But underneath that hum, the door.
Come see,it sang.Come see what love looks like when it dies.
She pressed her face into the pillow and counted her breaths until the pull loosened its grip. Twenty-three breaths tonight. Last night it had taken fifteen. The curse was gaining ground.
Sleep wouldn't come after that. She dressed in the dark, pulling on the borrowed clothes that still hung loose on her frame, and slipped out of the cabin.
The ship was quiet at this hour, the skeleton watch moving through their duties with the easy rhythm of wolves who'd sailed together for years. A few nodded to her as she passed. Otherslooked away, not from hostility but from something closer to respect. She'd stitched Sébastien's face during the storm. Word had spread. The crew was beginning to see her as something other than the omega.
She climbed to the upper deck. The night was clear, the Crimson Sea flat and black as obsidian, reflecting a sky crowded with stars. She tipped her head back and tried to find the constellations Anatole had shown her.
The Wolf's Eye. True north. She located it after a moment, a bright point of light anchoring the sky.
"You're supposed to be resting."
His voice came from the shadows near the helm. She'd walked right past him without seeing him, which told her something about how quietly a wolf could sit when he wanted to.
"You keep saying that." She moved toward him. "And you keep being out here when you say it, which makes you a hypocrite."
Anatole sat on the deck, his back against the base of the helm, legs stretched out in front of him. No coat, no boots. His shirt was unlaced at the throat, the silver-blue streak in his beard catching starlight. He looked stripped down. Unarmored.
He looked like the man she'd seen during her heat, not the captain who terrorized the Crimson Sea.
"Couldn't sleep," he said.
"Neither could I." She sat beside him without asking permission. Close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. Close enough to catch his scent on the still air. "The door woke me up."
His head turned. In the darkness, she could just make out the shape of his profile, the strong line of his nose, the way his hair fell loose around his shoulders. "How bad?"
"Worse than before the heat. Twenty-three breaths to push it down tonight. Fifteen last night." She drew her knees up to herchest. "I'm keeping count. It seems important to know whether it's getting stronger."
"It is. It always does." His voice was steady, but his hand, resting on the deck between them, had curled into a fist. "After the heat, the curse pushes harder. As if it knows the omega has gotten closer to the alpha. As if it's trying to claim her before the bond can."
"Cheerful."
"I stopped being cheerful about twelve years ago."
She leaned sideways until her shoulder rested against his arm. He stiffened, then slowly, deliberately, relaxed into the contact. It was a small thing. A shoulder against an arm.
"Tell me about the others," she said. "Not how they died. How they lived. On this ship, with you."
He was silent for a long time. She thought he might refuse. But the darkness seemed to make it easier, the same way knotting had made conversation flow during the heat. Something about not having to look each other in the eye.
"Celeste was the second," he said. "After Marguerite. She was a wolf omega from a northern pack. She challenged me the first night aboard, tried to take a knife to my throat." Something in his voice might have been fondness. "I respected her for it. She lasted four months before the room took her."
"Four months."
"The longest any of them held out. She was strong-willed. Stubborn. Reminds me of you, in some ways." He paused. "In the end, it wasn't enough. She started sleepwalking. I'd find her standing in front of the door at three in the morning, her hand on the wood, talking to something I couldn't hear. I moved her to a different cabin. Chained off the corridor. None of it mattered. The curse found a way."
Jeanne's throat ached. "And the others?"
"Isabeau lasted two months. She was clever, tried to outsmart the curse. Researched old magic, made deals with traders at port for protection charms. None of them worked. Vivienne lasted six weeks. She was kind, the gentlest person I've ever known, and the curse tore through her like paper." His breathing had gone uneven. "Lucienne was brave. Adele was..."
He stopped. The silence stretched.
"Adele was pregnant. Three months along. She said she had something to tell me the morning she opened the door." His fist tightened on the deck, tendons standing out along his forearm.
"And it’s been twelve years since she died?"
