The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 19: The Note

NORA POV

“It’s Mum’s handwriting”

Dana said it so quietly I almost missed it.

I looked up from the note. “What?”

“The writing.” She pointed at the paper in my hand. “That’s Mum’s. The way she makes her letters small and presses hard at the end of each word. I’d know it anywhere.”

I looked back down at the note.

Short. Clean. No wasted words.

If you want to keep your baby safe, be gone from Blackwood Pack before the gathering at the end of the week. This pack has no room for two Lunas. Only one of them is real. This is not a threat. It is a fact.

No signature.

My mother had written this. Had walked through or around this pack property, found Dana’s room in the east wing, and slid this under the door in the dark while the power was out.

“She’s been here” I said. “She didn’t just send this from the city.”

“I know” Dana said.

“She’s been here and she didn’t come to either of us.”

“Nora…”

I was already folding the note.

Rhett read it twice. Standing at his desk, paper held flat in both hands, eyes moving through it slowly. His face stayed level. But something behind his eyes changed. A tightening. Very small. Very controlled.

“The handwriting” he said. “You’re certain.”

“Dana’s certain” I said. “So am I. It’s our mother.”

He put the note down on the desk.

“Judith Cole is on pack grounds” he said. Flat. Like he was saying it to make it real. “I don’t know how long.”

The cellar felt far away now. That cold and the stone and Dana’s relieved face. Our mother had been moving through this property, unseen, while Warren was in the main hall and the lights were out and the whole pack was searching for Dana.

She knew the layout. She knew where Dana would hide. She knew about the cellar.

How long had she been watching?

“She came here before” I said. “August told me. Three years ago in the middle of the night. She already knew her way around.”

Rhett looked at me.

“She’s done this before” I said. “Coming in quietly. Watching and then leaving without telling anyone she was here.”

“Yes.”

“And now she’s warning Dana to leave.” I pressed my fingers against the edge of the desk. “She’s trying to push her out before the gathering.”

“Before things come into the open” Rhett said.

“She doesn’t want this coming out publicly. She never did.” My voice was getting tight. I could hear it. “She suppressed my wolf so nobody would notice what I was. She’s been hiding me my whole life. And now she’s here doing it again.”

Rhett was quiet for a second. Just watching me.

“Let me find her” I said.

“Nora…”

“She’s still here. She has to be. She wouldn’t write that note and leave before she knew Dana read it.” I looked at him straight. “Let me find her myself. Please.”

He held my gaze. One moment. Two.

Then he stepped back.

“Forty minutes” he said. “After that I’m sending Conrad.”

I searched the pack grounds the way I had learned to search everything in this place. Methodically. Starting from the east wing and working outward in a grid my brain had memorised from years of patrol schedule reviews.

The pack hall. Clear.

The training yard. Empty.

The far garden path. Nothing.

I was on the second lap, going wider, when I turned the corner into the small east garden and stopped.

She was sitting on the stone wall.

The same low wall where I had sat with Rhett just last night. My mother was perched on it like it was a perfectly normal place to be at this hour, coat buttoned to the collar, hands folded in her lap, looking out at the dark tree line.

She looked completely calm.

That was the most Judith thing about her. The world could be falling apart and she would still sit like someone had told her it was important to have good posture.

“Mum.”

She turned her head. Looked at me.

“I was wondering how long it would take” she said.

I walked up and stopped a few feet in front of her. “How long have you been here?”

“Two days.”

“Two days.” I repeated it slowly. “You’ve been on these grounds for two days and you didn’t come to me.”

“I wasn’t ready.”

“Ready for what?”

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she looked down at her hands. “To answer your questions. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that for twenty-four years and I still don’t have it right.”

“Then just say it wrong” I said. “I don’t need it to be perfect. I need it to be true.”

She was quiet. The wind moved through the garden. Somewhere above us the emergency lighting was still on, that pale weak yellow, and it reached just far enough to catch the side of her face.

“You wrote that note to Dana” I said.

“Yes.”

“You’re trying to push her out before the gathering.”

“I’m trying to keep her baby safe.”

“By threatening her?”

“By telling her the truth!” Her voice came out sharper than she probably meant it to. She pressed her lips together. Breathed. “There are things coming, Nora. Things that are already in motion. Warren did not come here just to fish for information. He came here because he thinks the gathering is the right moment to make his move and he is probably not wrong about that.”

“I know that already.”

“Do you know what he’s planning to do with Dana’s pregnancy?” She looked up at me. “If he exposes her here, in front of the pack, the baby’s status becomes a question. Whose child. What claim it carries. Dana becomes a liability and that baby becomes a piece on a board.” Her jaw was tight. “I will not let that happen.”

I looked at her.

This woman. Elegant and controlled and always three moves ahead of everyone around her. She had suppressed my wolf without asking me. She had arranged the whole twin substitution without asking me. She had made every decision that shaped my life based on what she thought was the right move and she had done it all with that same composed face.

But.

Right now her hands were not folded. They were gripping each other in her lap. The knuckles slightly pale.

And when she looked at me there was something in her eyes I had never seen there before.

I knew what Judith Cole looked like when she was thinking. I knew what she looked like when she was calculating. I knew what she looked like when she was managing a situation.

I had never seen her afraid.

Not of being caught here. Not of Rhett or Conrad or Warren.

Of me.

She was looking at me and she was afraid of what she saw.

“Mum” I said slowly. “What is it?”

She didn’t answer.

She just kept looking at me with that fear sitting open on her face and her hands gripping each other and for the first time in my life my mother had no words ready.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​