Alphas' Indecent Proposal

Chapter 9

Damian's POV

Not mine.

The words landed like ice water poured straight down my spine — dousing the wildfire that had barely had three seconds to catch.

My wolf retreated. The low, resonant hum that had vibrated through my sternum — that sound I'd never heard before tonight — cut off mid-note. Replaced by a silence so sudden and so complete it felt like a door slamming shut before I'd even glimpsed what was behind it.

I can't smell her.

My wolf again. No hesitation this time. Just a clinical certainty that bordered on cruel.

No lavender. No petrichor. No fated-mate marker of any kind. She smells like laundry detergent and drugstore hand cream. That's it.

She's not ours.

Lavender and petrichor.

The scents of my two ex-girlfriends.

The fact that my wolf chose this moment to resurrect their memory was — I didn't have a word for it. I stood in the doorway of the bedroom, jaw locked, and let the silence do what silence does best: make everything worse.

Kate shifted in my arms. Her cheek grazed my collarbone — a featherlight drag of warm skin against bone — and her breath fanned across my throat in slow, even waves. She had no idea. No idea that she'd just triggered something seismic inside an Alpha who was currently holding her like she was made of spun glass and pretending it was logistics.

I looked down at her.

If my wolf was right — and the bastard had never been wrong about this — then what was that? That split-second cardiac arrhythmia? That primal, bone-deep conviction that she belonged to me?

A glitch?

A system error?

Or just the pathetic wishful thinking of a thirty-year-old unmarked Alpha holding a married woman at two in the morning?

I chose not to answer.

Because I don't make judgments without data. And every available data point was converging on a single conclusion: she was a collaborator. An asset. A means to an end in the Catherine equation — a chess—

No.

I deleted the word before it fully formed.

Somewhere between the first time Kate told me to go to hell and this exact moment, the word chess piece had started leaving a taste in my mouth I couldn't wash out.

I laid her on the bed.

Gently. More gently than I'd intended — and I intended nothing, which was the problem. My palm cradled the back of her skull before her head touched the pillow, fingers threading through her hair to absorb the impact, and the whole maneuver was executed with such unconscious precision that by the time my brain's approval process caught up, it was already done.

I withdrew my hand. Slowly.

Then I stood there like an i***t and studied her — a full head-to-toe sweep, as if sheer visual analysis might explain what the hell it was about this woman that kept overriding my voluntary motor functions.

Nothing.

She was just — lying there. Pale. Exhausted. Still wearing those ridiculous ballet flats with the tiny bows.

I turned to leave.

"...Don't."

Her voice came from behind me — threadbare, barely there, a sound you'd miss if you weren't already listening for it.

It nailed my feet to the floor.

"Please, Moon Goddess." A murmur. Half-prayer, half-plea, rising from whatever dream had swallowed her whole. "Let Ronald be faithful. Tell me it was a lie. Tell me Voss made it all up — he's just trying to destroy my marriage... so he can have me for himself. Please... don't let any of this be real..."

Her body twisted against the sheets. Her fingers had found the edge of the blanket and were gripping it so hard her knuckles had gone white — ten small bones pressing through skin like they were trying to escape.

I stood perfectly still.

Have her for himself?

I inhaled sharply. Held it. Released it without a sound.

The idea was so absurd it nearly startled a laugh out of me — one of those dark, airless laughs that have nothing to do with humor. I was Damian Voss. Alpha-designate. CEO of a financial empire currently neck-deep in a political nightmare of an arranged marriage. The absolute last thing on my mind was stealing a fragile, crying woman from her mediocre husband.

I was not trying to forge a new bond.

I was trying to destroy an existing one.

But my eyes — my traitorous, undisciplined eyes — had drifted back to the woman on the bed without my permission. They traced the line of her closed lashes. The bridge of her nose. The small curve of her ear. And then — god help me — the damp swell of her lower lip, still trembling from whatever nightmare was eating her alive.

"Are you sure about that?" My wolf's voice slid through the dark like a blade — low, unhurried, edged with something possessive enough to draw blood.

And for one disorienting heartbeat, I genuinely couldn't tell what he was asking.

