The Alpha Imposter Wife

Chapter 13: Rhett at Night

NORA POV

“You’ve been standing there for ten minutes.”

I spun around.

Rhett was sitting on the low stone wall behind me. Dark jacket, arms loose at his sides, looking at me like he had been there for a while already.

I had not heard him. Not one single footstep.

“How long have you been there” I said.

“Long enough.”

I turned back around. My face was doing something I didn’t want him to see.

The grounds were dark and cold and I had no idea how I’d ended up on this side of the pack property. I just remembered leaving Dana’s room and walking and then walking some more and now I was here, near the east tree line, standing in the grass in the dark like a person who had completely lost the plot.

He didn’t ask what I was doing out here. He just sat on that wall and looked at the trees.

I breathed. Once. Twice.

“What are you always looking for?” I asked. “In those trees.”

He didn’t answer right away. He never did.

“Things that are out of place” he said finally. “Most problems announce themselves. You just have to watch the edges.”

I looked at the tree line. Black shapes against a slightly less black sky. Nothing moving.

“And tonight?” I said. “Anything out of place?”

“Not yet.”

I pulled my jacket tighter. The cold was sharper out here than I expected and my hands were already stiff. Behind me the house was lit in patches, warm yellow windows cutting through the dark, and somewhere in there Warren Steele was sleeping under Rhett’s roof and Petra was sleeping two floors below me and Dana was sitting on a guest bed knowing things she had known for five years.

“She knew” I said.

My own voice surprised me. I hadn’t planned to say it out loud. Not tonight, not like this. But it came out anyway, flat and quiet, and now it was just sitting in the air between us.

Rhett looked at me.

“Dana” I said. “She knew about the prophecy before the wedding. Warren showed her documentation. She knew what I was and she left anyway.” I kept my eyes on the trees. “She knocked on my door that night and said just one week and she already knew.”

Silence.

I waited for something. Anger. Judgment. Some reaction I could push back against.

His jaw moved. One tight shift. That was it.

“Dana’s choices are her own” he said.

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

“What do you want me to say?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I pressed my lips together and looked down at the grass under my boots.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it? Okay?”

“You don’t have to decide tonight” he said. “You can have tonight.”

Something in my chest went quiet when he said that. Not the pressure feeling. Something smaller. Like a part of me that had been bracing for something just slowly unclenched.

I sat down on the wall. Not right next to him. A few feet away. Close enough that I could see his face when he turned to look at the trees again.

“Can I ask you something else?” I said.

“Yes.”

“What did you actually think. When you figured out I wasn’t Dana.” I looked at him sideways. “Not the practical version. What did you think.”

He was quiet for a bit. Long enough that I almost let it go.

“I was surprised” he said. “For about an hour.”

“And then?”

“And then I stopped being surprised.” He shifted slightly on the wall. “You were doing the thing that needed doing. I have always found it hard to argue with that.”

“That’s still the practical version” I said.

He turned his head and looked at me.

Really looked. Not the quick assessment he did when he was reading a situation. This was slower. Like he was deciding something.

“I thought you must love your sister very much” he said.

The words hit somewhere I wasn’t prepared for.

I looked away fast. Back at the trees. My jaw was tight and I kept it that way and just breathed through my nose and waited for whatever was rising in my chest to settle back down.

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t push. He just turned back to the trees and let the quiet be what it was.

That was the thing about him. He never needed to fill the silence. Most people did. They got uncomfortable and they talked and they asked questions until the air felt normal again. Rhett just sat in it like it was a perfectly reasonable place to be.

It should have felt cold. It didn’t.

The wind moved through the grass at our feet. Something small rustled in the hedges along the garden wall. Far off, past the tree line, a wolf called once and went quiet.

“I should go back in” I said.

“Probably.”

Neither of us moved for another minute.

“Petra knows something” I said. “Whatever she said to me in the corridor last night, it wasn’t a guess.”

“I know.”

“And Warren’s questions at dinner. He wasn’t making conversation.”

“I know that too.”

“So what are we doing about it?”

Rhett stood up from the wall. He looked down at me, hands loose at his sides, and said, “Tomorrow we find out exactly what they think they have. And then we decide what to do with it.”

“Together?” The word came out before I thought about it.

He looked at me for a second.

“Yes” he said. “Together.”

He walked me back. Not beside me exactly, just near me, that specific Rhett distance that was close enough to matter but not so close that anything was being said. His footsteps were quiet on the grass and mine were louder and I was aware of every single step.

At the back door he stopped. I went through and then turned back.

He was already looking at the tree line again.

“Go inside, Nora” he said. Without turning around.

I went inside.

The house was warm after the cold outside. I stood in the back hallway for a second and let my eyes adjust to the light and felt the tension in my shoulders starting to loosen. Just slightly. Just enough.

I went upstairs. Down the corridor. Into my room.

Closed the door.

Sat on the edge of the bed and picked up my phone off the nightstand out of habit. It was late. Nothing would need me until morning.

The screen showed a notification.

Unknown number.

A message.

One photo.

I opened it.

My whole body went cold.

It was a picture. Clear, taken from a distance but sharp enough. Me and Rhett at the stone wall on the far side of the grounds. His profile. My face. Side by side in the dark.

Taken tonight.

Someone had been out there watching. In the dark, close enough to the tree line, while we were sitting right there.

While I was talking about Dana.

While he was saying together.

My thumb went numb. I was still holding the phone but I couldn’t feel my fingers properly. I just stared at the photo. At us. At the dark shape of the trees in the background.

Someone had been at those edges.

And neither of us had seen it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​