The Alpha's Bargain

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Selene couldn't keep to herself anymore. On her fourth day in the valley, Selene sought Jo out directly. She found Jo in the manor's kitchen garden gathering herbs for Freya's expanding medical stores, and settled onto the low garden wall with the easy, unselfconscious grace that seemed to define her every movement.

"Show me the valley properly. Everything in it," Selene said, without a preamble. "Not the formal diplomatic tour Garrick's people have been walking me through. The actual place, the way you've come to know it these past weeks."

"Why me?" Jo questioned.

"Because you're the only person here who still looks at this valley with something like wonder, rather than the practiced familiarity everyone born into it seems to carry," Selene said. "I find myself curious what a place looks like, seen through eyes still new enough to notice its actual shape."

Jo agreed, against Dorian's earlier caution days ago, telling herself the outing served legitimate diplomatic purpose — better to understand exactly what Selene actually observed and reported than to leave her unsupervised entirely. She spent the following afternoon walking Selene through the terraced farmland, the spring's careful irrigation channels and the small township with its lantern-lit streets. She watched Selene's genuine fascination with details Jo herself had only recently learned to properly appreciate.

"This is remarkable engineering," Selene said, crouching to examine one of the irrigation channel's carefully constructed sluice gates. "Three generations of careful expansion, Dorian mentioned. You can see it in the stonework — different eras, different techniques, all working in careful harmony."

"You know considerably more about irrigation engineering than I expected from a pack envoy."

"I spent my childhood being trained for exactly this kind of diplomatic assignment," Selene said, something wry beneath the words. "Understanding infrastructure, understanding leverage, understanding exactly what makes a territory worth conquering or worth partnering with instead. I don't often get to appreciate any of it for its own sake, rather than its strategic value."

"Is that what you're doing now? Appreciating it for its own sake?"

Selene considered the question with unexpected seriousness. "I think I might be," she admitted. "Which is either refreshing or considerably more dangerous than my usual professional detachment, depending on how my uncle eventually judges the outcome of this particular assignment."

They continued the tour through the afternoon, conversation drifting easily between practical observation and increasingly personal territory — Selene asking careful, genuine questions about Jo's life before the binding, Jo finding herself answering with more openness than she'd initially intended, some quality in Selene's attentive curiosity making honesty feel considerably easier than the careful diplomatic caution she'd been maintaining with everyone else in this unfamiliar valley.

"You miss your farm, don't you?" Selene observed, watching Jo's expression shift while describing her family's south pasture.

"I miss what it used to be, before the drought," Jo admitted. "I don't know if I miss the actual daily grind of trying to keep it alive against impossible odds. Mostly I think I miss simply being useful in a way I understood completely, rather than fumbling through pack customs I'm still learning."

"You're not fumbling nearly as much as you seem to think," Selene said gently, softly reaching out to hold Jo's hand. "I've watched you navigate this entire strange new world with more grace than most people manage in a lifetime, let alone a handful of weeks."

"That's kind of you to say," Jo responded shyly. Something about Selene's hand in hers made her cheeks burning red.

"It's simply true," Selene continued, something warmer than simple diplomatic courtesy coloring her voice. "I find myself considerably more impressed by you than I expected to be, walking into this assignment and considerably more... curious."

Jo tried to hide her reddened cheeks. "What did you expect, walking into this assignment?"

"Someone considerably more bitter," Selene admitted. "A woman forced into marriage against her will, understandably resentful of the entire arrangement. I didn't expect someone who'd actually taken the time to learn this valley's irrigation history, or who genuinely cared whether Hollow's End's water treaty served the town's actual needs rather than simply satisfying formal treaty language."

"I've had considerable practice caring about irrigation," Jo said dryly. "It rather comes with the territory, when your entire hometown's survival depends on it."

"I suppose it does," Selene said, something fond entering her expression. She kept holding Jo's hand, squeezing it softly this time.

The observation hung between them with a charge Jo chose. For the moment, she let her hand remain in Selene's, lingering with a cloud of uncertainty that hung over her head. She tried not to examine too closely, and they returned to the manor as evening settled over the valley. They were both quieter than the afternoon's easy conversation had been, each privately turning over exactly what this particular growing familiarity might eventually mean for the careful, guarded lives they'd both been trying to maintain.

"What is happening to me?" Jo muttered under her breath as they both parted ways to their rooms, but she couldn't help but turn back, watching Selene gracefully sway her hips as she walked away. "f**k, this is bad..."