He could feel it, a darkness gathering at the edges of his awareness. The same feeling he'd had with Marguerite, in the days before she'd found the room. Like something was waiting, watching, preparing to strike.
"Captain."
Luc approached, two cups of what passed for coffee on the ship. He handed one to Anatole without a word.
"You saw," Anatole said. Not a question.
"The whole crew saw." Luc leaned against the rail. "You teaching her to sail. Smiling. Actually smiling, like the old days."
"It was a mistake."
"Was it?" Luc sipped his coffee. "Or was it the first honest thing you've done since she came aboard?"
"Honesty will kill her."
"Maybe. Or maybe honesty is what saves her." Luc was quiet for a moment. "The curse requires true love, freely given. You've been treating it like a death sentence. What if it's actually the key?"
"Love killed Marguerite."
"Marguerite's love was hidden. Rushed. Formed in secret and shame." Luc met his eyes. "That's not what's happening with Jeanne. She knows who you are. She knows what you've done. She knows the danger. And she's choosing you anyway."
"She doesn't know what she's choosing."
Anatole wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe Jeanne was different, special, strong enough to break what had killed six women before her.
But wanting didn't change reality.
"The door will call her," he said quietly. "It's already started. And when it does, when she can't resist anymore, she'll open it. She'll look in the mirror. And she'll die, just like all the others."
"Maybe." Luc finished his coffee. "Or maybe she'll survive. Maybe the witch never planned for a human omega. Maybe that's the loophole that breaks everything."
"And if it's not?"
"Then we’re all damned.”
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.
