Chapter Eleven
ANATOLE
The sail appeared at dawn, a pale smudge against the eastern horizon that shouldn't have been there.
Anatole had been at the helm since the last bell of the night watch, letting the wheel's resistance ground him while Jeanne slept below.
He'd developed the habit over the past week, these stolen hours before sunrise when he could think without her scent unraveling him.
The mornings were his. He used them to be the captain instead of the man who was losing his war against loving her.
The smudge resolved itself over the next twenty minutes. Not one sail. Three. A formation, running close-hauled on the wind, cutting across the Barbe-Bleue's heading with a purpose that had nothing to do with coincidence.
"Luc." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. His first mate slept light as a cat and always within earshot.
Boots on the stairs. Luc emerged onto the deck, already buttoning his coat, his scarred face creased from the hammock's canvas. He followed Anatole's gaze to the horizon and went still.
Luc pulled the spyglass from his belt and raised it. "Three ships. Bone Harbor colors." After a long moment he lowered it again. "The Sang-Noir leads them. That's Rickard Pleisse's flagship."
Anatole knew the name. Every captain on the Crimson Sea knew the name.
Pleisse ran a pack of sixty wolves out of the Bone Harbors, trafficking in everything from stolen cargo to slaves.
He was the kind of alpha who measured his worth by what he could take from others, and he'd been circling Anatole's territory for years, waiting for weakness.
"How did he find us?" Anatole's grip tightened on the wheel. "We've been sailing open water for weeks. No ports, no trade lanes."
"Word travels. You took a new omega in Roquemort. Half the coast watched her come aboard in chains." Luc tucked the spyglass away. "A human omega, Captain. You know what she's worth to men like Pleisse. There are wolves who'd sail into a hurricane for the chance to claim one."
Anatole's wolf surged behind his ribs, and the surge wasn't the familiar ache of wanting Jeanne. This was something older. Blacker. The territorial rage of an apex alpha sensing a rival near what was his.
Kill them, his wolf said. Not a suggestion. A command. Kill them before they get close enough to smell her.
"Wake the crew," Anatole said. "Battle stations. And send someone to lock the cabin. She doesn't come on deck until this is over."
"And if Pleisse wants to parley?"
"He can parley with my cannons."
Luc nodded and was gone. Within minutes, the Barbe-Bleue came alive.
Wolves poured from below decks, pulling on boots and strapping on weapons with the economy of a crew that had fought together for years.
The gun crews ran out the cannons. Sails were trimmed for speed and maneuverability.
The black flag rose up the mainmast, snapping in the morning wind.
Anatole watched the approaching ships grow larger and calculated distances, angles, wind advantage. The Barbe-Bleue was faster than anything on the Crimson Sea, but three against one meant he couldn't simply run. Not without showing his stern and giving Pleisse a shot at the rudder.
Besides. Running wasn't in his nature.
The Sang-Noir was close enough now to make out her details without the glass.
Red sails, dark hull, a crew that lined the rails with weapons drawn.
And on the foredeck, a figure Anatole recognized even at this distance.
Tall, lean, red-haired. Rickard Pleisse, grinning like a wolf who'd cornered a rabbit.
"Bluebeard." Pleisse's voice carried across the narrowing water, amplified by alpha projection. "We heard you'd taken a new bride. A human omega, no less. Generous of you to sail so far from help."
Anatole said nothing. Let the silence do the work.
"I'm a reasonable man," Pleisse called. "I have no interest in fighting the great Bluebeard over a woman. Trade her to me. I'll pay handsomely. Whatever you spent on her, I'll double it. She'll fetch ten times that in the Bone Harbors."
The Barbe-Bleue's crew went rigid. Twenty seawolves, every one of them staring at their captain, waiting.
"She is not for sale, for trade, or for negotiation." Anatole said. He amplified his voice so that the other ship and crew heard it in their bones.
"Then what is she?"
"Mine." The word came from somewhere below thought, from the place where man and wolf were the same creature.
JEANNE
SHE HEARD THE COMMOTION through the cabin door. Boots pounding overhead. Shouted orders. The heavy rumble of something being rolled across the deck, and even through wood and distance, the unmistakable tension of wolves preparing for violence.
