Chapter One
ANATOLE
The Barbe-Bleue cut through the morning fog, her black sails swallowing what little light the dawn offered. Anatole stood at the bow, one hand resting on the rail, watching the coastline of Roquemort emerge from the mist. Vineyards crawled up the hillsides in neat, dying rows. It was a town that had seen better centuries huddled against the shore.
Somewhere in that town, his seventh bride was waking up.
His wolf stirred beneath his skin, restless in a way it hadn't been for years.Hungry,it whispered.Starving. We need. We need.Twelve years without a true mate bond, twelve years of fighting through ruts alone, chained in the hold while his crew kept their distance. An unbonded apex alpha couldn't survive forever. The instability was already showing in the gray threading through his temples, the way his control slipped more easily with each passing month.
He needed an omega. He needed the curse broken. They were tangled together—mistaken for the same need—and that mistake had already cost six women their lives.
"Captain." Luc's boots were soft on the deck as he approached. His first mate's scarred face was unreadable, but Anatole could smell the hesitation on him. Worry, layered over years of loyalty. "The debt collectors sent word. They have her ready."
"A human omega." Anatole kept his voice flat. "Confirmed?"
"Confirmed. The father hid her for years, but he couldn't hide her from the men he owed money to." A pause. "She's young. Twenty-two."
Young. Marguerite had been young too. Twenty when she died in his arms, the curse eating through their bond like acid through silk.
"The curse was designed for wolf omegas," Anatole said. "Morvenna never accounted for a human. The magic might not take the same way."
"Or it might kill her faster."
Anatole finally turned from the rail. The silver-blue streak in his beard caught the weak light, the curse's mark. "Every omega I've taken has died. Bought, bartered, given willingly. It doesn't matter. They find the room. They open the door. They look in the mirror." His hands flexed at his sides. "This one is different. She has to be different."
His wolf pushed against his ribs, urgent and angry.This one. Yes. This one will live. This one is ours.
Anatole told his wolf to shut up. It had been wrong before.
JEANNE
THE VINES WERE DYING.
Jeanne knelt in the dirt between rows of grapes that would never ripen, her fingers working at weeds that hardly mattered anymore. The vineyard had been failing for five years, ever since her mother's death. Her father had stopped caring about the land around the same time he'd started caring about cards and dice and the sweet promises of wolves who lent money at ruinous rates.
She could smell the sea on the wind. The salt and brine made her skin prickle with unease. Her omega senses were sharper this close to her heat, and she'd learned to trust them.
"Jeanne?"
Her brother Marc picked his way between the rows, his face pale beneath his farmer's tan. He was thirty-three, ten years her elder, and he'd been the one to help her hide what she was after she'd presented at sixteen. Six years of suppressants bought on the black market, of masking her scent with bitter herbs, of never letting any wolf get close enough to smell the truth on her.
"They're coming," Marc said. "Father's creditors. They'll be here within the hour."
Jeanne stood, brushing dirt from her worn skirts. "How much does he owe them now?"
Marc's throat worked. He wouldn't meet her eyes. "It doesn't matter. They're not here for money."
The air left her lungs. She understood then, in the way that omegas always understood danger before it arrived. Her father's debts. Her hidden designation. The wolves who collected for the sea captains.
"He sold me."
It wasn't a question. Marc's silence was answer enough.
"To whom?" Her voice came out steady, which surprised her. Inside, the careful architecture of her hidden life was collapsing into rubble. "Which captain?"
"Jeanne..."
"Which captain?"
