The Alpha's Bargain

CHAPTER FIVE

Dorian found her afterward, in the manor's small library, and surprised her by settling into the chair across from hers rather than simply delivering whatever pack business had brought him looking for her and departing again, as had become his habit over their first week together.

"Garrick tells me you asked him some pointed questions about border security," he said, not quite an accusation, more genuine curiosity threading beneath the observation.

"I like understanding things properly before I have to live inside them," Jo said. "It's a farming habit, I think. You don't plant a field without understanding the soil first."

"That's a remarkably practical way to approach a fated mate bond."

"Someone in this arrangement has to be practical," Jo said, though warmth colored the words rather than any real edge. "You've spent this entire week being formally correct and carefully guarded. I'm trying to actually learn the shape of the life I'm apparently about to live."

Something in Dorian's expression shifted at that — not quite a smile, but the careful, guarded stillness he usually wore easing by some small, deliberate degree. "Would you like to actually see it, then? Rather than just reading treaty documents and asking Garrick pointed questions about border skirmishes?"

"See what?"

"The valley. Properly. Not the manor, or the ceremony grounds, or whatever formal tour Garrick's already walked you through." He rose, extending a hand with a hesitance that looked almost boyish on a man who otherwise carried himself with such coiled, deliberate authority. "I'd like to show you, if you're willing. Before the ceremony makes it formally yours to share, I'd rather you choose to want it first."

She took his hand, and he led her out past the manor's formal gardens to a ridge overlooking the full sweep of pack territory — terraced farmland catching the last gold light of afternoon, the spring's clean water threading silver through fields that had never once known the particular desperation of drought, smoke curling from a dozen scattered homesteads settling into evening.

"It's beautiful," Jo said, and meant it, some of the careful wariness she'd been carrying since her arrival easing at the sight of a place that looked, from this particular vantage, considerably more like a home than a political fortress.

"My grandfather built the first terraces, three generations back," Dorian said, settling onto a flat stone that seemed, by its worn, smooth surface, to have served this exact purpose for considerably longer than his own lifetime. "My father expanded them. I've spent six years trying to make sure I leave this place better than I found it, rather than simply keeping it from falling apart on my particular watch."

"Is that difficult? Following two generations of men who apparently built something worth continuing?"

"Some days, unbearably." He was quiet for a moment, watching the valley settle into evening. "I was nineteen when my father died. I hadn't finished training for half the responsibilities suddenly required of me. I spent that first year terrified, every single day, that I'd be the generation that finally broke what the first two built."

"You didn't break it."

"No," he agreed. "Though I came considerably closer than anyone outside Garrick and Freya ever fully knew." He turned to look at her, something unguarded in his expression that she hadn't yet seen from him. "I'm telling you this because I want you to understand what you're actually marrying into, beyond the treaty's formal terms. Not simply a title, or a mate bond, or even this valley's physical beauty. You're marrying into six years of a man learning, slowly and at considerable personal cost, how to actually lead rather than merely survive leading."

"What was the closest moment? When you nearly broke, I mean."

Dorian considered the question with visible seriousness, weighing how much to share. "A border dispute, two years into my leadership. I made a strategic error — trusted an ally's assessment without independently verifying it, and it cost this pack considerable territory before I recognized my mistake. Garrick had to talk me through the aftermath, convince me I hadn't simply proven myself unfit for the role everyone had already begun doubting I deserved at such a young age." His jaw tightened at the memory. "I've been considerably more careful since. Perhaps too careful, at times, given how long it took me to trust anything as uncertain as a fated bond."

"Thank you for telling me that."

"Thank you for asking the kind of questions that made me want to." His hand found hers on the stone between them, tentative in a way that contradicted every confident, alpha-composed inch of him she'd witnessed so far. "I don't know how to do easy intimacy, Jo. I've spent so long being careful that I'm not certain I remember how to simply let someone in without calculating the risk first. But I find, sitting here with you, that I want to learn. That's new, for me. Wanting to learn something dangerous, instead of merely guarding against it."

"I don't know how to do easy intimacy either," Jo admitted. "I've spent two years being the only reliable adult in my family, making every decision alone because there wasn't time to be vulnerable about any of them. Maybe we can learn badly, together, rather than expertly, alone."

Dorian's laugh, when it came, was low and genuine, the first sound of real, unguarded amusement she'd heard from him since her arrival. "I think I'd like that considerably better than expertise," he said, and they sat together on that worn stone as the sun finally set fully over the valley, saying very little more, simply existing together in a silence that felt, for the first time since her arrival, entirely comfortable rather than merely careful.

"Can I ask you something forward?" Jo said finally, as the last light faded and the first stars began emerging overhead.

"Always."

"Would you kiss me, if I asked you to? Or does the mate bond make that feel like something owed rather than something chosen?"

Dorian considered the question with visible seriousness, turning to face her fully in the gathering dark. "I've wanted to since the moment you walked into that hall," he admitted. "I've been careful not to, precisely because I didn't want you to feel it as something the bond demanded of you, rather than something you actually wanted for yourself."

"I'm asking," Jo said softly. "That should answer the wanting part clearly enough."

He reached up to cup her face with a gentleness that contradicted every hardened, capable inch of him, and pressed his lips gently on hers slowly, testing, giving her every opportunity to pull back before deepening it into something more certain. Jo melted into it without hesitation, months of careful distance and days of complicated fear dissolving into the simple, undeniable fact of wanting this man's mouth against hers. He pushed in a bit deeper, pulling her bottom lip softly with his teeth and watching her respond with a soft moan. His hands gently exploring the curves of her body through the roughness of her clothes. Jo savoured the kiss, allowing herself to be vulnerable at that moment. When they finally broke apart, both of them slightly breathless, Dorian's forehead rested against hers with a tenderness that felt like its own kind of vow.

"That felt considerably less like obligation and considerably more like relief," he murmured, something wondering in his voice.

"Good," Jo whispered back. "Because I intend to ask again, before this particular arrangement is through."

"I'm counting on it," he said, and kissed her once more.

A loud, unmistakable thud followed as Dorian rested his lips on hers again. The kiss broke off immediately as they both shot their eyes over the valley.

"What the hell was that?" Jo finally asked.