As the man trembled over her, and the final hour of her life blurred within her eyes. The guillotine tightened, but instead of dropping, it lifted. The blade that was poised to split her neck had been drug away, yet still ever present to remind her where she was but a moment ago. The burning and unstable gaze had left her to release a heavy exhale of breath, trying to focus himself, the surging heat of the breath told the woman she was still very much alive. His hand removed itself from her, before he took a step forward to bring himself directly over her face, his wild hair falling around her face as he loomed over her, eyes opening again to stare down into hers deeply. Even with breath still shaky, as the inner fire raged within, he spoke again.

"Yet... that willingness to sacrifice everything..."

"That /loyalty/ to your dream... to risk it all to get what you want..."

Another pause, yet his tone shifted, a hint of respect emerged from the hateful man's voice as it slowly returned to its smoother tone.

"Is why I will provide you with what you seek."

His eyes still studied hers, searching them, a very driven and peculiar woman. A means to an end. Despite how horribly he hated everything she had done, the core reasoning behind it was not one he could simply ignore. They'd come from very similar positions, all be it with a different beginning. The woman who'd known she lost, who remained defiant against the insurmountable odds until the jaws of death had closed around her very throat. And instead of begging pathetically for her life, had given the world one last smile, an admittance of failure, rather than clinging to who she was... what she could give, where she'd come from, and who could or couldn't kill her.

"With a condition."

"I won't demand your servitude... nor the type of /loyalty/ you give to your dream."

It was then that she felt the heat of his form leave her, his gaze still pouring through her eyes down to her very soul, bringing himself into a stand as he looked down at her. His free hand brushing out the wild and ruined braid back into its let loose form, revealing the horrid gash that took his eye from him. It was not long before that same hair fell back over his shoulders and the left side of his face, he stood silently for a moment as he watched her from above. The wait was almost cruel.

"What I demand, Yolande Cartier. Is your /word/. That we will be partners, that we will see eye to eye. Not as Pack Leader and Matriarch. That we be honest with the other, and strike an accord to benefit us both the same, recognizing what we gain from the other."

From his standing position over her likely still recovering form, the hand that had reached out to grip her hand in the beginning for the almost theatrical welcome. Extended down toward her, offering his hand to her, not only as a way to bring her back up to his level, but as a way for her to symbolically seal the deal.

"In return, you will have mine."

Observant he remained, from the moment she accepted the hand and was pulled back to her feet, to watching the box closely, with the echoes of paranoia ringing in his mind despite her thoroughly pacified disposition at this point. The promise in Gallic tongue, followed by the symbolic gesture of trust between two parties, outlined the different backgrounds they both resided within, and hailed from. Shockingly, his voice raised ever so slightly in pitch from its darker tone, speaking "almost" perfect Gallic in reciprocation to the word she gave. Revealing that he had perhaps known what she was saying the whole time. Though his tongue was tinted by a lack of practice in recent time as was evident by an awkward roll at the end.

"Amis et alliés, jusqu'à la dernière goutte de notre sang."

After his words he lifted his hand to close the box, rather than select one of the offered "measures of trust", perhaps symbolic gestures too meant nothing to him. He lifted the box carefully from her well cared for hands and placed it back on the table behind her, approaching her again as his human eye gazed deeply into her stone gaze, measuring the dilation from impact before he gave a motion for one of the nearby rogues to bring something. Wiping some of the blood from the side of her head as he inspected it, staring down at its crimson hue, a look in his eye as if something was off.

He stood before her in silence, holding her gaze as he waited for perhaps twenty thirty seconds before a rogue returned to get his attention. His voice lifted to speak to Yolande once more.

"I'm sure you won't be against an offering of chance to... re-collect yourself, before negotiations?"

Yolande would feel his gaze come off her as she bent over to pick up the vial, the man let out a low grumble, eyes focused back on her as she began unscrewing the item, watching with curiosity. Though as his eyes saw the orange trails, and her addicted behavior. His eyes rolled with disinterest. His left hand lifting to release a profound snap from his scarred fingers to get someone's attention.

"Seal the vents."

He took a few steps back, the reaction of the man that dealt with the drug every day could easily be shocking to Yolande, the question of his state posed and easily answered in his singular response. She was desperate for more than just a singular reason, and that much was now made abundantly clear to him. A fact she had probably kept hidden to avoid it being used against her in negotiation.

He gave a direct answer to her high induced slip of the tongue that she attempted to play off as a jest. A somewhat harsh tone came with it.

"Alone."

The woman wearing a lower facial mask from before stepped away from the wall and began approaching Yolande, offering her hand to escort the now rather dosed woman, likely to the destination previously mentioned.

"We'll meet here when you are finished."

Little had changed in the time she was away, aside from brief re-organization of scattered pleasantries. The hulking mechanical monstrosity that the clawed woman had stood alongside earlier was now stomping around in a side room, doing who knows what, the woman had taken a seat to the direct right of the chair the Packleader stood over, rather than sitting. His crimson eye tracking the heeled set of foot steps all the way down the stairs and back into the main room as she re-approached her end of the table, he stared across the steel between the two to observe her. Thankfully, this time. She'd gotten straight to the point.

The four individuals, two assorted to leans against walls, Hemlocke standing behind the chair watching her from afar, and the sophisticated woman to his right with milky white eyes, as if blind, all staring right at her like hawks. She had their attention as she spoke, not a singular detail was missed. An odd professionalism for pirates, not chomping at the bit to shove in with their side.

The ghoulish woman to the man's right spoke up as she finished.

"There is one correction to be made, Matriarch."

"The product. It is handed over to us at the final leg of the journey, not at the beginning. Which means the entailed hassle, and speed at which a large amount can be accrued without endangering ourselves or your party, is not ideal. Meaning you will owe us more than you may have initially been prepared to bargain for."

Hemlocke's crimson gaze blinked only once as the woman beside him finished speaking, tilting his head to stare at Yolande more intently.

"We give you, what you need to secure your family's future, and your own legacy. As I remember it, the Corse sit between both sides of the law in Gallia. That means you have access to far more than anyone else, no corner, remains untouched. You will provide us with anything we could possibly want, beyond mere credits."

"Do you find that agreeable?"