The door was locked from the outside.
She tried the handle three times before accepting it. Someone had bolted her in while she slept. A week ago, that would have sent her into a rage. Now she understood it for what it was: protection, not imprisonment. A distinction she was still learning to navigate.
She pressed her ear to the door and listened. Voices, too far away to make out words. The wind groaning through the rigging as the ship changed course. And underneath it all, the hum from the lowest deck, the forbidden door taking advantage of her fear the way it always did.
Come see, it whispered. While he's busy. While no one's watching. Come see what's behind the door.
"Shut up," she told it.
Thirty-one breaths to push the pull down this time. A new record, and not in the direction she wanted.
She went to the port holes. Three ships were bearing down on the Barbe-Bleue, red-sailed, their decks crowded with armed wolves.
The lead ship was close enough that she could see individual faces on the rail.
Hard faces. Hungry faces. The kind of faces she'd seen on the debt collectors who had taken her from Roquemort.
Then she heard Anatole's voice, too distant for words but unmistakable in its tone. That voice commanded submission from wolves who were born to dominate. She'd heard it give orders, issue warnings, and whisper her name against her skin. She knew every register it had.
This register was new. This was the voice of a wolf about to kill.
The sound that followed would stay with her for the rest of her life.
Not a howl. Not a roar. Something between the two, a sound that bypassed her ears and went straight to her marrow.
The entire ship shuddered. On the approaching vessels, she watched wolves stumble backward, some of them dropping to their knees, their bodies responding to an alpha command so powerful it reached across open water.
On the lead ship, the red-haired man who'd been speaking was backing away from the rail.
His wolves were scrambling, some of them shifting in panic, their bodies responding to the threat before their minds could catch up.
The two flanking ships had already begun to veer off, their captains reading the situation faster than their leader.
The lead ship's bow swung away. Slowly at first, then faster as the helmsman brought her around. The red sails filled with wind as the three ships retreated, growing smaller against the eastern sky, and Jeanne watched until they were nothing but smudges on the horizon.
THE BOLT SLID BACK a few minutes later.
Anatole stood in the doorway. His hair was loose and wild, his chest heaving, and his skin was flushed. The silver-blue streak in his beard stood out starkly against the color in his face.
His scent flooded the cabin. Not the controlled, banked-fire scent she'd grown accustomed to.
This was raw. Pine, gunpowder and salt, made her omega senses light up.
His wolf was still close to the surface, not fully retreated, and it was making him smell like the embodiment of every alpha instinct her body was wired to respond to.
Her nipples tightened. Slick gathered between her thighs. She ignored both.
"Who were they?" she asked.
"A pack from the Bone Harbors. Their captain wanted to buy you." His voice was rough, scraped thin from the shift. "Or take you, if I refused to sell."
"You didn't attack them. But they ran away anyway."
"Apex command. The dominance signal is strong enough in wolf form to force submission from any wolf within range.
It's a blunt weapon. I don't use it unless I have to.
" He leaned against the doorframe, and she could see the tremors running through his arms. "Pleisse won't come back.
His wolves won't sail against an apex who's declared a mate claim. Pack law forbids it."
"Mate claim." She turned the words over. "Is that what you declared?"
"I said you were mine." His eyes searched her face.
She reached up and touched his face. Her fingers traced the silver-blue streak in his beard, the mark of the curse that had taken everything from him.
"You would have killed every wolf on those ships," she said. "If they'd gotten closer. If they'd boarded."
"Yes."
"And you're shaking right now because you didn't have to. Because they left, and you don't have blood on your hands." She could see it in the way his body vibrated, the adrenaline of a fight that hadn't happened burning through him with nowhere to go. "You're relieved."
He closed his eyes. Her hand was still on his face, her thumb resting against the curse mark, and she watched the tension bleed from his shoulders in increments. The shaking slowed.
"Twelve years ago, I wouldn't have hesitated.
I would have boarded the Sang-Noir and gutted Pleisse and mounted his head on my bowsprit as a warning.
" He opened his eyes. Blue, not gold. The wolf retreating, letting the man come forward.
"Today I stood on the rail and hoped they'd leave so I wouldn't have to. "
"What changed?"
"You know what changed."