The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 7: What Warren Wants

NORA POV

"Don't answer it" Rhett said.

"I'm not answering it" I said.

We both watched my phone light up on the table. Warren Steele. Second call. The name sat there glowing for ten long seconds and then it stopped and the screen went dark and the study went quiet again.

I let out a slow breath. "How does he have my number?"

"I don't know yet" Rhett said.

The way he said yet. Not I don't know, full stop. Yet. Like the answer already existed somewhere and it was just a matter of hours before it landed in front of him. I had been around him long enough to know the difference.

"But you're going to find out" I said.

"Yes."

He moved back to his chair and sat and I watched him the way I always watched him when something was happening, trying to read what was going on behind that controlled face. He picked up his glass of water, took one sip, set it down.

"Tell me what you know about Warren Steele" I said. "All of it."

Rhett looked at me for a second like he was deciding how much to give me. Then he said, "Ironridge Pack. About sixty miles east. Warren's been Alpha there for four years. Before him his father ran it and his father ran it badly, so Warren came in and cleaned it up and now he's ambitious in ways his father never was."

"What kind of ambitious?"

"The expanding kind." Rhett's voice was flat. "He's been putting pressure on Blackwood for two years. Nothing direct. No challenges, no open moves. Just quiet things. Boundary inquiries. Trade route questions. Requests for meetings that we've kept neutral." He paused. "And for the past few months, questions about the Luna."

My stomach went tight. "What kind of questions?"

"Her background. Her history before Blackwood. Her family." He looked at me directly. "The same things he would ask if he thought something wasn't right and he was building a case."

"Does he know?" I asked. Just flat out. "Does he know what I am?"

"I don't know exactly what he knows" Rhett said. "But the pattern of his questions tells me he knows something is off. And now he has your direct number, which means he has access to something inside this pack or he's been watching from closer than I knew."

Closer than I knew. Coming from Rhett that was serious. He didn't miss things.

"So what do we do?" I asked.

He looked at me. "We don't panic."

He said it like panic was just not a thing he had ever done personally and couldn't really picture happening. Like it was a weather event that only hit other places.

"I'm not panicking" I said. "I'm asking what the actual plan is."

"The plan is we find out how he got your number, we figure out what he thinks he knows, and we stay ahead of it." He picked up his phone off the desk. "Conrad is already on the number. I'll have something by morning."

"And until morning?"

"Until morning you don't answer any calls you don't recognise and you don't leave any conversations with him open. If he messages, you tell me before you respond to anything." He looked up from his phone. "Can you do that?"

"Yes" I said. "Obviously yes."

He nodded once. Done. Settled. Like that was the whole problem handled.

I left his study and went upstairs and pushed open the door to my room and stopped.

Dana was sitting on my bed.

"How did you get in here?" I said.

"The door wasn't locked." She was holding her own phone in both hands and she looked up at me with an expression I hadn't seen on her face before. Not guilt this time. Something closer to fear. "I heard Conrad talking this afternoon. Outside the east wing. I wasn't trying to listen, I just…"

"What did you hear?"

"Enough." She set her phone down on the covers. "Nora, Warren Steele called you, didn't he."

I closed the door behind me. "How do you know that name?"

"Because I know him." Her voice dropped. "I know who he is and I know what he's like and I need you to listen to me right now. He's not safe. Whatever he said to you or whatever he wants, he is not safe."

I stayed near the door. Didn't sit. "Dana. How do you know Warren Steele?"

She looked at her lap. One second. Two. The kind of pause that means someone is deciding how much truth fits in the next sentence.

"He came to me" she said. "Two weeks before the wedding. He found me, I don't know how, and he sat across from me at a coffee shop and he told me things." She looked up. "Things about Blackwood Pack. About what I was walking into. About what would happen to me if I went through with it."

I stared at her. "What kind of things?"

"He had information, Nora. Documentation. Things about the pack, about arrangements that had been made, about…" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "He made me believe that if I married Rhett Blackwood I would not be safe. That something would happen to me."

The room felt very still suddenly.

"So you ran" I said slowly. "You ran because Warren Steele told you to be scared."

"He didn't tell me to run. He just told me things and then I made a choice and I…" She stopped again. Her hands twisted together in her lap. "The night of the wedding I was so scared I couldn't think straight and I just…"

"You left me in your place" I said. Quiet. Not angry. Just the fact of it sitting between us.

"I know."

"Because a man you'd met once in a coffee shop scared you."

"It wasn't like that, there was real…" She exhaled hard. "The information he had was real. It wasn't just talk. I saw documents, Nora. Whatever he showed me, it was…"

"What information?" I moved closer. Sat on the chair across from the bed. "Tell me exactly what he showed you."

Dana opened her mouth.

And from somewhere downstairs came voices.

Raised. Sharp. Not an argument exactly but something that had too much heat in it for this house because Rhett's house did not sound like that. People didn't raise their voices here. Not ever. Not in five years had I heard anything through these floors that sounded like what I was hearing right now.

Dana went rigid on the bed.

Three hard knocks on my door. Conrad.

"Luna." His voice through the door was tight in a way I had never heard from him. "You need to come downstairs."

I looked at Dana. She looked back at me with wide eyes and whatever she was about to tell me was still sitting unsaid between us and I had no idea when I was going to get it back.