She didn't move.
The nest was too right. Too necessary. Her body had made a decision that her mind had no authority to overrule, and fighting it would cost her energy she couldn't afford to waste. Not with the heat this close. Not with the door still whispering in the back of her skull.
So she lay in the nest she'd made from a cursed pirate's belongings, and she let herself breathe.
A knock at the door. "Little one?" Gris's voice, careful. "I brought supper."
"Come in."
The old cook entered with a tray, and she watched his gaze travel over the bed. Over the ransacked wardrobe, the clothes on the floor, the elaborate construction of blankets and shirts and folded sheets that she'd built without fully deciding to.
Recognition and an old sadness flickered across his face.
"The others did this too?" she asked.
Gris set the tray on the desk. "Every one of them. Some sooner than others." He paused, choosing his words. "Marguerite used to steal Anatole's coat right off his back. He'd be standing at the helm and she'd walk up behind him and just take it. He never stopped her."
Jeanne pulled one of the shirts closer to her chest. She told herself it was involuntary. "I can't help it."
"I know." Gris didn't say it with pity, which she was grateful for. He said it the way he might saythe tide's coming inorthe wind's shifted.A fact. No judgment attached. "It means your heat's close. By morning, I'd wager."
She knew. She could feel it building in her like a storm gathering behind the horizon, the pressure mounting in her belly and her breasts and the aching space between her thighs that no amount of shifting position could ease.
"Does he know?" She gestured at the nest, the evidence of her body's betrayal.
"He can smell it. All of it." Gris's expression was unreadable. "The nesting, the slick, the way your scent's been changing all day. He's been on the opposite end of the ship since noon trying to stay upwind of you, and it's not working."
Of course it wasn't working. She could smell him from here, through the walls, through the deck, through whatever distance he tried to put between them. The bond his wolf had declared was pulling at both of them like a rope with no slack left.
"Eat something," Gris said. "Whatever you can manage. You'll need the strength."
He left, closing the door behind him, and she was alone again in her nest. She ate a few bites of bread and some dried fish, though her appetite was nearly gone. Then she curled back into the hollow she'd made, pulled his shirt to her face, and breathed.
She should hate herself for this. For the way her body was preparing itself for a man she hadn't chosen, building a nest out of his scent like an offering, like a welcome. Marc would look at her and see surrender.
But Marc was dead. And the nest wasn't surrender. It was survival.
Her body knew something her mind was still fighting, and if she was going to make it through what came next, she needed every advantage her instincts could give her. Even the ones that came wrapped in a cursed alpha's shirt.
She buried her face in the linen and let his scent carry her toward the first real sleep she'd had since coming aboard.
The dead brides were quiet tonight. Maybe even they understood that an omega in a nest was not to be disturbed.
ANATOLE
HE COULDN'T SLEEP.
Anatole paced the deck in the darkness, the night wind cold against his skin. Above him, the stars wheeled slowly, indifferent to his suffering. Below him, in his cabin, Jeanne's scent seeped through the wood, sweet and ripe and maddening.
His wolf was pacing too, restless behind his ribs, snarling at the distance he'd put between them. It didn't understand. It couldn't understand. It only knew that their mate was close, and they weren't with her, and that felt wrong on a level deeper than thought.
Gris found him an hour before dawn, still pacing.
"You look like death," the old cook said, handing him a cup of something that smelled like herbs and bitterness.
"I feel like death." Anatole took the cup but didn't drink. "Her heat?"
"Tomorrow. Possibly tonight." Gris settled against the rail, his weathered face tired in the pre-dawn gray. "It'll be bad, Captain. Human omegas don't handle heat well without an alpha to ground them. Especially not a heat triggered by a compatible apex."
