Alphas' Indecent Proposal

Chapter 7-1

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."