Chapter Four
ANATOLE
The hold smelled of rust and salt and old fear.
Anatole stood in the center of the cramped space, running his hands over the chains bolted to the hull.
Iron links as thick as his thumb, designed to hold a shifting alpha in the grip of rut.
He'd had them forged specially after the third bride died, when he'd realized his wolf couldn't be trusted around an omega in heat.
Twelve years, these chains had held him. Twelve years of ruts spent alone in this darkness, his body tearing itself apart with need while his wolf howled for a mate it couldn't have. Twelve years since the last omega died.
He tested the first shackle, then the second. The metal groaned but held. It would have to be enough.
It will not be enough, his wolf said. Not this time. Not with her.
Anatole ignored it. He'd been ignoring his wolf's opinions about Jeanne since the moment she'd come aboard, and he wasn't about to stop now.
But the wolf wasn't wrong. He could still feel her hands on his face, gentle as she'd tended his wound. Could still smell her scent clinging to his skin even after he'd washed. Honeysuckle and vanilla, threaded with the rising musk of approaching heat.
Two days. Maybe less. And then...
He closed his eyes and saw Marguerite. Not as she'd been at the end, gray-skinned and gasping, the curse eating her from the inside out. But before. Laughing in the sunlight on her mother's island, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, reaching for him with hands that had never known cruelty.
I love you, she'd said. Nothing can change that. Not my mother, not her magic, not anything.
She'd been wrong. Love itself had been the weapon that killed her. The curse fed on devotion, turned it rancid, used it to devour the one who loved.
He would not let that happen to Jeanne.
"Captain."
Luc's voice came from the stairs. Anatole didn't turn around.
"The chains will hold," he said. "They always have."
"That's not what I came to talk about." Luc descended the rest of the stairs, his boots heavy on the worn wood. "It's the omega."
"What about her?"
"She's been asking questions. Wanting to know when we next make port. Whether any of the crew might be sympathetic to helping her leave."
Anatole's hands stilled on the chains. "And what did you tell her?"
"The truth. That we won't make port for another three weeks. That the crew is loyal to you. That even if she managed to escape, a human omega alone on the Crimson Coast wouldn't last a day." Luc paused. "She didn't like hearing it."
"I imagine not."
"She's not giving up, though. I can see it in her eyes." Luc leaned against the hull, arms crossed.
Mate. Ours. She is ours.
"Then perhaps she needs to see how futile escape really is. I'm going to remind her what I am. What she is." Anatole released the chains and moved toward the stairs.
He didn't look back as he climbed out of the hold, but he could feel Luc's eyes on him. Judging. Pitying.
JEANNE
ESCAPE WAS IMPOSSIBLE.
Jeanne had spent the morning after the storm testing every avenue she could think of.
She'd asked Gris about the ship's route, trying to sound casual, and learned they were weeks from any port. And there wasn’t anything on board this ship that even came close to the herbs she had taken to dim her heat.
She'd even approached the young beta guard outside her door, Sébastien, hoping to find a crack in his loyalty, but he'd looked at her with such pity that she'd had to turn away.
"Even if you got off the ship," he'd said gently, "where would you go? The Crimson Coast is wolf territory. A human omega alone..." He'd shaken his head. "You're safer here. Even with the curse."
Safer. On a ship full of wolves, with a cursed alpha, and a forbidden door that called to her in her dreams.
She'd laughed at that. It hadn't sounded like laughter.
Now she watched the sun climb toward noon through the salt-streaked windows.
Her body ached with pre-heat symptoms that were growing harder to ignore.
Her nipples were so sensitive that even the soft fabric of her shift felt like torture.
Between her thighs, she was constantly damp, her body preparing for something her mind refused to accept.
And underneath all of it, the pull. The forbidden door calling to her, a constant tug behind her sternum that whispered you need to open the door.
Marc, she thought desperately. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to survive this.
But Marc was dead, and the only answer was the sound of the waves against the hull.
The door to the cabin opened without a knock.
The captain stood in the doorway, and Jeanne's traitorous body responded instantly. Her nipples hardened. Slick flooded between her legs. Every nerve ending lit up, screaming alpha, alpha, alpha.
She locked her knees and forced herself to stay seated. She would not go to him. She would not beg.
"Is there something you wanted?" Jeanne forced a calm she didn’t feel.
He moved so fast she barely saw it, his hands gripping her upper arms, pulling her close until they were chest to chest. His eyes blazed gold, his wolf rising to the surface.
"My wolf has claimed you as mate. From the moment I caught your scent on the dock, it's been howling for you.
Every instinct I have screams to throw you down and mount you and knot you until you can't remember your own name. "
Her breath caught. Her body flooded with heat, with need, with the desperate urge to bare her throat and submit.
"That’s what I want.”
She whimpered.
“But my wolf has been wrong before," he continued, his grip tightening.
He released her so suddenly she stumbled. By the time she caught her balance, he was already at the door.
"Your heat will hit tomorrow, maybe sooner. You are going nowhere. There is not escape from it or from me.”
“But you said...”
He cut her off. “I'll chain myself in the hold. Gris will take care of you." A pause. "But stay away from the forbidden door. Whatever it whispers to you, whatever it promises, don't listen. It's the only way you survive this heat without me."
Then he was gone, the door slamming behind him.
Jeanne stood in the middle of the cabin, shaking, her body screaming for him while her mind reeled. Mate. His wolf had claimed her as mate. That was why she responded to him so intensely, why every fiber of her being wanted to submit.
He loved us, the dead brides whispered in the back of her mind. He tried to save us. Look how that ended.
She pressed her hands over her ears, but the voices were inside her head. There was no blocking them out.
THAT NIGHT, THE DEAD brides were louder this time, their voices overlapping, weaving together into something almost like a song.
Jeanne, they called. Jeanne, come see. He called us mate too. But love is the trap, Jeanne. Love is the curse.
She walked toward the door. She didn't want to walk toward it, but her legs moved anyway, drawn by the pull in her chest. The light grew brighter as she approached, warm and inviting and wrong.
The handle was cool beneath her fingers.
Open it, Marguerite whispered. Open it and see. See what love did to us. See what it will do to you.
Her hand turned the handle.
She woke gasping, drenched in sweat. Her skin was on fire, too hot, feverish.
The pre-heat symptoms were worse than yesterday. Worse than this morning. Her nightgown was soaked through, clinging to her body, and between her thighs she was slick and aching.
The pull in her chest was stronger too. A chain now instead of a rope, dragging her toward the lowest deck. She could feel the door waiting for her, patient and certain.