The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 38: Nora and August

NORA POV

“I need specifics”

August looked up from the rosemary hedge. He had a small pair of garden shears in one hand and dirt on his knees and he looked at me like he had been expecting me to show up today and was only mildly surprised it was this hour.

“Sit down” he said.

“I don’t want to sit down. I want you to tell me what choosing it actually means. Step by step. Not the philosophical version. Not be patient and trust the process.” I crossed my arms. “Actual steps.”

He looked at me for a moment. That look again. The one where he was deciding how much I could take. I was tired of that look.

“I am running out of time” I said. “You told me days. That was yesterday. So whatever recalibrating you are doing right now, please do it faster.”

He set the shears down on the wall. Brushed his hands on his trousers. Then he moved to the stone bench and sat and nodded at the space beside him.

I sat.

“The lock” he said. “Think of it as a physical thing. Because in a sense it is. It has been holding back twenty-four years of your wolf’s natural growth.” He kept his voice even. Practical. Like he had heard me ask for practical and was actually giving it to me. “When a suppression fails on its own, the lock does not open. It shatters. Everything behind it comes out in one direction and there is nothing to guide it.”

“And when I choose it?”

“When you choose it, you open the lock yourself.” He held my eyes. “Deliberately. Consciously. You feel where the lock is sitting inside you and you turn toward it instead of pushing it back and you let it go.”

“That’s it?” I said. “That’s the whole step?”

“That is the hardest step” he said. “Because everything in you has been trained to push it back. You have been doing it every time it surfaces. Your whole body knows how to resist it. Choosing it means doing the opposite of what your instincts have been doing for five years.”

I thought about every time the pressure came and I pressed my hand against my sternum and pushed it back down. Every morning. Every meeting. Every time it tried to rise and I made it go quiet because I had a pack to manage and a lie to maintain and no space for it.

“Okay” I said. “I stop resisting. I let it surface. Then what?”

“Then you stay conscious through it” he said. “You do not go with it. You do not let it pull you under. You stay present and you breathe and you let it move through you the way water moves through something instead of breaking it.”

“And the pack?”

“They will feel it” he said. “Yes. There is no version where they do not feel it. But if you are in control of yourself while it happens, what they feel will be different.” He paused. “Think of it this way. If a fire breaks out on its own it goes wherever it wants and burns everything in its path. If someone controlled starts a fire in a contained place, the heat still reaches people nearby. But nothing burns down.”

“The heat still reaches them” I said. “They still feel something.”

“Yes. But something manageable. Not something that overwhelms them.” He looked at me steadily. “Fear will rise. Loyalty will deepen. Some of them may feel things they cannot explain. But they will not be overtaken.”

I looked at the garden. The hedge he had been trimming. The same cold grey sky that had been sitting over everything all week.

“When?” I said.

He looked up at the sky.

“How long do I have before the window closes?” I said. “Before waiting is no longer a choice I have?”

“Hours” he said. “Not days anymore. The acceleration has moved faster than I estimated.” He brought his eyes back to mine. “I think you already know that.”

I did know that. The pressure this morning had been different. Not higher exactly. Closer. Like it was right at the surface instead of sitting somewhere in the middle of my chest. Like the distance between me and it had gotten very small overnight.

“If I wait until tomorrow” I said.

“By tomorrow the choice may not be yours to make.”

“And tonight?”

He was quiet for a second. “Tonight is still a window.”

“How small?”

“Small” he said plainly. “Very small.”

I pressed my hands flat on my knees. The stone bench was cold even through my clothes and the garden smelled like rosemary and cut leaves and the specific cold that came before rain.

“Will it hurt?” I said.

“I don’t know” he said. And for once he did not dress that up. “I cannot tell you what it will feel like because no one has written it down. I can tell you that wolves who come into their nature naturally describe it as overwhelming but not painful.” He paused. “You are not doing it naturally. I cannot make you a promise about pain.”

I looked at him.

“You are asking me to walk into something with no guarantee of how it goes” I said.

“Yes.”

“With a pack of sixty wolves around me who will feel whatever comes off me while it happens.”

“Yes.”

“And if I don’t, it breaks on its own in hours and I have no control over any of it.”

“Yes.”

I stood up.

Walked to the edge of the garden and stood looking at the grounds. The main house from here. The east wing window where Dana’s light was on. The tree line in the distance. Rhett’s tree line.

Sixty wolves in that building.

Bex. Roy. Marcus sitting in a corridor. Conrad doing his job with that controlled careful face. Pack members who had brought me small questions yesterday because something in me was pulling at them and they didn’t know why.

All of them. Whatever I was carrying, they would feel it.

My grief about Dana. My anger about the years. The thing I could not name that happened every time Rhett said together and meant it.

All of that moving through a pack.

Uncontrolled or controlled.

I had a choice. Barely. Still a choice.

I turned back to August. “Tonight.”

He looked at me.

“Tonight” I said again. “Tell me what I need to do to make it tonight.”

He stood up from the bench.

“Come back after dark” he said. “Bring no one.”

“Rhett—”

“After” he said. “Tell Rhett after. Not before.” He looked at me firmly. “This is your choice, Nora. Not his. Not the pack’s. Not the prophecy’s.” He held my eyes. “Yours.”

I nodded.

He picked up his shears and went back to the hedge like the conversation was done and I stood in the garden with the weight of tonight sitting already in my chest.

Ready or not.

I walked back toward the house.

I did not feel ready.

I was starting to think ready was not something that was going to show up before the window closed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​