The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 6: The Conversation She Cannot Unhear

NORA POV

"Sit down, please."

Rhett didn't look up when he said it. He was already at the small table by the window, pulling out the chair across from his like this was something people did, like this was a normal after-dinner thing and not the conversation I had been dreading since Conrad walked out of my office three hours ago.

I sat down.

The study was quiet. The rest of the house had gone still after dinner, pack members heading to their own spaces, and now it was just this room and the low lamp on the desk and Rhett pouring water into two glasses like we had all the time in the world.

He set one glass in front of me.

I had my story ready. The whole thing, start to finish. Dana was my twin sister, she was going through something difficult, I brought her here because she had nowhere safe to go. I had answers for the follow-up questions too. I had been building this in my head all day and it was solid and I was ready.

Rhett sat down across from me and looked at me for a second and then said, very calmly, "I've known you weren't Dana since the night of the wedding."

The story I had prepared turned to dust. Just gone. I sat there and stared at him and my brain tried to catch up and couldn't.

"What?" The word came out before I could stop it.

"Five years ago" he said. Same voice. Same level, unbothered tone, like he was talking about something completely ordinary. "The first night. I knew within the first hour."

I couldn't speak. I genuinely could not make words happen.

"Your voice is slightly lower than hers" he said. "You held your hands differently. And when I asked you which side of the bed you preferred, you hesitated for just a second too long before you answered."

Small things. He listed them like they were nothing. Small things that I had not even known I was doing wrong, tiny cracks I didn't know existed, and he had seen every single one of them on the very first night and said nothing.

For five years.

"You knew" I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected, which surprised me. "You knew the whole time."

"Yes."

"Every meeting. Every morning. Every…" I stopped. Pressed my fingers flat on the table. Breathed. "Five years and you never said anything."

"No."

"Why?" I looked at him directly. "Why didn't you say something? Why did you just let it…" I stopped again because my voice was doing something I didn't want it to do.

Rhett was quiet for a moment. Not uncomfortable quiet. The kind of quiet he used when he was choosing his words properly.

"The pack needed stability" he said finally. "Dana had made her choice and you had made yours. I watched you learn everything you needed to know. You ran this pack the way it needed to be run." He looked at his glass. "I made a decision to let it continue."

I stared at him. "You made a decision."

"Yes."

"About my life."

"About the pack" he said. "Your life was already the decision you made."

That was fair. I hated that it was fair. I had made that decision myself, nobody put a gun to my head, and he wasn't wrong that the pack ran better than it might have otherwise. But knowing it was fair didn't make it sit any easier.

"Was it purely practical?" I asked. "Is that all it was?"

He looked at me. Quiet again. A different quiet this time.

He didn't answer.

I let it go because I didn't know what I would do with the answer anyway.

"Dana being here changes things" he said, moving on like the unanswered question hadn't just sat between us. "Things can't continue the way they have been. The pack will notice eventually, if they haven't already, and I would rather control how this comes out than have it come out on its own."

"I know" I said.

"Which means we need to figure out what happens next." He looked at me steadily. "What do you want, Nora?"

My name. My actual name. He said it like it was natural, like he'd been saying it for years in his head and it just finally had somewhere to go, and it hit me somewhere low in the chest in a way I wasn't expecting at all.

Nobody had asked me that. Not once in five years. What do you want. Like my answer mattered. Like there was a version of this where what I wanted was actually part of the equation.

I opened my mouth. I didn't fully know what I was going to say but something was coming, some honest thing I hadn't planned, and it was right there on the surface…

My phone lit up on the table between us.

The screen was face up and we both saw it at the same time. A name. A number I didn't recognise, but a name attached to it that meant nothing to me and clearly meant a lot to Rhett because something moved across his face, fast, a quick tightening around his eyes and jaw, before he got control of it.

Warren Steele.

Calling my personal number.

My personal number that I had never given to anyone outside this pack.

I looked at the screen. Then at Rhett. His expression was back to neutral but I had seen what it did for that one second and that one second was enough.

"Rhett" I said slowly. "How does Warren Steele have my number?"

He was already standing up. His chair scraped back and he reached across the table and turned my phone face down without answering the call, firm and deliberate, and the screen went dark.

"Don't answer that" he said. Low. Quiet. Not a suggestion.

"I wasn't going to." I stared at the back of my phone. "But I need you to tell me how he has my number because that's not something that should be possible and you just looked at that screen like it was the worst thing you've seen all week."

Rhett stood at the edge of the table and said nothing for a beat. Just looked at my phone sitting dark between us.

When he looked up his eyes were different. Still controlled. But underneath the control there was something sharp and serious that made my stomach drop all over again.

"It means he's closer to this than I thought" he said.

Closer. He said closer. Which meant there was already a distance Rhett had been calculating and Warren had just closed more of it than expected and the look on Rhett's face said that was a very bad thing.

My phone lit up again on the table between us. Same name. Second call.

Warren Steele. Calling again. Not giving up.