The Alpha's Bargain

CHAPTER SIX

Dorian held Jo's hand with a kind of caution she wasn't used to as he guided her back to the manor. The heavy sound had sounded like something falling to the ground, but neither of them could sight anything awry. Not even a shadow.

"Weird," Jo commented. Darting her eyes around as they walked down the path. Dorian remained cautious till they got back.

It was the night before the binding ceremony. Unable to sleep, Jo wandered the manor's moonlit gardens and found Dorian already there, sitting on a stone bench with the particular stillness of a man thinking through something difficult.

"Couldn't sleep either?" she asked, settling onto the bench a careful distance away. "Is it because of that sound?"

"Not particularly. I don't sleep well before full moons," Dorian said. "The shift pulls at you, the closer it gets. Tomorrow will be... intense, for both of us. The ceremony completes under moonlight specifically because it lets the bond settle fully, wolf and human sides both." He glanced at her, something almost apologetic in the admission. "I should have explained that earlier. I've been better at logistics than conversation, since you arrived."

"I noticed." But she said it without heat, watching moonlight silver the careful lines of his profile. "Can I ask you something honestly?"

"Always."

"Are you scared? Of the bond, I mean. Not the treaty, not the politics. Not even what we heard tonight. Just — this. Whatever's happening between us that neither of us asked for."

Dorian was quiet for a long moment, and Jo had the sense of watching him decide, deliberately, to answer honestly rather than deflect the way he had over dinner.

"Terrified," he admitted finally. "I built this pack's stability on control, Jo. On never letting anything matter enough that losing it could break me. A mate bond doesn't ask permission for any of that. It just arrives, absolute and undeniable, and demands you rebuild your entire sense of safety around another person's survival instead of your own competence." His eyes found hers, something raw and intense in them that she hadn't seen since that first electric moment in the hall. "I don't know how to do that without also handing you the exact kind of power that got my father killed."

"I'm not going to hurt you, Dorian."

"You don't know that. Neither do I." But something in his expression had softened, some of the careful distance thinning under the weight of the moonlit garden's privacy. "I want to believe it anyway. That's new, for me. Wanting to believe something dangerous, instead of guarding against it."

"Maybe that's what the bond actually is," Jo said softly. "Not a guarantee against danger. Just — reason enough to risk it anyway."

Dorian's hand found hers on the bench between them, tentative, testing, and when she didn't pull away, his fingers threaded through hers with a gentleness that contradicted every hardened, alpha-composed inch of him she'd witnessed so far.

"Tomorrow," he said quietly, "we bind ourselves to each other in front of my entire pack and whatever gods still watch these old ceremonies. I find, against every careful instinct I've spent six years building, that I'm not dreading it anymore."

"Neither am I," Jo admitted, and found, watching moonlight play across his face, that it was entirely true.

Jo released her hand from his and positioned them on the sides of his face, pulling him closer for another kiss.

"Eh-em," a soft cough echoed from the bushes behind them. "I believe you both are meant to be sleeping?"

Jo's hands immediately snapped back to her body while Dorian remained stiff.

"Tomorrow is going to be a busy day," Garrick called out once again. "All affecti ons paused till after the ceremony."