The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 4: The Girl With Her Face

NORA POV

"I'm going to turn her away" I said out loud to nobody.

My own voice disappeared into the cold morning air. The grounds were empty, just grey light and wet grass and my own footsteps crunching on the gravel path toward the east gate. The sun wasn't properly up yet. The sky was that flat, colourless kind of light that makes everything look like it's waiting for something.

I was going to turn her away. I had decided. I spent the whole night deciding it, lying on top of the covers fully dressed like I might need to move fast, staring at the ceiling and running through exactly how the conversation would go. I would get to the gate. I would see her. And I would tell her to go back to wherever she came from because this wasn't her life anymore.

Simple. Clean. Done.

I told myself that firmly all the way across the grounds.

Then I got to the east gate and saw her and forgot every word.

Dana was standing just outside the iron bars with a bag hanging off one shoulder and a coat that was way too thin for the temperature, the kind of thin that meant she'd grabbed it in a hurry or hadn't planned to be outside this long. Her hair was pulled back. Her face was bare. No makeup, no effort, nothing put together about her at all.

And her face.

My face. The same face. Except the way she was holding it right now was nothing like the way I held mine. She looked tired in a bone-deep way, the kind that sleep doesn't fix. She looked guilty. And she looked smaller than I remembered, which didn't make sense because we were the same height, had always been the same height, but somehow she seemed like less than she used to be.

Then my eyes dropped and I saw it. The curve of her stomach under that thin coat.

Pregnant. Dana was pregnant.

Whatever speech I had prepared, whatever clean and firm and final words I had arranged in the right order overnight, they all just fell apart. Gone. I stood on my side of the gate and she stood on hers and neither of us said anything for what felt like a very long time.

She broke first.

"I'm sorry" she said. Fast. Like she had to get it out before she lost the nerve. "I know that's not enough. I know it doesn't fix anything. But I am, Nora. I'm so sorry."

I heard the rehearsal in it. The way certain words were slightly too smooth, like she'd said them to herself in a mirror somewhere on the road here. It made the apology feel real and practised at the same time, which made it hard to know what to do with.

"How long have you been in the area?" I asked.

She blinked. Clearly not the first response she expected. "Two days. I was staying at a motel about forty minutes out. I wasn't sure if you'd.." She stopped. Swallowed. "I didn't know if you'd see me."

"Two days" I repeated.

"I know."

"You were forty minutes away for two days and you sent a pin."

"I didn't know what to say."

I looked at her. At the coat. At the bag. At the stomach I couldn't stop looking at. "What happened to you?"

Her jaw tightened. "It's a long story."

"I've got time."

She shifted the bag on her shoulder and glanced past me at the grounds like she was checking whether anyone else was around. "Can I come in first? Please? I've been standing out here since before the sun came up and it's freezing and I really, really need to sit down."

I looked at her face. The tired in it. The guilty in it. The please that sat in her eyes even when her voice tried to sound like she was just asking a practical question.

I should say no. I knew I should say no.

"I need to come back" she said quietly. "Not forever. I'm not asking for forever. Just until I figure out what to do. Just until things are safer." She pressed one hand against her stomach, just briefly, not for show. Just a reflex. "I don't have anywhere else to go, Nora."

There it was. Just until things are safer. Just until I figure it out. The same shape of words she used five years ago standing in my apartment in a wedding dress. I recognised the pattern the second she said it. Same Dana. Same ask. Different disaster.

I should say no.

I pushed the gate open.

"East guest room" I said. "You stay there, you don't wander, and you let me handle how we explain you to the pack. Okay?"

Dana let out a breath that she had probably been holding for two days. "Okay. Yes. Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet."

She came through the gate and fell into step beside me and for a second it was just two people walking across a quiet morning and it almost felt normal. Almost.

"How far along are you?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

"Six months."

Six months. She had been pregnant for six months and this was the first I was hearing about it. I filed that away with everything else to be angry about later, when I had the space for it.

"Are you okay? Like physically, are you.."

"I'm fine. Healthy. I've been seeing a doctor." She glanced at me sideways. "I was being careful, Nora."

"Okay."

"I know what you're thinking."

"You really don't."

She went quiet. We were halfway across the grounds, almost to the main steps, and the house was starting to look less like a dark shape and more like a real building as the light came up. I was already running through the logistics in my head. Get her upstairs before the pack started moving. Keep her away from the main halls until I had a story together. Tell Conrad something minimal, enough to explain a guest without explaining anything real.

And then the shadow moved at the top of the steps.

We both saw it at the same time. Dana's hand caught my arm and squeezed and I stopped walking because she stopped walking and we both just stood there in the grey morning light looking up at the top of the steps.

Rhett.

He was standing completely still at the top of the steps in a dark jacket, hands loose at his sides, and he was looking at us. Not moving. Not saying anything. Just looking.

He looked at Dana.

Then at me.

Then back at Dana.

His face didn't do anything. No shock. No anger. No confusion. Nothing I could name or use or prepare for. Just those grey eyes moving between us like he was confirming something he already knew the shape of.

Dana's grip on my arm tightened. I could feel how tense she was through her fingers.

I couldn't breathe right.

Five years. Five years of holding this together and it could all be ending right now, in the cold morning light at the bottom of these steps, because Rhett Blackwood was standing at the top of them looking at both of us and his face was giving me absolutely nothing to work with.

Nothing at all.