The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 17: She Asks Him Directly

NORA POV

I didn’t knock.

I pushed the office door open, walked in, and closed it behind me. Rhett was at his desk. He looked up when I came in and something in his face shifted. Not surprise. Not guilt.

Just readiness.

Like he had been waiting for this and now it was here.

“Tell me what you know about the prophecy” I said.

He put his pen down. “Sit down.”

“I’m fine standing.”

He looked at me for a second. Then he leaned back in his chair and said, “Yes. My family found the records. Forty years ago, before either of us were born.”

Just like that. No buildup. No softening around it.

“Your father made the arrangement with my mother” I said.

“Yes.”

“He believed bringing the right twin into Blackwood would stabilise the pack. Better than any political deal. Better than anything else he could arrange.”

“That was his thinking” Rhett said. “He believed in the prophecy. He built the arrangement around it.”

“And you?”

He was quiet for a second. “I am less certain.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I do not make decisions about people based on old documents.” His voice was even. Not defensive. Just straight. “When Dana arrived on that first night and I knew within an hour that she was not Dana, the prophecy was not the first thing I thought about.”

“Then what was?”

“You” he said simply. “A woman standing in my house pretending very hard and doing it for reasons I did not understand yet.”

I looked at him.

“You knew about the prophecy” I said. “You knew what I was. And for five years you said nothing.”

He didn’t look away. “No. I didn’t.”

“Why?”

The office was quiet. Outside in the corridor someone walked past, footsteps fading. The fire in the far corner of the room was the only sound, that low crackling.

“Because I did not know how to tell someone what they are” he said, “when they are still figuring out who they are.”

It didn’t sound like an excuse. That was the thing. It came out too plain to be an excuse. No dressing around it. No justification attached. Just the actual reason sitting there in the air between us.

I hated that it made sense.

“That was not your choice” I said. “To decide when I was ready. To decide how long I went without knowing.”

“No” he said. “It wasn’t.”

Just that. You’re right. No argument.

The heat in my chest dropped just slightly. Not gone. But lower.

I pulled the chair out and sat down. My hands were in my lap and I kept them still and looked at the desk between us.

“My mother suppressed it to protect me” I said. “She didn’t want packs using me.”

“I know.”

“Dana ran because Warren told her she would be exposed if she stayed. Because the thread wouldn’t activate for her and eventually everyone would notice something was missing.” I looked up at him. “He basically herded her out of her own wedding.”

Rhett’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

“And you have known, the whole time, why any of this happened.”

“Not all of it” he said. “Not Dana’s reasons. Not what Warren told her. I knew about the prophecy and I knew you were the right twin. The rest of it I have been putting together the same way you have.”

“But you had more pieces than me.”

“Yes.”

I pressed my back against the chair. The fire crackled. Somewhere outside a door closed.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

He straightened in his chair. Something shifted in how he was sitting. More focused. Like the conversation had just moved into the part he had already been thinking through.

“We stop managing this quietly” he said. “We have been handling it piece by piece and Warren knows that. He is sitting in my house right now because he is waiting for one of us to make a wrong move.”

“And?”

“We take it out of his hands. We bring it into the open ourselves before he finds a way to do it first. On our terms. Our timing. Our framing.”

“You want to tell the pack.”

“I want to control what the pack hears and when they hear it. That is different from just telling them.”

I looked at him. The fire light was catching the side of his face and he was watching me with that straight, patient look that meant he had already run the options and this was the one that made sense and he was waiting for me to catch up to it.

The pack finding out. Warren losing the weapon in his hands. Dana. The prophecy. All of it coming out in one move.

It was terrifying.

It was also the only thing that made sense.

“Okay” I said.

Something moved in his expression. Small. Like he had not been one hundred percent sure I would say yes and now I had.

“Okay” he said back. “Tomorrow morning, before Warren…”

Every light went out.

Not a flicker. Not a warning. Just gone. All of them, at once, the whole building slamming into darkness so fast my eyes couldn’t adjust. The fire in the corner was the only thing left, throwing a low orange glow across half the room.

I was on my feet before I thought about it.

“Rhett.”

“I heard it.” He was already moving. I could hear him in the dark, chair pushing back, footsteps fast and quiet toward the door.

“There’s no storm” I said. “There’s nothing outside, the weather was clear…”

“I know.”

“That means someone cut it.”

“I know” he said again, sharp this time.

He pulled the office door open. The corridor was pure black. No emergency lights. Nothing. Just dark from wall to wall and the faint orange glow spilling out from the fire behind me.

My chest was going hard. That pressure, that deep pulse, slamming against my ribs.

Warren was in this building.

Petra was in this building.

And Dana.

Dana was alone in the east wing.

“Rhett.” My voice came out low. “Dana is in the east wing.”

He turned back to me in the dark. I couldn’t see his face properly, just the shape of him.

“Don’t move without me” he said.

“She is alone in there…”

“Nora.” His hand found my arm in the dark. Firm. Grounding. “Do not move without me.”

The corridor was silent except for the sound of voices starting somewhere deeper in the house. Pack members waking up to the dark. Footsteps starting.

And from somewhere outside, faint, through the walls, something that sounded like a car door.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​