The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 21: The Alarm

NORA POV

“Nora, stop!”

Judith’s voice came from behind me but I didn’t stop. My feet were already on the grass, moving fast, the main house lights cutting through the dark ahead of me.

The alarm was still going. That sharp, hard sound splitting the night in two.

The grounds were not empty anymore. Wolves were everywhere. Moving fast, some already shifted, some still in human form pulling on jackets and calling out positions. I had to cut around two of them just to keep my line to the front steps.

Conrad was on the steps. Clipboard. Jaw tight.

“Luna!” He saw me coming. “Where were you?”

“East garden” I said, hitting the steps. “What happened? What set it off?”

“Tree line. East side.” His eyes moved past me toward the dark grounds. “Three patrol wolves flagged movement.”

“What kind of movement?”

“Unknown.” He said it clipped. Like the not knowing was its own problem. “Alpha is already there.”

I looked past the grounds toward the tree line. In the dark I could make out shapes. Three patrol wolves, frozen in a rough line about twenty feet back from the trees. And in front of them, further forward, one figure standing completely still.

Rhett.

My chest was going hard. That pressure again, deep and rhythmic, hitting my ribs from the inside like it had somewhere to be.

I wanted to go to the tree line. Every part of me wanted to move in that direction.

“Luna.” Conrad’s voice. Firm. “I need you on the steps.”

He was right. The pack was looking for anchor points right now and anchor points meant visible leadership, calm face, steady voice. That was my job whether I liked the location or not.

I turned back to the steps and stood where the light from the front hall could reach me and kept my face completely still.

Bex appeared at my side from nowhere. “Are you okay?”

“Fine” I said. “How many wolves do we have unaccounted for?”

“None. Conrad got everyone on the grid.”

“Warren’s delegation?”

Her face did something. “Inside. Roy is with them.”

Roy. Good. Roy could hold a room without making it feel like he was holding a room.

“Dana?”

“Back in the east wing. I checked before I came out.”

I breathed. “Good.”

We stood on the steps and I kept watching the tree line and Rhett’s figure standing in front of it and the alarm kept going and the pack kept moving and two full minutes passed like that, tight and loud and awful.

Then the alarm stopped.

Just cut out. Clean. Like someone flipped a switch.

The sudden quiet was almost worse.

The pack stilled. Everyone on the grounds went quiet and looked toward the front and waited.

Rhett walked back from the tree line.

He walked the way he always walked. Easy pace. Arms loose. No rush in any of it. The patrol wolves fell into step slightly behind him without being told.

He got to the steps and looked at Conrad first. “Stand everyone down.”

“Sir.” Conrad was already turning.

Rhett looked at the pack spread across the grounds. He raised his voice just enough to carry. “False signal. Equipment fault with the east sensor. Nothing on the perimeter.” He said it clean and flat. “Everyone back to position. Thank you.”

The pack started to dissolve. Conversations starting again, the tension bleeding out, people moving back to their places.

Rhett looked at me.

That was when I saw it.

Just for a second. Before he put it away. Before he arranged his face back into the neutral steady thing it always was when the pack was watching.

I saw it.

Something tightly held. Something that was not about the tree line or the alarm or the patrol wolves. It was in his eyes and it was pointed directly at me and it looked like concern in the specific way that concern looks when someone has been trying not to show it.

Not for the pack.

For me.

And then it was gone. His face was level again, Alpha face, nothing showing, and he turned to say something to Conrad and I was left standing on the steps with that one second still running through my head.

“Luna.” Bex, beside me. Quiet. “Is it over?”

“Yes” I said.

I kept my voice normal. I kept my face normal. I stood on the steps until the grounds were properly clear and the pack had settled and the last patrol wolves had moved back to their positions.

Then I went inside.

The front hall was warm after the cold outside. Roy was in the doorway to the main sitting room, leaning on the frame, watching me come in. Behind him I could see Warren in a chair. That polished calm face.

“All good?” Roy said.

“Equipment fault” I said.

Roy looked at me for just a second too long. “Right.”

I kept walking.

I went to the end of the hallway and stopped with my back against the wall and put both hands flat on the cold plaster behind me and stood there.

Equipment fault.

I had been on those grounds for five years. I knew every sensor, every patrol position, every piece of perimeter equipment. Those sensors did not fault. They were checked twice a week, serviced every month. Conrad ran the checks himself.

And Rhett had stood at that tree line and looked at something and then walked back and told sixty wolves it was nothing.

His face before he arranged it.

That look in his eyes.

He lied to the pack.

Whatever was at that tree line, whatever the patrol wolves had seen moving in the dark, whatever had pulled Rhett out there at that hour, it was not an equipment fault and I knew it and he knew I knew it and that was exactly why he had looked at me the way he did on the steps.

He wasn’t concerned about me being on the wrong side of the grounds when the alarm went off.

He was concerned because whatever was out there had been close enough to see me.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​