Page 4 of Prospect’s Curvy Beekeeper

Until this second.

The fire stops spreading. It pulls back from the edges of my vision. It condenses, sharpening into a single, lethal point of focus, and it aims at the woman standing three feet away from me.

She’s mine.

That’s all there is to it. The universe rearranges itself in the span of a heartbeat, collapsing down to twelve acres of high-altitude meadow, two hundred wooden boxes, and her.

"Don't move," she orders. Her voice is exhausted, carrying a two-year-old wound she thinks nobody can see. The grief of fighting a war alone.

I don't move. I’ve never been this still in my life. A second bee lands on my wrist. Then a third on my forearm. They drift through the air, smelling the scorch of the pine smoke from her metal canister, smelling the aggression radiating off my skin, and they simply accept me.

"They shouldn't be doing that," she says. The mesh veil shifts. She’s staring at my bare hands. "You aren't wearing a suit. You aren't wearing a veil. You walked straight into the flight path of a Russian hybrid colony. They should be tearing you apart."

"They aren't." My voice sounds strange. Grating. Heavier than usual.

"You're too still." She shakes her head, taking a half-step back. "Animals react to heart rates. To panic. You don't have any."

"No."

"Who are you?"

"Alas."

She processes the name. Processes the black leather cut I'm wearing over my black t-shirt. The rocker on the back says Prospect. The air between us is rich with warm wax, clover honey, and the sharp bite of high-altitude wind.

"Logan Gunnar sent you," she states. It isn't a question.

"Yes."

She turns back to the hive. Stubborn. Immovable. She grabs the metal hive tool and wedges it under the edge of a wooden frame, prying it loose from the box. "Tell the MC President I appreciate the warning about the south trail. But I'm not leaving."

"The Crimson Hollow Syndicate filed a right-of-passage easement with the county clerk." The intelligence briefing echoes in my head. Austin Gunnar tossing the folder on the clubhouse table. The silver snakes moving in the grass. "They're claiming your south trail for agricultural commerce. It's a legal fiction. They're using it to move men and product into Pine Valley."

"I know what they're doing," she snaps. She lifts the frame. It’s heavy, dripping with dark gold honey, crawling with thousands of bees. "They intercept my mail-order queens at the county line. They drop trail markers in my timber. They think if they squeeze hard enough, I'll pack up and sell."

She slides the frame into an empty box on her transport wagon.

"I'm not leaving." She points a thick canvas glove at me. "This is my farm. My grandfather built these boxes with his bare hands. I have two hundred colonies pulling nectar before the freeze. If I leave, the hives die. So you go back down the mountain, Alas from the MC, and you tell Logan that Susan says no."

The rage hums. A beautiful, dark vibration. She’s fighting the Syndicate over a strip of dirt and some bugs, and she’s fully prepared to do it by herself.

I step closer. The bees on my knuckles ride the movement. I stop inches from her shoulder. The smell of her—pure, concentrated beeswax and sweat—hits the back of my tongue.

"Logan gave the evacuation order," I say.

"I'm rejecting it."

"Good."

She freezes again. The veil turns sharply toward me. "What?"

"I said good. Don't leave."

She stares at me through the mesh. She expects an argument. She expects me to throw her over my shoulder, haul her down the mountain, and lock her in a safe house like the rest of the club would do. She expects a fight.

She doesn't understand the bond. She doesn't understand that the second that bee landed on my thumb and her eyes locked onto mine, this twelve-acre plot of land became the most fortified piece of real estate in the state.

"I don't have anywhere else to be," I tell her. "I sleep in a bunkhouse. I don't own a damn thing except the knife in my boot." I look out over the meadow. The timber line to the south. The chokepoint where the Syndicate thinks they can walk. "You stay. I stay."