"Double the watch on the lowest deck," he said. "Two wolves at all times, stationed at the corridor entrance. No one goes down there. No one. And if the omega approaches, you hold her. Physically. I don't care if she fights you. You do not let her near that door."
"Captain," Luc said carefully, "she's pack now. Laying hands on the captain's mate..."
"Is better than burying her." Anatole's voice came out stripped to the bone. "Post the guard, Luc. And keep trying to push south. The witch can't hold us forever."
He didn't know if that was true. But the alternative was admitting that Morvenna had won before the fight had even started, and Anatole had never surrendered anything in his life.
He pocketed the dead bird's message and went below to find Jeanne.
JEANNE
SHE KNEW SOMETHINGwas wrong before Anatole reached the cabin.
The pull had changed. It had been a constant ache, tugging her toward the lowest deck with steady, predictable force. This morning, the fishing line had become a chain.
Not gradual. Not the slow escalation she'd been tracking. Between one breath and the next, the pull doubled in strength, as if someone had grabbed the other end and yanked. She'd been sitting at the desk reviewing the star charts Anatole had given her to study when it hit, and she'd gasped, both hands flying to her chest, the charts scattering to the floor.
The hum from the lowest deck was audible now. Not just in dreams, not just in the twilight between sleeping and waking. She could hear it through the floorboards of the cabin, a low resonance that vibrated in her fillings and made her eyes water.
And underneath the hum, a voice that was older and colder than the dead brides' whispers.
The door is singing for you.
The cabin door opened. Anatole filled the frame.
"What’s wrong? What’s happening?” she asked.
He told her about the drifting course, the unnatural weather, the dead bird and its message. She listened with her hand on her chest, trying to ease that maddening pull.
"How close is her island?" she asked.
"Close enough that her magic can hold the ship. We can't steer south. The current is carrying us in a slow circle around the Scattered Isles. The closer we are to Morvenna, the stronger her magic. The room was made from her power. When we're near her, the door's pull on you..." He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
"Gets worse. Yes. I noticed." She forced a smile that had no humor in it. "So we're trapped in a witch's current with a magic door that wants to eat me. What's the plan, Captain?"
"The plan is to keep you as far from that door as possible while the crew works on breaking free of whatever she's done to the water." He crossed the cabin and took her hands, pulling them away from her chest. His grip was firm. Grounding. "You stay above decks. You stay with me, Luc or Gris. Don’t go below the main deck for any reason. And don't go anywhere alone."
"Okay,” she said shakily.
He brought her hands to his mouth, kissed her knuckles. "I've posted guards at the corridor, just in case."
The pull was so strong now, a physical force dragging at her ribs, and the hum was so loud, and somewhere in the lowest deck a door was singing her name with a voice that sounded like love and tasted like death.
"I’ll fight her with everything I have," she said. She hoped it would be enough.
He pulled her against his chest and held her there, his chin on top of her head. She could feel the tension in his body, the coiled readiness of a wolf who sensed a threat he couldn't fight with teeth or strategy or the raw force of an apex alpha's will.
Morvenna wasn't a rival pack captain who could be scared off with a territorial display. She was the source of the curse itself, and she was close, and she was angry, and she wanted Jeanne dead.
ANATOLE
NOTHING WORKED.
He tried everything in the three days that followed. Practical measures first: the guards at the corridor, and the course changes that the sea refused to honor. He moved Jeanne’s belongings to a hammock rigged on the main deck, giving hera sleeping space as far from the forbidden door as the ship's geography allowed.
She lasted one night in the hammock before the dreams drove her out of it. He woke to find her standing at the top of the stairs that led below, barefoot, her eyes open but unfocused, her hand reaching for the rail. The watch had stopped her, a young beta named Thierry who'd planted himself in her path and spoken her name until she blinked and came back to herself.
She didn't remember getting out of the hammock. Didn't remember crossing the deck. The last thing she recalled was lying down and closing her eyes.
