Alphas' Indecent Proposal

Chapter 9-1

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.