JEANNE
SHE HEARD THE COMMOTIONthrough the cabin door. Boots pounding overhead. Shouted orders. The heavy rumble of something being rolled across the deck, and even through wood and distance, the unmistakable tension of wolves preparing for violence.
The door was locked from the outside.
She tried the handle three times before accepting it. Someone had bolted her in while she slept. A week ago, that would have sent her into a rage. Now she understood it for what it was: protection, not imprisonment. A distinction she was still learning to navigate.
She pressed her ear to the door and listened. Voices, too far away to make out words. The wind groaning through the rigging as the ship changed course. And underneath it all, the hum from the lowest deck, the forbidden door taking advantage of her fear the way it always did.
Come see,it whispered.While he's busy. While no one's watching. Come see what's behind the door.
"Shut up," she told it.
Thirty-one breaths to push the pull down this time. A new record, and not in the direction she wanted.
She went to the port holes. Three ships were bearing down on the Barbe-Bleue, red-sailed, their decks crowded with armed wolves. The lead ship was close enough that she could see individual faces on the rail. Hard faces. Hungry faces. The kind of faces she'd seen on the debt collectors who had taken her from Roquemort.
Then she heard Anatole's voice, too distant for words but unmistakable in its tone. That voice commanded submission from wolves who were born to dominate. She'd heard it give orders, issue warnings, and whisper her name against her skin. She knew every register it had.
This register was new. This was the voice of a wolf about to kill.
The sound that followed would stay with her for the rest of her life.
Not a howl. Not a roar. Something between the two, a sound that bypassed her ears and went straight to her marrow.The entire ship shuddered. On the approaching vessels, she watched wolves stumble backward, some of them dropping to their knees, their bodies responding to an alpha command so powerful it reached across open water.
On the lead ship, the red-haired man who'd been speaking was backing away from the rail. His wolves were scrambling, some of them shifting in panic, their bodies responding to the threat before their minds could catch up. The two flanking ships had already begun to veer off, their captains reading the situation faster than their leader.
The lead ship's bow swung away. Slowly at first, then faster as the helmsman brought her around. The red sails filled with wind as the three ships retreated, growing smaller against the eastern sky, and Jeanne watched until they were nothing but smudges on the horizon.
THE BOLT SLID BACKa few minutes later.
Anatole stood in the doorway. His hair was loose and wild, his chest heaving, and his skin was flushed. The silver-blue streak in his beard stood out starkly against the color in his face.
His scent flooded the cabin. Not the controlled, banked-fire scent she'd grown accustomed to. This was raw. Pine, gunpowder and salt, made her omega senses light up. His wolf was still close to the surface, not fully retreated, and it was making him smell like the embodiment of every alpha instinct her body was wired to respond to.
Her nipples tightened. Slick gathered between her thighs. She ignored both.
"Who were they?" she asked.
"A pack from the Bone Harbors. Their captain wanted to buy you." His voice was rough, scraped thin from the shift. "Or take you, if I refused to sell."
"You didn't attack them. But they ran away anyway."
"Apex command. The dominance signal is strong enough in wolf form to force submission from any wolf within range. It's a blunt weapon. I don't use it unless I have to." He leaned against the doorframe, and she could see the tremors running through his arms. "Pleisse won't come back. His wolves won't sail against an apex who's declared a mate claim. Pack law forbids it."
"Mate claim." She turned the words over. "Is that what you declared?"
"I said you were mine." His eyes searched her face.
She reached up and touched his face. Her fingers traced the silver-blue streak in his beard, the mark of the curse that had taken everything from him.
"You would have killed every wolf on those ships," she said. "If they'd gotten closer. If they'd boarded."
"Yes."
"And you're shaking right now because you didn't have to. Because they left, and you don't have blood on your hands." She could see it in the way his body vibrated, the adrenaline of a fight that hadn't happened burning through him with nowhere to go. "You're relieved."
He closed his eyes. Her hand was still on his face, her thumb resting against the curse mark, and she watched the tension bleed from his shoulders in increments. The shaking slowed.
