Alphas' Indecent Proposal

Chapter 7

Kate's POV

Damian stood in front of the monitor with his arms crossed, spine straight, those eyes—somewhere between arctic blue and gunmetal—locked on every frame of Ronald's movements.

Like a leopard with its tail pinned. Patient. But not willing.

My palms had gone slick five minutes ago. I curled my fingers into fists, nails biting into flesh, and tried to breathe like a person who wasn't falling apart.

On-screen, Ronald pulled long-stemmed red roses from their wrapping one by one, sliding each into the white ceramic vase on the kitchen counter. His movements were slow, deliberate—almost ceremonial. After every stem, he stepped back, tilted his head, and studied the arrangement like a director framing a shot.

"Maybe they're for Kate," Damon offered from beside me, his voice warm and unhurried. He turned to give me a small, reassuring smile—as though the bond between us were closer than the one he shared with his own brother.

If I hadn't watched him spend three days negotiating every clause of our arrangement with surgical precision, I might have believed the softness was real.

Still—I was grateful. That single sentence felt like a hand reaching through the dark.

Damian didn't turn around. "He's posing."

"There's no rule that says a man can't photograph flowers he bought for his wife—"

"He adjusted the vase three times." A thread of impatience stitched through Damian's voice—the tone he used whenever he was forced to explain something beneath his time. "And changed the lighting twice. If these roses are for a wife supposedly in Boston, what scene is he setting? A pharmaceutical sales manager with that level of attention to ambient lighting isn't documenting a Tuesday. He's preparing a stage."

Damon didn't answer.

Neither did I.

Because Ronald had placed the last rose, stepped back, and pulled out his phone.

He didn't just snap a photo. He crouched low for an upward angle, shifted left, deleted, reshot. Each take was followed by a careful review, a slight frown, another attempt. The kind of effort that belonged to someone who needed this to be perfect.

Damian was right about one thing—Ronald's technique was clumsy. He held the phone too close, overcorrected every composition. This wasn't a man accustomed to documenting his life through a lens.

At least not the Ronald I'd known for five years.

He used to bring me daisies. Occasionally tulips when the bodega on the corner stocked them. But never roses this red—this aggressive. The warm light caught the petals and turned them molten, tiny flames burning against white ceramic.

Something sharp twisted beneath my ribs.

Deep in the back of my mind, my wolf stirred—breaking her long silence with a voice that was faint but steady.

See? Your mate is thinking of you. He bought roses. He's arranging a surprise you're not supposed to see. This is love. This is the thing you've always believed in.

Damian turned his head slowly and looked at me.

He said nothing. But his expression said a thousand things—every single one of them some version of don't you dare be moved by this.

I pretended not to see.

Minutes crawled by. Then my phone buzzed against the table.

In that vacuum-sealed room, the sound hit like a stone dropped into still water. Damian's gaze snapped to my phone. Damon sat up straighter. Darius—who had been silent the entire time, tucked into the corner rewinding surveillance footage, its blue glow casting shadows across his jaw—raised his head.

A photo message from Ronald. The roses.

Beneath it, a voice note.

I tapped play before anyone could stop me.

Ronald's voice spilled into the room—warm, honeyed, wrapped in the kind of intimacy that only exists between two people who've built a world no one else can enter:

"Baby, I just picked up a bouquet of red roses and set them up at home. Sending you a photo so you can see. I even had the florist count out exactly thirty—because you said this trip would be about a month, right? Thirty days. One rose for every day I'll be missing you. Every second you're not here, these flowers are going to remind me how lucky I am to have you. Come home soon, okay? I love you."

The recording ended.

Warmth flooded through me—instant, overwhelming—melting away the ice that had been coiling around my limbs for hours.

Ronald loved me. He hadn't done anything wrong. He was just buying flowers for his wife.

And beneath the relief, a flicker of shame: how easily I'd let the pressure of three Alpha brothers circling like wolves around a kill make me doubt the man I'd married.

I lifted my phone with a smile that was equal parts victory and challenge. "See? I told you. Ronald isn't the kind of man who betrays his marriage."

Damian didn't glance at the screen. He scoffed. "That's not devotion. That's a rehearsed line. A distraction tactic. Nothing more."

The warmth evaporated. Hot, defensive fury took its place.

"Not everything is a conspiracy, Mr. Voss. Just because you're trapped in a loveless engagement with a woman who treats you like an ATM doesn't mean the rest of us are faking it." My voice climbed before I could rein it in. "You're jealous. Admit it."

The temperature in the room plummeted.

Damian turned—slowly, deliberately—and the raw dominance rolling off him was enough to buckle weaker wolves at the knees. "Watch your mouth. My instincts have never been wrong."

But I held his gaze without flinching.

"Enough." Damon's voice cut between us, clean and final. He stepped into the gap, then looped a casual arm around my shoulders and guided me toward the couch. The gesture was easy, natural—and far too warm for a man I was supposed to distrust.

I caught the briefest stiffness in Darius's frame as I settled beside him. Something electric flickered between us—gone before I could name it.

Damon continued, calm, measured. "Presumption of innocence, Damian. We operate on evidence, not your gut." He shot me a steadying look. "It's day one. Kate's a partner, not your enemy. Apologize."

Damian's jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might c***k. The silence stretched—taut, suffocating—before he finally spoke through gritted teeth:

"Fine. I apologize for the assumption."

I blinked. "...Thank you."

"However."

A low, rough voice sliced through the fragile calm.

Every head turned toward Darius. His fingers hadn't stopped moving across his keyboard, but now he looked up—and when those eyes locked onto mine, it felt like being sighted through a scope.

"There's an inconsistency." One long finger pointed to the timestamp on the third monitor. "He took the photo at 7:20."

Darius leaned toward me—his broad frame eclipsing mine, close enough that I caught cedar and gunpowder and something underneath that made my breath hitch.

"When did you receive the message?" he asked.

I checked the screen. "7:24."

"Four minutes." His tone was flat, but the precision behind it cut through every defense I had left. "Average time to snap a photo, select a contact, and send: six seconds. Recording that voice note? Twenty seconds. One minute, total. Being generous."

He tilted his head. Those unblinking eyes held me until I had nowhere left to hide.

"Kate. What was your husband doing with that photo for the remaining three minutes?" A beat. "My guess—you weren't the first person he sent it to."

"That's ridiculous." My voice cracked. "The Wi-Fi could've been spotty. He could've been editing—"

"We don't need to guess." Damon's voice dropped an octave, shifting into something low and predatory—closer to Damian's register than his own. He leaned in from my right, and between him and Darius, I was bracketed—surrounded by warmth and authority and the faintest pull of something I refused to acknowledge.

"That's the beauty of a high-end surveillance system," he murmured. "We can always take a closer look."

He pressed play.

The footage rewound, slowed to half speed. Ronald's movements unspooled frame by frame—

But his back stayed to the camera. Every angle. Every second.

Whatever he'd done with those three minutes was hidden behind the wall of his own shoulders.

Damian turned from the screen. His eyes found mine—and this time, there was no mockery in them. Just a cold, quiet certainty that settled over me like a verdict.

"Something happened off-screen," he said softly. "And we're going to find out what."