All Chapters of CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA: Chapter 21 - Chapter 29

DANIELLA POVThe clock on my screen read 3:47pm and I had barely touched the report sitting open in front of me.I kept staring at it. The words were right there, the cursor was blinking, and my brain had completely checked out and gone somewhere else entirely. Somewhere that smelled like his cologne and had green eyes and made it very hard to think about quarterly projections.I pressed my fingers to my temples and exhaled slowly.*Focus, Daniella. You literally have one hour.*I had asked Rider this morning if I could leave at five instead of the usual late finish. He had looked up from his laptop, studied me for a second with that infuriating calm expression of his, and said yes without asking why. Just yes. Like he already knew. Which he probably did because he always knew everything before I said it and it was both deeply comforting and extremely annoying.I got back to the report. Or I tried to.“You’re glowing again.”I didn’t even look up. “I’m not glowing Mia. I’m working.”“

DANIELLA POV I noticed it the moment I walked through the doors. Nothing obvious, nothing anyone said out loud. Just the way the energy shifted when I passed through the main floor. The small pauses in conversation, the glances that lasted a second too long before people looked back at their screens. Mia caught my eye from across the room and gave me a look that said she had already been talking about me before I arrived and had zero regrets about it. I kept my head up. A few weeks ago I would have shrunk under all of it. I would have found the nearest corner and made myself as small as possible until the attention drifted somewhere else. But something was different this morning. I walked to my desk, set my bag down, and pulled up my screen like a woman who had been carried to her room by Rider Brighton last night and was entirely at peace with that fact. I was mostly at peace with it. The “what did I say” situation was still living rent free in my chest and probably would be f

DANIELLA POVThe weekend passed the way good weekends did when you were trying not to think about something. It was full, warm, and carefree. Saturday was for Rider as usual. He showed up at noon with no announcement and no explanation, the way he had started doing, and we spent the afternoon doing nothing in particular. His hand in mine on the couch, while watching a movie neither of us paid real attention to, a late lunch that turned into an early dinner because neither of us moved to end it. He was present in the way he had been before Friday night. Warm and unhurried he was fully there.I looked at him, and the words rearranged themselves into something softer, something easier, and came out as nothing at all. I wanted to talk to him about yesterday, but I just didn’t know how. He was there, like literally right beside me , shoulder against mine, thumb tracing slow absent patterns on the back of my hand, and I didn’t want to put something between us that didn’t have to be there

DANIELLA POVIt was a Thursday evening and we just left work. We were on our way to my house as usual for him to drop me off. While in the car, we were planning a little dinner night later during the week. We argued for some time, before we finally agreed to go to this little Italian place that Lilian had been talking about,and he had also gone there so we settled on that. I was in the passenger seat with my shoes off because my feet weren’t comfortable in the heels I'd chosen. Rider was driving with one hand on the wheel the way he always did and we were talking about something stupid, I don't even remember what, something that had made me laugh, and everything was completely fine, till his phone rang through the car speakers.He glanced at the screen on the dashboard and something shifted in his face immediately, like the good evening just packed itself up and left, and he said "I need to take this" and then he disconnected his phone from the car speaker and answered it.I wasn't

DANIELLA POVHe had been quiet all evening.Not his usual quiet, not the comfortable kind that I had learned to just exist inside of without needing to fill it. This was different. This was the kind of quiet that had weight to it, that sat between us at dinner and drove home with us afterward and didn’t leave when we pulled off the main road into this spot he knew, overlooking the city, where he’d parked without explaining why and turned the engine off.I had waited. The city glittered below us and the car was warm and I sat with my hands in my lap and waited because I had learned that with Rider you didn’t push. You just made enough space and eventually he came to you.He was staring straight ahead through the windshield.“I need to tell you something,” he said.My heart rate did something immediate.“Okay,” I said. Quietly. Like if I spoke too loudly the moment would startle and run.He turned to look at me and the look on his face was something I hadn’t seen before, not exactly, it