The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 18: In the Dark

NORA POV

“Stay here” Rhett said.

I was already moving.

He didn’t push it. He just went faster and I followed him into the corridor and the emergency lights were a weak, sickly yellow that made everything look wrong. Shadows in the wrong places. Doorways that looked deeper than they were.

Conrad was somewhere ahead of us, his voice sharp in the dark, calling out instructions to wolves I couldn’t see yet.

“East wing” I said.

“Conrad is checking the grounds…”

“Dana is in the east wing alone, Rhett!”

He didn’t argue. He turned toward the east corridor and I was right behind him, my shoulder almost brushing the wall because the light was so bad I couldn’t fully judge the space.

The east wing was quiet. Too quiet. The pack noise was all behind us now and here it was just our footsteps and the hum of the backup power and the dim yellow light casting everything in that flat sick colour.

Dana’s door was open.

Not wide open. Just slightly. Like someone had gone through it without pulling it fully shut behind them.

I pushed it the rest of the way.

The room was empty.

Her shoes were by the door. Both of them. Her bag was on the chair, open, clothes half folded on top. The lamp on the nightstand was off because of the power but everything else was exactly where it should be. Normal. Untouched.

Just no Dana.

My chest went cold.

“She didn’t leave” I said. “Her shoes are here. Her bag is here. She didn’t go anywhere on purpose.”

Rhett was already scanning the room. His eyes moved across everything fast and then landed on me.

“That is what I am afraid of” he said.

The next forty minutes were horrible.

The pack was moving. I could hear them across the grounds, wolves calling out to each other, Conrad directing the search in that clipped voice he used when things were serious. The backup generator kept the emergency lights on but it wasn’t enough. Every shadow felt like it was hiding something.

Rhett pulled Warren’s full delegation into the main hall. Clean move. No accusation in it, he framed it as keeping guests safe while the building was checked, but every wolf in Blackwood knew what it actually meant. Warren was being watched.

I stood near the hall entrance and watched Warren sit in one of the chairs near the fireplace, one leg crossed over the other, completely relaxed. Or performing relaxed. His eyes kept moving around the room in small careful sweeps that he probably thought nobody noticed.

Petra was by the window. Arms loose at her sides. Face completely blank in a way that was not natural blankness. That was chosen blankness. She was making herself look neutral and it was one layer too smooth.

I watched her watch the room and my jaw stayed tight and I said nothing.

Bex appeared at my shoulder.

“Anything?” I said without looking at her.

“Still searching” she said. “Conrad’s got wolves on every exit.” She paused. “She didn’t go through any of them.”

“Then she is still inside somewhere.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Keep looking” I said.

Bex went.

I turned back to Warren. He caught me looking and smiled. Easy. Open. Like we were at dinner again and everything was perfectly fine.

I smiled back.

I was going to burn that smile off his face eventually.

Bex found her.

She appeared in the main hall doorway twenty minutes later with her eyes wide and her hand already up to signal me before she even said anything.

“Cellar” she said quietly when I reached her. “Under the pack hall. She’s okay.”

I moved fast.

The pack hall was on the far side of the building. The cellar door was set into the floor at the back, old iron handle, the kind that hadn’t been used regularly for years. Bex pulled it up and the stairs going down were dark and smelled like cold stone and dust.

“Dana!” I called down.

“Here” came back. Her voice. Steady enough.

I went down the stairs fast, one hand on the stone wall because the light from above barely reached. At the bottom the cellar was wide and low ceilinged and cold and Dana was in the far corner, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and her arms wrapped around her knees.

She looked up when I got to her.

Not scared. Not hurt. Just sitting there with this expression on her face that took me a second to place.

Relief.

She looked relieved.

“You’re okay” I said. I crouched down in front of her. “Are you hurt? The baby…”

“I’m fine” she said. “We’re both fine.”

“Dana, what happened? Why are you down here? You scared me half to death!”

“Someone came to my room” she said.

I went still. “What?”

“When the lights went out. Maybe just before, I’m not sure. I heard someone in the corridor outside my door.” She uncurled one arm from around her knees. “They slid something under it.”

She held out a folded piece of paper.

I took it.

The paper was plain. No letterhead. Handwritten, small neat letters, pressed hard into the page like whoever wrote it was in a hurry.

I read it.

Then I read it again.

My face did something I couldn’t fully control. I felt it happening across my expression in waves and I had to press my lips together hard to stop at the third thing because the third thing was the one I wasn’t ready to have Dana see yet.

I lowered the note.

“Who do you think sent this?” I asked.

Dana looked at me steadily. “I know who sent it.”

“Tell me.”

“It wasn’t Warren” she said.

I looked at her.

“I’m sure of that” she said. “The way it’s written. What it says. Warren wouldn’t…” She stopped. Pressed her hand once against her stomach. “It’s not him, Nora.”

“Then who?”

She held my gaze.

“Someone who has been in this pack long enough to know exactly where I would hide” she said. “Someone who knew about this cellar. Someone who knew I would come down here if I thought I needed to disappear.” She tilted her head slightly. “Someone who wanted me safe before whatever happened next.”

The cold in the cellar was sitting in my lungs now.

Above us the pack was still moving. Footsteps across the floor of the hall. Conrad’s voice, more distant now. Warren sitting in that main hall chair doing his performed calm.

I looked at the note in my hand.

Not Warren.

Someone inside this pack.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​