Chapter Ten
JEANNE
The door whispered to her while she slept.
Not words, exactly. More like a frequency she could sense in her teeth, a low vibration that settled deep inside her and pulled.
It had been silent during the three days of her heat, as if even the curse knew better than to compete with biology.
But now that the heat had burned itself out, now that her body was sated and her mind was dangerously clear, the pull had returned even stronger than before.
Jeanne lay in the dark of Anatole's cabin and breathed through it.
The sheets still carried his scent, layered under something warmer from the days they'd spent tangled together.
Her body was sore in ways she'd never been sore before, tender between her thighs, and the ache wasn't entirely unpleasant.
Her skin still hummed with the memory of him.
But underneath that hum, the door.
Come see, it sang. Come see what love looks like when it dies.
She pressed her face into the pillow and counted her breaths until the pull loosened its grip. Twenty-three breaths tonight. Last night it had taken fifteen. The curse was gaining ground.
Sleep wouldn't come after that. She dressed in the dark, pulling on the borrowed clothes that still hung loose on her frame, and slipped out of the cabin.
The ship was quiet at this hour, the skeleton watch moving through their duties with the easy rhythm of wolves who'd sailed together for years.
A few nodded to her as she passed. Others looked away, not from hostility but from something closer to respect.
She'd stitched Sébastien's face during the storm.
Word had spread. The crew was beginning to see her as something other than the omega.
She climbed to the upper deck. The night was clear, the Crimson Sea flat and black as obsidian, reflecting a sky crowded with stars. She tipped her head back and tried to find the constellations Anatole had shown her.
The Wolf's Eye. True north. She located it after a moment, a bright point of light anchoring the sky.
"You're supposed to be resting."
His voice came from the shadows near the helm. She'd walked right past him without seeing him, which told her something about how quietly a wolf could sit when he wanted to.
"You keep saying that." She moved toward him. "And you keep being out here when you say it, which makes you a hypocrite."
Anatole sat on the deck, his back against the base of the helm, legs stretched out in front of him. No coat, no boots. His shirt was unlaced at the throat, the silver-blue streak in his beard catching starlight. He looked stripped down. Unarmored.
He looked like the man she'd seen during her heat, not the captain who terrorized the Crimson Sea.
"Couldn't sleep," he said.
"Neither could I." She sat beside him without asking permission. Close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. Close enough to catch his scent on the still air. "The door woke me up."
His head turned. In the darkness, she could just make out the shape of his profile, the strong line of his nose, the way his hair fell loose around his shoulders. "How bad?"
"Worse than before the heat. Twenty-three breaths to push it down tonight. Fifteen last night." She drew her knees up to her chest. "I'm keeping count. It seems important to know whether it's getting stronger."
"It is. It always does." His voice was steady, but his hand, resting on the deck between them, had curled into a fist. "After the heat, the curse pushes harder. As if it knows the omega has gotten closer to the alpha. As if it's trying to claim her before the bond can."
"Cheerful."
"I stopped being cheerful about twelve years ago."
She leaned sideways until her shoulder rested against his arm. He stiffened, then slowly, deliberately, relaxed into the contact. It was a small thing. A shoulder against an arm.
"Tell me about the others," she said. "Not how they died. How they lived. On this ship, with you."
He was silent for a long time. She thought he might refuse. But the darkness seemed to make it easier, the same way knotting had made conversation flow during the heat. Something about not having to look each other in the eye.
"Celeste was the second," he said. "After Marguerite. She was a wolf omega from a northern pack. She challenged me the first night aboard, tried to take a knife to my throat." Something in his voice might have been fondness. "I respected her for it. She lasted four months before the room took her."
"Four months."
"The longest any of them held out. She was strong-willed.
Stubborn. Reminds me of you, in some ways.
" He paused. "In the end, it wasn't enough.
She started sleepwalking. I'd find her standing in front of the door at three in the morning, her hand on the wood, talking to something I couldn't hear.
I moved her to a different cabin. Chained off the corridor.
None of it mattered. The curse found a way. "
Jeanne's throat ached. "And the others?"
