The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 40: Dana Wants to Go Public

NORA POV

“I have a plan”

I looked up from my desk.

Dana was in my doorway. She had her hair down, which was the first time I had seen that since she arrived, and she was standing straight in a way that said she had been building up to this for a while and had decided she was ready.

“Come in” I said.

She came in and sat down across from me without waiting to be invited to sit. She put both hands flat on her knees and looked at me.

“We go public first” she said. “Before Warren does anything.”

I put my pen down. “Keep going.”

“I present myself to the pack. Voluntarily. On our terms.” She kept her voice steady. Practiced. She had definitely been running through this in the east wing for hours. “I tell them the truth. Who I am. What happened. Why you were here. All of it.” She paused. “You step aside. We control the story instead of letting Warren take it from us.”

I looked at her.

“He has a two week window” she said. “Maybe less now. We know that. And right now he is sitting in Ironridge building whatever he is building and we are sitting here waiting for him to make the first move.” She leaned forward slightly. “We do not wait. We move first.”

“And after?” I said. “After you go to the pack and tell them everything.”

“I take my place.” She kept my eyes. “As the real Luna.”

The room went quiet for a second.

“Say the last part again” I said.

“I take my place as the real Luna of Blackwood Pack.” She said it like she had practised it. Firm. Clear. “That is what should have happened five years ago. I take it back now.”

I looked at her for a long moment.

“Okay” I said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand what that means?” I said. “Not in theory. Not as a title or a position or the right ending to this story. Actually. Practically.” I kept my voice even. “Do you know what the Luna of Blackwood Pack does on a Tuesday?”

She blinked. “What?”

“A Tuesday. A regular one. Not a crisis, not a delegation visit, just a normal pack Tuesday.” I leaned back in my chair. “What time does she get up? Which meetings is she in? Who comes to her door and what do they bring? What does she know about the patrol schedule, the border maintenance schedule, the six pack members who are currently in some kind of personal difficulty that needs managing quietly?”

Dana was quiet.

“The woman who had three pack wolves show up at her office yesterday with small questions they could have handled themselves because something in her was pulling at them.” I looked at Dana steadily. “The woman who sits across from Rhett in that study and does not flinch. The woman the pack has been built around for five years.” I paused. “Do you want that? Actually?”

“It is mine” Dana said. “By rights.”

“I am not asking what is yours by rights. I am asking if you want it.”

She looked at me.

“There is a difference” I said. “And I need you to hear that before you walk into a room full of sixty wolves and say your piece.” I kept my voice quiet. Not angry. Just straight. “I am not trying to take anything from you. I promise I am not. But the story being right is different from wanting the thing.” I held her eyes. “Do you want the thing?”

Dana opened her mouth.

Closed it.

She looked at the desk between us. Her hands on her knees. The window behind me. She was doing the thing she did when she was thinking hard, really thinking, not performing thinking but actually working through something that had no easy answer.

The quiet stretched.

It went on long enough that I knew.

She knew too.

“Dana.”

“I don’t know” she said. Very quietly. “I don’t know if I want the work of it.” She looked up. Her eyes were wet at the edges but she was holding it together. “I know it should be mine. I know I should want it. I have spent five years telling myself I would go back and take it back and fix what I did.” She pressed her lips together. “And now I’m here and I’m looking at you and I don’t—” She stopped.

“Say it” I said.

“I don’t know if I want it.” She said it like it cost her something. “Not the way you do it. Not the way you are in this pack.” She looked at me. “I don’t know if I ever wanted it that way. I think I wanted the idea of it. The title. The being right about it.” She breathed in sharp. “Not the Tuesday.”

The room was very still.

I sat with that. With her saying it out loud finally. Five years of her justifying the run and the absence and the reappearance by holding onto the story of it being hers. And now sitting here she was saying the word she had probably been avoiding since the moment she walked through the east gate.

“Okay” I said.

“I’m sorry” she said. Her voice cracked just slightly.

“I know.”

“That’s not enough.”

“I know that too.” I stood up. “But it is honest and honest is more useful right now than sorry.”

She looked at me. “Then what do we do? We still need to get ahead of Warren.”

“Yes” I said. “We do.” I moved toward the door. “But the plan of you stepping in as Luna is not the right move. Not because it is not yours by right. Because it is not what you actually want and the pack will feel that.” I paused at the door. “We are going to do this a different way.”

She stared at me. “What way?”

I thought about August.

About tonight.

About the window that was already narrow and getting smaller.

“Give me until tomorrow” I said. “Just tonight. And tomorrow I will tell you the plan.”

Dana looked at me. At the desk. At her hands.

The thing she couldn’t answer was still sitting between us. Neither of us pretended it wasn’t.

“Okay” she said. Quiet.

I walked out.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​