“For as long as it takes to break the curse.”
“But how long is that?”
“We don’t know.”
THAT NIGHT, SHE WENTlooking for him. The sky was clear, stars brilliant against the darkness. The ship rocked gently, the storm's violence replaced by an almost eerie calm. Anatole stood at the rail, staring out at nothing.
"You're supposed to be resting." He didn't turn around.
"I've been resting for hours." She moved to stand beside him. "Couldn't sleep."
"Nightmares?"
"No." She didn't mention that her thoughts had been about him, not the forbidden door. That felt too revealing. "Just restless."
They stood in silence. The only sounds were the creak of the ship, the whisper of water against the hull, the distant call of night birds.
"Thank you." His voice was quiet. "For helping Sébastien. You didn't have to."
"Yes, I did." She looked at him. "He was hurt. I could help. That's all that mattered."
"Most omegas wouldn't have left the safety of the cabin during a storm."
"I'm not most omegas." She said it without heat, just stating fact. "I'm human. I don't have a wolf's strength or healing. All Ihave is what my brother taught me—how to mend things, how to help people, how to keep going when everything's falling apart."
"He taught you well."
"He did." The grief rose up, familiar and sharp. "He taught me a lot of things." Her voice caught. "But he didn’t teach me how to go on without him."
Anatole turned to face her then. In the starlight, his eyes were shadowed. "Tell me about him. About Marc."
She shouldn't. Talking about Marc made the loss fresh. But Anatole had shared things with her—about Marguerite, about the curse, about the man he'd been before everything went wrong.
Maybe she owed him the same honesty.
"He was ten years older than me." She looked out at the sea. "When our mother died, he tried to fill that space for me—being mother and brother both."
"What about your father?"
"He loved his wine and his cards more than his children." The bitterness in her voice surprised her. "After mother died, Marc held our family together through sheer stubbornness."
"Is that where you learned it? The stubbornness?"
Despite everything, she almost smiled. "Probably. Marc used to say I was the most stubborn person he'd ever met, and that was saying something coming from him."
"What else did he teach you?"
She thought about that. About all the small moments that had made up their life together.
"How to climb. There was this old oak tree at the edge of our property, and he taught me to climb it when I was six. Said if I could climb trees, I could escape anything." Her throat tightened. "He was wrong about that."
"He gave you tools to survive." Anatole's voice was gentle. "That's not nothing."
"No." She blinked back tears. "It's not nothing. But it wasn't enough. He died trying to save me, and I couldn't save him."
"That's not your fault."
"Isn't it?" She turned to face him. "If I hadn't been omega, if my father hadn't sold me, Marc would have had a much different life. He'd probably be married, maybe with children. Instead, he's dead in the dirt because of what I am."
