The Alpha's Bargain

CHAPTER TEN

Just three weeks into her new life as Dorian's bonded mate, Jo had begun to believe the hardest part might already be behind her — until the morning a Kestrel pack envoy arrived at the manor gates, and everything about the fragile peace she'd started building shifted underneath her.

"Alpha Kestrel sends his regards!" the envoy announced, a wiry, sharp-featured man who introduced himself as Corin, "and his niece, Selene, as a gesture of goodwill — an ambassador to help ease tensions along the disputed border, given the recent change in circumstances your pack has undergone."

Dorian's jaw had gone tight the moment the envoy's wagon was sighted descending the hill, and it stayed tight through the entire, carefully formal exchange of greetings that followed. "The Kestrel pack has never once sent a goodwill ambassador in six years of border disputes," he murmured to Jo, low enough that only she could hear it. "This is a reconnaissance mission wearing a diplomat's clothes. I'd stake my life on it."

"Then why are we accepting her?"

"Because refusing a goodwill gesture, however transparent, hands Malachi Kestrel exactly the pretext he's been looking for to escalate the entire situation," Dorian said grimly. "We accept her, we watch her carefully, and we give her absolutely nothing worth reporting back."

Selene Kestrel, when she finally stepped down from the wagon, was nothing like the sharp, calculating spy Jo had braced herself for. She was warm in a way that seemed almost deliberately disarming — dark hair loose around a face that carried an easy, confident smile, emerald green eyes that could easily pierce your soul. She was dressed simply but with an unmistakable grace to every movement she made. When her eyes found Jo's across the courtyard, something flickered in her that Jo couldn't immediately name, though it made her breath catch in a way that had nothing to do with the mate bond humming steady and familiar toward Dorian.

"You must be the famous mate," Selene said, crossing the courtyard with an easy confidence that made the formal greeting feel almost like an afterthought. "The whole valley's been talking about the human girl who bonded with the Vane alpha. I confess I was expecting someone more... intimidating."

"I get that a lot," Jo said dryly, unable to entirely suppress a smile despite Dorian's obvious tension beside her.

"I meant it as a compliment," Selene said, something warm and genuine in her laugh. "Intimidating people are exhausting. I find I much prefer people who seem like they'd actually be interesting to talk to."

Dorian's hand quickly found the small of Jo's back, a subtle, proprietary gesture that Jo suspected was meant as much for Selene's benefit as her own. "Miss Kestrel will be shown to the guest quarters," he said, voice carefully neutral. "Garrick will handle logistics for her stay. I trust you understand the sensitivity of the current border situation and will conduct yourself accordingly."

"Of course, Alpha Vane." Selene's smile didn't waver, though something sharper flickered briefly behind her eyes before smoothing back into easy warmth. "I'm only here to help ease tensions. Nothing more complicated than that."

Jo believed her about as much as Dorian clearly did, which was to say not at all — and yet, watching Selene walk away toward the guest quarters with a confident grace, she found herself unable to entirely shake the strange, unwelcome flutter that single warm smile had left behind.

Over the following days of her stay, Selene proved considerably more difficult to dismiss as a simple political inconvenience than either Jo or Dorian had initially hoped.

She was, infuriatingly, good company — quick-witted, genuinely curious about Hollow's End and Jo's life before the binding, capable of holding her own in the pack's political discussions with a sharpness that suggested Corin's "goodwill ambassador" framing was, as Dorian suspected, considerably more calculated than it appeared. But she was also, Jo found herself noticing more than she wanted to, warm in a way that felt entirely genuine underneath the political performance — quick to laugh, unexpectedly gentle with the pack's youngest children, and possessed of a way of looking at Jo during their increasingly frequent conversations that made the mate bond's steady hum toward Dorian feel, confusingly, like it wasn't the only current running through her anymore.

"You're staring," Dorian observed one evening, watching Jo watch Selene across the dining hall with more attention than the moment strictly warranted.

"I'm not staring," Jo protested shakily. "I'm monitoring a potential security risk." Jo tried for dry humor and suspected, from Dorian's knowing expression, that she hadn't quite landed it.

"Is that what we're calling it?" But there was no real jealousy in his voice, more a careful, searching curiosity that made Jo's chest tighten with something like guilt, though she'd done nothing yet to warrant it. "The mate bond doesn't usually leave room for anyone else, Jo. I want you to know that whatever you're feeling, watching her — it doesn't threaten what's between us. Not unless you decide it should."

"That's a strangely generous thing to say, given the circumstances."

"I've spent six years assuming the worst about everyone who came near this pack with a smile that easy," Dorian said quietly. "I'd rather trust you to navigate whatever this is honestly, than spend our marriage assuming the worst about you the way I've assumed the worst about everyone else." His eyes found hers, steady and searching. "Just be careful, Jo. Whatever Selene Kestrel actually wants from this valley, I doubt very much it's as simple as good company."

Jo turned his warning over carefully in the days that followed, watching Selene with a wariness that did absolutely nothing to dampen the strange, unwelcome warmth that bloomed every time those sharp, green eyes found hers across a room — and found herself no closer to understanding what, exactly, she was supposed to do about a pull she'd never expected to feel toward anyone but the man she'd already bound herself to for life.

Jo felt her heart pull harder everytime Selene was around, and honestly, she had a strong feeling of impending doom looming over her each time she caught herself thinking about her.