Page 11 of Prospect’s Curvy Beekeeper

"Downdraft was hitting the boxes," he replies flatly. "Fixed it."

"You didn't ask me."

"I don't need permission to protect what's mine."

The words land between us, final.

The sassy, sharp comeback I usually keep loaded on my tongue dissolves into ash. The edge in his tone leaves no room for argument. He isn't claiming the farm. He's claiming the burden.

I step closer, eliminating the remaining space between us. I tilt my chin up, refusing to back down from the overwhelming heat rolling off his frame.

"My grandfather built this farm," I say, my voice steadying, the steel returning to my voice. "I run it. I make the calls on the colonies. You don't touch the hives without my say-so."

Alas leans down, his face inches from mine. The scent of pine needles, dark roast coffee, and raw violence surrounds him.

"I don't give a fuck about the hives, Susan," he rumbles, his eyes dropping briefly to my mouth before snapping back to my gaze. "I care about the woman tending them."

He doesn't look away. He holds my stare, the heat of him pouring off his frame, and waits.

I stand by the honey shed, the cold smoker hanging loosely from my hand, my body humming with the same frequency as the colonies behind me.

I fought this mountain for two years. I fought the Syndicate, the winters, and the crushing weight of grief.

And in one night, a feral prospect from the Broken Halos wiped it all away with a pile of scavenged lumber and a ball of orange tape.

I look at the perfect, staggered boards of the windbreak.

I’ve lost the war for my isolation.

And God help me, I’ve never been more relieved to lose.

I turn back toward the hive line. He moves with me, a silent shadow at my shoulder, and for once I don't tell him to keep his distance.

4

Alas

The crushed ball of neon orange tape burns a chemical stench into the cold morning air. I drop it into the dirt. The plastic uncoils slightly, a bright, ugly smear of Syndicate trespassing against the dark earth of her farm.

She stands still. The white canvas of her protective suit swallows her shape, but it can’t hide the sudden drop of her shoulders. The fight drains out of her. The relentless, exhausting war she waged against her own isolation simply cracks in half and falls away. She stops pushing me away.

That surrender hits my veins like a shot of gasoline.

My jaw locks. The muscles in my neck pull taut, tight with territorial violence. The bond fires again, an irreversible click at the base of my skull. A physical lock snapping into place.

Mine.

That’s the only truth left in the world. The bunkhouse is a memory. The club is a distant echo. The directionless rage that’s defined my life finally has a focal point. A boundary line. I’ll burn Crimson Hollow to the ground before I let a single one of those bastards set foot on this grass again.

She turns away from the crushed tape. Her boots crunch over the frost-hardened ground. She walks back to the row of white wooden boxes. Colony D. The stubborn ones. The hybrids she warned me about yesterday, the ones that sting everyone else.

I follow her.

My boots fall in her footprints. A silent, stalking shadow. The towering timber windbreak I built overnight blocks the harsh northern downdraft, creating a pocket of stillness around the hives. The air here is dense. Saturated with the sweet scent of warm clover honey and the sharp, bitter sting of smoke.

She picks up her metal cold smoker. The bellows wheeze, pumping a cloud of grey smoke across the grass.

I step into her space.