Was I sure I could keep pretending I didn't see how vulnerable she looked right now? Or was I sure I could keep ignoring the fact that something inside me had responded — viscerally, involuntarily, hungrily — to the sight of a woman curled up in my sheets, fully clothed, utterly wrecked, and more dangerous to my self-control than anyone who'd ever been naked in my bed?

I shut both options down.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. Cold. Clipped. The voice I used in boardrooms when someone was about to get fired.

I turned to leave. Again.

Because both of those questions led somewhere I wasn't prepared to go.

Catherine.

Catherine was what I needed to focus on. The name alone flooded my mouth with something rancid. Just hours ago, my beloved fiancée had crashed a charity gala that wasn't on my calendar — inserted herself as the future Luna of the Voss pack, and in between the fundraising speeches, ordered the event staff to remove a rival pack's Omega from the guest list and physically escort her out. Security concerns, she'd claimed.

Catherine was a parasite wearing couture. She treated my pack like her personal playground — bullying anyone who couldn't fight back while rotating through hotel rooms with a lineup of men she thought I didn't know about.

And one of those men was currently married to the woman lying behind me.

Ronald. The easiest thread to pull. The weakest link in Catherine's chain of indiscretions.

I couldn't afford distractions. I especially couldn't afford to shut down this surveillance operation — not with the wedding date creeping closer like a countdown to my own execution, and my father backing Catherine with the blind, irrational fervor of a man who'd lost the ability to distinguish loyalty from stupidity.

Kate was the key. The only reliable key I had to unlocking the proof that would sever Catherine from my life permanently.

I'd already convinced her to sign the agreement. The cameras were installed. All I needed was ironclad evidence of Ronald and Catherine together — and I would never have to breathe the same air as that woman again. My pack would be safe. My family's legacy would be intact.

One woman's pain weighed against a pack and a corporation.

I knew which side of the scale was heavier.

I'd always known.

So I pressed down on the ache in my chest — that unidentifiable, acidic pressure that had no business being there — and forced myself toward the door.

Every step felt harder than the last.

I made it three paces before I stopped.

Because in my peripheral vision — sharp enough to catch a sparrow mid-flight at two hundred yards — I saw a single tear slide from beneath Kate's closed lashes. It traced a slow, gleaming path down her cheek, catching the streetlight that filtered through the curtains, and left a wet trail across skin so pale it looked like it had never seen the sun.

My feet stopped moving.

My jaw clenched.

And something behind my sternum cracked — not loud, not dramatic, just a quiet fracture in something I'd assumed was solid.

"Then let's try a different approach." My wolf spoke from the deepest part of me — the part I never let anyone see. "Stop treating every time she defends her husband as a personal insult to your judgment. And stop using sarcasm to answer her fear."

My jaw tightened further.

I said nothing for a long time.

Outside, the city's early light was bleeding across the skyline — a wash of amber and copper that turned the horizon into something almost beautiful. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed — thin, sharp, fading — like a needle being drawn through cotton.

Kate's breathing had finally leveled out. No more murmuring. No more white-knuckled grip on the blanket. She'd sunk into some deeper layer of sleep — the kind where nightmares couldn't follow.

I walked back to the bed.

Looked down at her.

The tear track was still visible — a faint, glistening line that mapped the geography of a grief I'd helped create.

I crouched beside her. Eye level. Close enough to count her eyelashes if I'd wanted to — and I didn't want to, which is why I immediately noticed there were more on the left side than the right.

Stop it.

My hand moved. On its own. Toward her face. My fingers hovered above her cheekbone — close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her skin, close enough that one millimeter of forward motion would have made contact.

I pulled back.

Forced my hand to my side.

Held it there like a man restraining a weapon.

"Goodnight, Kate." My voice was barely above a breath — spoken to an empty room, to a sleeping woman who couldn't hear me, to whatever was left of my self-control. "Sleep well. I don't want you."

The lie detonated silently inside my chest — a hollow implosion that left nothing but vacuum and the sharp, metallic taste of dishonesty.

"But I swear to you..." I rose to my feet, my gaze lingering on her face one final, inexcusable second. "When your world turns to ash — I'll make sure you survive the fire."