"Isabeau lasted two months. She was clever, tried to outsmart the curse.
Researched old magic, made deals with traders at port for protection charms. None of them worked.
Vivienne lasted six weeks. She was kind, the gentlest person I've ever known, and the curse tore through her like paper.
" His breathing had gone uneven. "Lucienne was brave. Adele was..."
He stopped. The silence stretched.
"Adele was pregnant. Three months along. She said she had something to tell me the morning she opened the door." His fist tightened on the deck, tendons standing out along his forearm.
"And it’s been twelve years since she died?"
"I swore I wouldn't take another omega. Swore I'd let my wolf starve and go mad before I put another woman in that room's path.
" He turned to look at her, and the starlight caught his eyes, full of mad regret and pain.
"Then the debt collectors sent word about a human omega in Roquemort, and I broke every promise I'd made to myself in the space of a single breath. "
"Because I might survive it."
"Because you might survive it. Because the witch's magic was built for wolves.
Because I was running out of time." He uncurled his fist and turned his hand over, palm up on the deck between them.
An offering, or a confession. "My wolf was degrading.
Apex alphas without a mate bond lose control eventually.
Go feral. I had a year, maybe two, before I wasn't safe to be around. "
She stared at his open hand. The calluses from rope and rigging. The hand that had held her through three days of heat.
She placed her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers. Not gripping. Just holding.
They sat together in silence after that, hand in hand, watching the stars wheel slowly overhead. The pull in her chest was a constant low-grade ache, but with his hand around hers it was easier to ignore.
ANATOLE
HE COULDN'T STOP TOUCHING her.
Not in the desperate, heat-driven way of the previous days.
This was worse, in some ways. During the heat, he'd had biology to blame.
Now, in the clear light of morning, there was no excuse for the way his hand found the small of her back as he guided her to the galley for breakfast. No excuse for the way his fingers lingered when he passed her a mug of the bitter tea Gris brewed each morning.
No excuse for the way he leaned close to point out a feature on the navigation chart and stayed there, breathing her scent, long after she'd seen what he was showing her.
His wolf was unbearable about it. A running commentary of satisfaction that made him grind his teeth in frustration.
Touch her more. Put our scent on her skin. She likes it when we're close. Look how she leans toward us. She is ours. She chose us. She held our hand under the stars.
He'd held hands with her. Sat on the deck like a lovesick boy and held her hand and told her about the dead brides, and instead of running screaming, she'd laced her fingers through his and sat with him until dawn.
"You're staring at her again," Luc said from the helm.
Anatole dragged his gaze away from where Jeanne was sitting cross-legged near the bow, a length of rope in her hands as she practiced the knots he'd taught her.
Her braid had come loose, honey-brown strands whipping around her face in the wind, and she kept blowing them out of her eyes with an expression of intense concentration.
"She's good for you. The crew sees it. I see it. For the first time in years, you look like a man with something to live for."
"That's exactly what scares me."
"I know." Luc's scarred face held no judgment. "But consider this. You've been treating every omega like a tool to break the curse or a victim to protect from it. Maybe what's needed is neither. Maybe what's needed is a partner."
"She's not my partner. She's my prisoner."
"Is she? Because from where I stand, she's sitting on your deck by choice, practicing knots you taught her, wearing your shirt under that jacket, and every wolf on this ship can smell that she wants to be here."
Anatole looked at Jeanne again. She'd given up on the knot and was now watching the sea, her face turned toward the horizon, the wind pulling at her hair. She must have sensed his gaze because she turned, and across the length of the deck, their eyes met.
She smiled. Small and uncertain and real.
His wolf howled. Not with hunger or rage or desperation, but with something far more dangerous.
Joy.
"If I let myself love her," he said to Luc without looking away from Jeanne, "and the curse takes her, I will not survive it. Not this time."
"Then make sure the curse doesn't take her."
"I don't know how."
"You didn't know how to captain a ship at first either. You learned." Luc clapped him on the shoulder. "Figure it out, Captain."
JEANNE
SHE WAS GOING TO KISS him.