The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 33: Roy and the Third Thing

NORA POV

“I need to tell you the third thing”

I looked up from the garden bench.

Roy was standing at the entrance to the pack garden with his hands in his jacket pockets and his shoulders slightly up. Not the easy Roy stance. The other one. The one I had only seen a few times and it always meant something real was coming.

“Sit down” I said.

He came and sat across from me on the low bench opposite. The garden was empty except for us. Cold afternoon air. The rosemary hedges along the wall smelled sharp. Somewhere above us clouds were doing that heavy flat thing that meant rain was coming eventually.

“You said the third thing before” I said. “In my room. You said there were pieces.”

“Yeah.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “The first piece was what I heard that night. Your mother and August in the corridor. The second piece was connecting it and realising it was more serious than I’d been letting myself believe.” He looked at the ground for a second. “The third piece I held back.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t sure it was connected.” He glanced up. “And because saying it out loud meant it was real and I wasn’t ready for it to be real.”

“But now?”

“Now everything is accelerating and you are running out of time and I am done waiting for the right moment.” He sat up straight. “After that night with your mother and August, I started paying attention. Not to the obvious stuff. To the edges. Old documents. Records from before Rhett took over. Things our father left behind.”

I went still.

“What did you find?” I said.

“A name.” He said it flat. “In notes our father kept about the prophecy. He had been tracking it for years, who knew about it, which packs had come across pieces of it.” Roy kept his eyes on mine. “One name came up more than once. Not directly connected to the records themselves. Connected to a conversation our father had with someone from outside Blackwood.”

“Who?”

“Gerald Steele.” He held my gaze. “Warren’s father. The previous Ironridge Alpha.”

The garden went very quiet.

“Your father talked to Warren’s father” I said slowly. “About the prophecy.”

“More than talked.” Roy reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Old. The creases were deep and soft like it had been folded and unfolded many times. He held it out to me.

I took it.

The handwriting was not Rhett’s. Older. More formal. His father’s.

I read it. Once. Then again.

Short. A record of a meeting. A date from over thirty years ago. Two Alphas, Blackwood and Ironridge, discussing what they called the thread situation. A note at the bottom in the same handwriting that said simply Gerald confirmed awareness. Family record passed down. Third generation.

“Third generation” I said.

“His grandfather found it first” Roy said. “Gerald inherited the knowledge. Warren inherited it from Gerald.” He looked at me steadily. “This was not Warren doing research and stumbling across something. His family has been sitting on this for decades.”

I lowered the paper.

“He came to Dana two weeks before the wedding” I said. My voice came out very flat. “He knew exactly what she was and what I was and he went to her specifically.”

“Yes.”

“He told her she would be destroyed if she stayed. He gave her the perfect reason to run.”

“Yes.”

“And when she ran and I walked in instead—”

“He got what his family had been waiting for” Roy said. “A pack with the wrong twin in place. A wolf waking up in someone who had no idea what she was carrying. And five years to let the situation develop before making his move.”

I stood up. Had to.

I walked two steps and stopped and just stood in the middle of the garden with the paper in my hand.

A generation. Warren’s grandfather had found the records. His father had made contact with Rhett’s father over thirty years ago. And Warren had grown up knowing. Had grown up with a plan already half formed, waiting for the right moment and the right people to be in the right positions.

He had sat across from Dana in a coffee shop with documents he had inherited and a story he had been preparing for years and he had delivered it perfectly.

Not opportunism.

Not ambition that got lucky.

A long game.

“Roy” I said without turning around. “Does Rhett know this? About his father’s note. About the conversation with Gerald Steele.”

“I don’t think so.” Roy’s voice was careful. “The documents were in a box of our father’s personal papers. Not in any official pack records. I don’t think Rhett ever went through them.”

I turned around.

“You need to tell him” I said.

“I know.”

“Today. Not tomorrow.”

“I know, Nora.” He stood up. “I came to you first because—” He stopped. Rubbed the back of his neck. “Because you are the one in the middle of it and you deserved to know before it became a meeting.”

I looked at him. This younger version of Rhett who was nothing like Rhett in almost every way and somehow the most straightforward person in this house.

“Thank you” I said. For the second time. He had earned it twice now.

He nodded. “You okay?”

“I was born in the middle of a plan I didn’t know existed” I said. “Nobody who knew told me. My whole life has been someone else’s long game.” I looked at the garden wall. “So no. Not okay.” I looked back at him. “But I’m still standing.”

“Yeah” he said. “You are.”

He took the paper back gently from my hand. “I’ll go to Rhett now.”

He left.

I stood in the garden alone.

Warren’s grandfather. His father. Warren himself. Three generations of waiting for this exact situation. And I was standing in the cold afternoon air with the pressure building in my chest and two days before the wolf inside me stopped waiting for my permission.

A plan that started before I was born.

And I was the only piece of it that had never been told it was a piece.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​