The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 25: The Delegation Leaves

NORA POV

“It has been a genuine pleasure, Luna Blackwood”

Warren took my hand and held it.

One second. Two. Just slightly too long.

“The pleasure was ours” I said. Warm smile. Nothing in my eyes.

“I mean it.” He was still holding my hand. “Blackwood is everything I heard it was. You run a beautiful pack.” His eyes moved to mine and stayed there. “I hope we see each other again soon.”

The way he said soon.

Like it was a date already set and I just hadn’t been told the details yet.

“Safe travels” I said.

He let go of my hand.

The morning had been one long performance.

Bags coming down from guest rooms. Cars being brought around to the front. Pack members carrying things and nodding politely and saying all the right words that delegations expected on their way out. Rhett and Warren had stood in the front corridor for twenty minutes doing the final formal back-and-forth, boundary notes, scheduling, next contact dates. All of it correct. All of it clean.

I had stood at Rhett’s side the whole time doing my part and it had cost me something every single minute.

My jaw ached from smiling.

Bex had appeared early and found a reason to stay close, refilling coffee at the right moments, redirecting one pack member who was about to ask Warren a question that would have opened something nobody needed opened. She did it without being obvious about it and I had looked at her across the room and she had looked back and that was enough.

Now we were in the courtyard. Cold morning air, gravel under my feet, the two black cars sitting with their engines running while the last bags went in.

Warren was already at the lead car. He turned once more to Rhett and they shook hands, the final shake, nothing left to negotiate.

Then Petra came through the front door.

She crossed the courtyard without hurrying. Said something brief to Warren that I couldn’t hear. Then she walked toward the car.

She stopped.

Turned.

Looked at me from across the courtyard.

That was all. No words. No smile. No lifted chin. Just one long look, straight and clear, from thirty feet away. Her eyes moving over my face like she was memorising something.

I looked back at her.

I didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t give her anything to take.

Then she got in the car.

The doors closed. The cars moved. The gravel crunched and the gate at the end of the drive swung open and the cars went through and the gate swung shut.

Gone.

The pack exhaled.

I could feel it. Like a pressure dropping, this collective breath going out through every wolf on the grounds. Shoulders loosening. Conversations starting back up at normal volume. Someone laughed somewhere inside the house and it sounded too loud at first and then it just sounded like normal.

I stood in the courtyard.

Rhett was beside me. Neither of us had moved yet.

The gravel was empty. The gate was closed. The sound of the cars was already gone.

“How did it go” I said. “The study meeting.”

“He talked around every edge” Rhett said. “Never stated anything directly.”

“But he has something.”

“He has enough of the shape of it.” He was looking at the gate. “He used the word suppress in the middle of a sentence about old pack history.”

I turned to look at him.

“He came in with that word already” Rhett said. “That is not a guess. That is not a fishing attempt. He knew it before he walked through the door.”

The courtyard felt colder suddenly.

“How long do we have” I said.

“Two weeks.” He said it flat. No softening around it. “Maybe. If he moves efficiently, possibly less. He will want to build the presentation before he acts. He is not the kind of man who moves before he thinks the picture is complete.”

“Two weeks.”

“Yes.”

I looked at the closed gate.

Two weeks. The same gate Rhett watched every morning. The same territory Warren had put a scout inside without asking. The same courtyard where Petra had just looked at me like she was memorising evidence.

Two weeks to do what we had been talking about. Coming into the open on our terms. Telling the pack ourselves before Warren could frame it for them.

“Dana is still in the east wing” I said.

“I know.”

“And my mother is still somewhere on these grounds.”

“Conrad is working on locating her.”

“Marcus is still gone.”

“Yes.”

I pressed my lips together. The list just kept going didn’t it. Every moving piece. Every thing sitting unresolved while the clock ran down.

And underneath all of it, that pressure in my chest. Steady and rhythmic. It had been stronger since last night and I had been ignoring it the way you ignored something you couldn’t deal with yet. But it was not going to wait for convenient timing.

That was the other problem nobody could plan around.

The wolf waking up inside me was not watching any calendar.

“Two weeks” I said again. Quieter this time.

“We start today” Rhett said. “Not tomorrow. Today.”

I looked at him.

“Today we talk to Conrad” he said. “Today we figure out what the pack already suspects and what they don’t. We map what we’re working with before we decide how the conversation with the pack goes.”

“And Dana.”

“Yes. We decide what her role in this is.”

“And my mother.”

“When Conrad finds her, yes.”

He was looking at me when he said it. That direct, steady look. Not reassuring me. Just laying it out clean because that was how he did things and I had learned, somewhere in five years, that clean was better than soft when everything else was already complicated.

“Okay” I said.

We went back inside.

The house felt different without Warren’s delegation in it. Lighter. But the lightness had edges because lighter did not mean safe and two weeks was not a lot of time and somewhere out there Petra was sitting in a car with whatever she had in her head and Warren was already planning his next move.

I walked to my room to change my jacket.

My phone was on the nightstand where I had left it.

Screen lit up.

One message. Unknown number. The same unknown number from two nights ago.

No photo this time.

Just four words.

He confirmed enough. Coming.