Page 23 of Prospect’s Curvy Beekeeper

Susan

The smell of raw honey and dark roast coffee hangs in the kitchen, a sweet contrast to the cold mountain draft seeping through the window panes. My muscles ache. A deep, bone-melting soreness radiates through my hips and thighs, a physical brand of everything that happened in the honey shed yesterday. The ghost of Alas’s heavy chest pressing me into the wax-scarred bench, the cast-iron uncapping tank biting my hip, still lingers on my skin.

I stand at the farmhouse sink, wrapped in my thickest flannel, staring out at the meadow. Dawn breaks over the eastern ridge, painting the frost-tipped pine trees in bruised shades of purple and gold. Down by the hive line, the windbreak Alas built overnight stands like a fortress against the mountain downdraft.

He stands at the stove. Massive. Scarred. Silent.

He doesn't clatter the mugs. He doesn't bang the cupboards. For a man who radiates the kind of violence that makes grown men cross the street, he moves through my kitchen with the preternatural stillness of a hunting wolf. He wears jeans and a plain black t-shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders. No cut. Not yet. But the lethal, unanchored energy he carries requires no leather patch to broadcast its threat.

He turns, holding two steaming mugs of black coffee laced with cinnamon. My grandfather’s percolator trick—a cinnamon stick dropped in the grounds—my homemade imitation of Christie’s Cozy Cup blend. He watched me make it once. He remembered. He walks toward me, his boots silent on the hardwood.

The air in the kitchen instantly shifts, compressing around his frame. He hands me a mug. His knuckles are scraped from whatever he did out on the south trail.

He doesn't ask how I am. He doesn't ask for a morning-after debrief. He wraps his fingers around the nape of my neck. His thumb traces the mark he left—the faint red welt where his teeth branded my skin hours ago.

The touch is a claim. A statement of ownership.

My spine melts a fraction. I lean into his palm. He thinks he can just stand there, silent, and I'll swoon. Please. I deal with literally thousands of venomous insects before most people eat breakfast. But the heat burning in his stare sends a flush straight down to my toes. I take a sip of the bitter, scalding coffee.

The metallic crackle of the tactical radio shatters the quiet.

Mac left the black military-grade box on the front porch a couple days ago, an unspoken tether to the Broken Halos compound. Alas moved it to the kitchen table an hour ago.

“Alas. Pick up.” Mac’s gruff, gravel voice fills the room.

Alas doesn't flinch. His thumb continues its slow, rhythmic stroke against my neck, tracking the steady beat of my heart. He reaches out with his free hand, keys the mic on the table, and speaks into the quiet room.

"Go."

“Petra caught something over at dispatch,” Mac says, the static hissing beneath his words. “County clerk’s office. Suits from out of town rolled in right at opening. They filed paperwork. Petra routed the scan to your encrypted channel before the sheriff’s deputy got his coffee.”

Alas’s jaw locks. The muscle ticks right below his ear. The stillness radiating from him drops ten degrees, turning from protective to instantly lethal.

"Send it," Alas says.

His phone vibrates on the table a second later. He drops his hand from my neck—a physical deprivation I instantly hate—and picks up the device. He taps the screen, opening the encrypted file Petra forwarded from the Pine Valley dispatch desk.

I step closer, pressing my shoulder against his bicep to read the screen. The heat of his body bleeds through his shirt, a solid wall of muscle anchoring me in place.

The document is a formal legal filing. A scan of a watermarked page stamped by the Pine Valley County Clerk.

Right-of-Passage Easement. Agricultural Commerce.

My eyes track the coordinates listed under the legal jargon. They match my property lines. Specifically, the twelve-foot-wide dirt track cutting through the southern edge of the dense pine corridor.

The Syndicate lieutenant—the man running the Hollow Routes out of Crimson Hollow—didn't just send thugs in the dark. He weaponized the courthouse.

"An easement," I say, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. "They filed a legal claim to use my south trail for agricultural commerce. They’re claiming they need it for transport."

"It’s a fiction," Alas says, his voice low and terrifying. "Paperwork to justify the tire tracks. Cover for the trucks."

He stares at the screen. The rage simmering beneath his skin flares, dark and violent. He isn't looking at a legal document; he's looking at a threat to his territory. To me.

"I'm supposed to file this with the Chapel," Alas says, his eyes never leaving the screen. The Chapel. The MC’s meeting room. "Logan and Austin need the intel. Once I file it, the club takes over. It becomes club business. The patch decides how we hold the property."

He finally looks down at me. The feral heat in his gaze is unfiltered.

"Or," Alas says, stepping into my space, crowding me against the edge of the kitchen counter. "I don't file it. I delete the scan. I walk down the mountain, cross the county line, and I slaughter the man who signed this paper. I bury him in the dirt, and this never touches you."