The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 27: Judith in the House

NORA POV

“She’s inside” Rhett said.

I stopped walking. “Inside the house?”

“East sitting room.” He kept his voice level. “Conrad found her near the garden wall. I had her brought in.”

“You had her brought in.”

“She is on my grounds without an invitation.” He looked at me. “I was polite about it.”

I almost said something. Didn’t. Just turned and went toward the east sitting room and he fell into step beside me without being asked.

Judith was in the chair nearest the window.

Perfect posture. Hands folded in her lap. Coat still on, which meant she hadn’t planned to stay long or was making a point about not being a guest. She looked up when we came in and her eyes went to me first, the way they always did, and that thing was in them again.

That fear sitting just underneath everything else.

“Judith” Rhett said. Polite. Nothing else in it.

“Alpha Blackwood.” She nodded at him. Then looked at me. “Nora.”

I sat down across from her. Rhett stayed standing near the door.

“You’ve been on these grounds for two days” I said. “Without telling anyone you were here.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She was quiet for a second. Not the guilty kind. The measuring kind, the kind where she was deciding how much truth to give and in what order.

“I came to watch” she said. “The suppression has been weakening for weeks. I could feel it from the city. I needed to see how far along it was before I decided whether to come to you directly.”

“And?”

“It is further along than I expected.” She looked at her hands briefly. Then back up. “Faster than it should be, given how long it held.”

“What does faster mean?” I said.

“It means we have less time than I calculated.”

“Time for what?”

“For you to be ready when it breaks.”

Rhett shifted slightly at the door. I didn’t look at him.

“You keep saying breaks” I said. “You said it in the garden. August said it waking up. What is the actual difference?”

Judith was quiet.

“Mum.”

“When a suppression this old comes apart” she said carefully, “it does not just stop working. It does not fade out quietly.” She held my eyes. “Whatever was locked behind it comes out all at once. In a burst. And the person it happens to is not in control of it.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does it look like when it happens?”

She looked at her hands again.

There it was. That was the thing she didn’t want to say. I could see it in the way she looked down, the way her jaw set slightly, the way the composure she always carried like a second skin pulled tight around her.

“Mum. What does it look like.”

“I said I came here to prepare you” she said. “That is what I am trying to do.”

“Then prepare me. Tell me what it looks like.”

She lifted her eyes. And the fear in them was so plain right now, so clear on a face that I had never once seen afraid of anything, that my chest went cold.

She would not say the word for it.

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked at the window.

“You suppressed it to protect me” I said. “You said that. You would make the same choice again. You came here because it is failing and you want to help.” I leaned forward. “So help. Tell me what happens when it breaks all the way.”

“It is not simple to describe” she said.

“Try.”

She breathed in once. Slow.

“The memory wolf in the old records” she said, “is not documented breaking free from a suppression. There is no record of that happening. I know what happens when a wolf like you develops naturally, slowly, from childhood. The records describe that.” She paused. “What happens when something this size comes out of a twenty-four-year lock is not something anyone has written down.”

“Because it has never happened” Rhett said from the door.

Judith looked at him. “No.”

The room was very quiet.

“So you don’t know” I said.

“I know it will not be quiet” she said. “I know the pack will feel it before it is over. I know you will not be able to control it in the first moments and those first moments could last…” She stopped.

“How long?”

“I don’t know.” She said it straight for once. No managing around it. Just the plain truth. “I do not know how long.”

I sat back in my chair.

Twenty-four years. She had locked something inside me for twenty-four years and now it was breaking out and nobody had a record of what that looked like and Warren was two weeks from making his move and Dana was in the east wing and the pack was already uneasy and the gathering was coming.

The worst possible timing. That was what she had said to me in the garden. Dana being here while this is happening is the worst possible timing.

She hadn’t been talking about Dana specifically.

She had been talking about the break. About it happening in the middle of all of this.

“You came here to prepare me” I said. “What does that actually mean? What can you do?”

Judith looked at me. “I can try to slow it down.”

“Can you stop it?”

“No.”

“Can you slow it enough to give us more time?”

She was quiet.

“Mum!”

“I don’t know!” Her voice cracked slightly. Just once. She pressed her lips together hard and looked at the window and pulled herself back and when she looked at me again the composure was on but the fear was still sitting right behind it. “I don’t know if I can slow it. I am trying to be honest with you.”

I stared at her.

This was my mother. The woman who had spent my entire life being three moves ahead of everything. Who had arranged marriages and suppressed wolves and slid notes under doors in the dark without losing a step. Who had sat in front of pack elders and pack Alphas and every difficult thing life had thrown at her with that same perfectly arranged face.

She was afraid.

Not of Rhett. Not of Warren. Not of what the pack would find out or what it would cost her.

Of what she saw when she looked at me.

“What do you see?” I said quietly. “When you look at me right now. What is it?”

She opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​