projections—the entire building held its breath.

I'd been at Voss Capital for four months. In that time, I had never spoken to Damian Voss. I had never been in the same room as Damian Voss. I had seen the back of Damian Voss's head once, from the far end of a hallway, and that single glimpse had been enough to make Priya fan herself with a manila folder for three straight minutes.

"Three brothers," she'd whispered reverently that day. "Triplets. All Alphas. All unmarked. God made them in a lab specifically designed to ruin women's lives."

"He's engaged," I'd reminded her.

"Barely engaged. And to a woman everyone hates. That basically doesn't count."

Priya was still doing her signature sharp inhale—her standard Damian Response—and I smiled the way I always did, entertained by the sheer theatrics, while my eyes locked back on my phone screen. I tapped the one I wanted. Scanned my fingerprint. Payment confirmed.

I now owned the most scandalous thing in my closet.

I couldn't wait to see Ronald's face.

I finally pulled out my earbuds, looked up—and froze.

Damian Voss was walking past my cubicle. A swarm of subordinates trailed behind him like a dark-suited entourage, but he was the only one who registered. And unless my eyes were deceiving me—

He glanced back. At me.

Just a flicker. A fraction of a second. Then he was gone.

No. No way. You imagined that.

I flipped my phone face-down so fast I nearly cracked the screen, then pressed both palms to my cheeks, which were radiating enough heat to fry an egg.

"Oh my God, you're blushing too?" Priya's gaze had followed Damian all the way down the hall before snapping back to me. Her eyes went wide, then knowing. "You finally get it, don't you? I always said no woman is immune to Damian Voss. Even if your brain says no, your wolf knows. I have his latest photos on my phone—want me to send them?"

She bumped my shoulder, grinning.

"No!" I said, way too fast.

I couldn't exactly explain that my blush had nothing to do with Damian Voss and everything to do with the fact that I'd just been caught—possibly caught—watching a lingerie livestream.

And I definitely couldn't explain that ever since Ronald and I got together, I genuinely hadn't felt a pull toward any other man. My wolf had been quiet for so long I'd almost forgotten what it felt like when she stirred.

Priya was already pulling up a photo of Damian at some pool—abs glistening, jaw sharp enough to cut glass—when my desk phone rang.

Saved by the bell. Literally.

I shot Priya an apologetic smile and lifted the receiver. "Human Resources, this is Kate. How may I direct your call?"

Four months of answering phones had turned this line into a reflex.

"Mr. Voss's office." The voice on the other end was clipped, efficient, and entirely devoid of warmth. But I recognized it instantly. Everyone in this building would. Meredith—Damian Voss's senior executive assistant. The one every employee privately called The Gatekeeper. "He wants to see you. Now."

The coffee I'd been lifting to my lips sloshed onto my keyboard.

My brain short-circuited.

"I'm sorry—which Mr. Voss?"

"The one who signs your paycheck."

Click.

I stood up. Sat back down. Stood up again—this time forcing my expression into something resembling calm—and the second I rounded the corner, out of my colleagues' line of sight, I broke into a dead sprint for the far elevator.

There was only one Mr. Voss with an office on forty-two.

I'd just asked the dumbest question of my entire career.

But why would the forty-second floor summon a nobody intern?

The elevator numbers climbed, and I launched a full mental audit of my four months at the company.

The microwave fish incident—that was Bryan, not me.

The Reply All catastrophe—also Bryan.

The time someone accidentally printed two hundred copies of a resignation letter on the communal printer—okay, that was me, but I'd cleaned it up before anyone noticed.

...Right?

It couldn't be about the glance. There was no way—even for an Alpha—that he'd caught a glimpse of my phone screen while striding past my cluttered cubicle at full speed. Impossible.

Right?

The executive floor existed in a different universe from the HR pit on five. Down there: gray carpet, fluorescent lighting, and the perpetual smell of someone's reheated lunch. Up here: polished dark hardwood, warm architectural lighting that probably cost more per fixture than my monthly rent, and air that smelled like money had launched its own cologne line.

I caught my reflection in the elevator doors just before they opened and quickly smoothed my hair. Small mercies.

Meredith led me down the corridor without a word. At the end of it—his office.

Damian was already seated behind his desk. The room was enormous, immaculate, and almost aggressively devoid of personal touches. No photos. No plants. Nothing that suggested a human being actually spent time here—except for the man himself.

He looked like he'd been carved from stone and placed here as an art installation. Dark hair, a jawline that could've been drafted by an architect, and eyes the color of a frozen lake in winter—pale, sharp, and utterly unreadable. He was signing something without looking up, the pen moving in quick, precise strokes.

I hated to admit it, but Priya wasn't wrong. Even through his suit, you could sense the kind of physique that made the pool photo make sense. The image from Priya's phone flashed unbidden through my mind—water dripping down sculpted abs—and I shoved it away with the force of someone slamming a door.

But underneath the reluctant acknowledgment of his attractiveness, something else stirred in me.

Something irrational and immediate.

Dislike.

"Sit down." Not a greeting. A command.

I frowned, crossed the room, and perched on the very edge of the sofa farthest from his desk. Knees together. Hands folded. Projecting capable professional with every fiber of my being.

And definitely not the woman who'd been shopping for lingerie four minutes ago.

"Do you know why you're here?"

Because you're firing me. Because IT flagged my livestream. Because I accidentally typed "pubic relations" instead of "public relations" in that company-wide email three weeks ago and you've been waiting to execute me personally.

"No, sir."

His gaze locked onto me—cool, clinical, thorough. Like he was cataloging every pore on my face.

Did every company make employees endure this kind of psychological warfare before letting them go?

Was there a company out there where the executioner at least had the decency to be quick about it? If so, I'd like to send my résumé.

Then he said something I never, in a thousand years, could have anticipated.

"Your husband is Ronald Harris. Correct?"

I blinked.

In every worst-case scenario I'd imagined on the elevator ride up, my husband's name had not appeared on the list.

"...Yes?" My voice tipped upward into a question without my permission.

"Sales manager at MedVance Pharmaceuticals. Married one year. High school sweethearts." He recited the details of my life with all the emotion of someone reading the ingredients on the back of a cereal box. Flat. Bored. Cold.

"How do you know all that?"

"I make it my business to know everything about my employees." He leaned back in his chair. "Especially the ones whose husbands are sleeping with my fiancée."

The room tilted.

The walls warped.

I processed each word individually—husband, sleeping with, fiancée—but when my brain tried to assemble them into meaning, it crashed.

“I'm sorry... what?”