1. Bee #2
My fingers tighten around the leather binder. Every number inside belongs to me. Three weeks of late nights. Two hundred tabs open at once. One very cold dinner I found on my counter at midnight and ate over the sink because sitting down felt like surrender.
“My report,” I say, “is right here.”
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
The word slips out before fear can catch it. Todd goes still. The courier becomes fascinated by the floor numbers.
“Excuse me?” Todd says softly.
“I sent you the executive summary last night. You have enough to present your version.” I hold the binder tighter. “This is the complete analysis. Source notes, projections, methodology and the expense discrepancies. If Ak Layn asks questions, I’ll answer them.”
His smile thins until it could cut paper. “Don’t play games with me, little girl.”
A cold pressure clamps around my stomach, but it is not fear.
Not exactly. Todd has called me a lot of things in two years.
Quiet. Reliable. Emotional. Not a team player.
Difficult when I asked him not to put his name on my work.
Little girl is new. I look at his shellacked hair, his expensive tie and his hands that have never once cleaned up the messes they made.
“No,” I say again.
The elevator opens on forty-seven. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, and step forward.
Let’s go.
The hallway is nothing like downstairs. No beige carpet.
No sample books stacked against the walls.
No birthday balloon tied to someone’s filing cabinet because Marcus from accounting turned thirty-nine and refused to suffer alone.
Just pale stone floors, recessed lights and the kind of silence that costs serious money to maintain.
My flats click against the stone with every step, far too loud for a place this quiet.
Each one lands like I have knocked something over in a church.
Todd walks ahead of me with fury tucked under his suit like a knife.
The double doors at the end stand open. He enters first. I follow, and the room swallows me.
Windows run floor to ceiling on three sides, and New York spreads below in hard morning layers, glass towers flashing under a clean white glare.
Traffic crawls between buildings like blood through narrow veins.
Far off, the Hudson lies flat and bright as a blade left on a table.
The air is different up here, colder and cleaner than downstairs. Under the polished metal and recycled cool, there’s a scent. It’s warm, dark and deep. It’s roasted coffee poured over wood smoke lingering from a sunset bonfire. My body catches the heat and lights from the inside.
My pulse trips once, hard, at the base of my throat.
A low pull starts beneath my ribs, slow and deliberate.
I know the edges of this feeling. I’ve felt them every month for the past two years, distant and muted and manageable.
My suppressants keep my Omega body quiet, a background frequency that lets me work through deadlines, staff meetings, subway crowds and every other insult adulthood has put on the calendar.
Right now, it is not a background frequency. I keep walking because stopping would be embarrassing and because Todd would enjoy it.
Skylor Ak Layn stands at the far end of the room with his back to us, hands clasped behind him, watching the city.
His shoulders fill the dark suit with no visible effort.
He is genuinely tall, not camera tall, not dating-app-profile-says-six-two-and-hopes-nobody-brings-a-tape-measure tall.
He is the kind of tall that changes the geometry of the room.
There’s power in how still he holds himself, the kind no one can fake.
He turns, and I stop breathing.
Loora is getting sushi.
No photo has ever come close, and no photo ever will.
Skylor Ak Layn has the kind of face that makes beauty seem like the wrong word.
Too soft. Too human. His jaw is sharp, his cheekbones high, and his skin is a muted blue-brown that catches the morning glare like deep water under a winter moon.
Not painted. Not tinted. Alive with undertones my eyes don’t know how to sort.
Amber eyes hold the room and give nothing back.
He’d look carved from cold stone if not for the sheer intensity behind them.
He does not look cold at all.
His gaze moves from Todd to me, then stops.
His nostrils flare, quick and controlled, immediately suppressed.
His pupils expand before he blinks once, slow and deliberate, like a man forcing a machine to reset.
A white cloth appears in his hand from nowhere.
He crumples it in his fist, jaw tight, and tucks it away.
The scowl that pulls at his mouth is aimed inward.
He is annoyed with himself. I file that away for later because apparently my brain has decided professional observation is easier than admitting every nerve in my body just sat up and begged.
Then the rest of me finishes processing what my nose started.
The warmth hits in a wave, low and insistent, moving through my chest and down into my belly in a way my suppressants are supposed to prevent.
My skin prickles up both arms. My pulse goes wrong, too quick, pressing at my throat, wrists and the soft place behind my knees.
I’ve felt pre-heat warnings before. They came faint, manageable and gone by morning after a dosage adjustment and one mortifying call to Dr. Osei.
This is my body staking a claim on a situation I have not approved.
Not now. Not here. Absolutely not in a room with Todd, alien royalty, and windows that do not offer enough privacy for whatever my hormones think they’re auditioning for.
I press my arm against my side and breathe through it.
Call Dr. Osei the second this meeting ends.
Double the dose. Triple it. Ask if there is a suppressant strong enough to make my ovaries respect capitalism.
Also, buy Loora sushi. I am woman enough to admit when I have lost a bet. Eventually. Not today.
“You’re Todd Childs.”
Skylor’s voice rolls out low and rough, gravel smoothed by command. There’s a faint congestion at the edges. Sick, maybe. He still sounds like authority made into sound, which is irritating because I prefer my dictators less attractive.
Todd’s posture deflates in real time. “Yes, Ak Layn. It’s an honor. We’re thrilled to have you here at Athena.”
“Why is Layn Magazine failing?”
Todd’s smile twitches. Technically, the magazine is still called Athena, but Layn Corporate owns the parent company, the building, the debt, probably the air vents, and possibly my student loans if the rumors are true.
“The market,” Todd says. “Demographics shifted. Reader behavior has changed. Print-ad revenue—”
“Stop.”
One word, and Todd stops.
Skylor crosses to the table with no wasted movement. No hurry either. Men like him don’t rush unless something has already started bleeding. “You waste my time.”
Todd swallows. “The numbers are all in the report.”
“Which report?”
Todd’s hand goes to his jacket, then his sides and his chest. He finds the thin executive summary I sent him last night. Four pages. Sanitized. Todd-friendly. No footnotes sharp enough to draw blood. His mouth tightens.
I step forward and extend the leather binder.
Skylor’s eyes drop to it, then come back to my face. The amber sharpens.
“You have it.”
“I compiled it,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. That is the miracle of the morning. “Todd had other priorities.”
Todd’s head whips toward me. “Beatrice.”
The warning in his voice is an old leash. For once, I don’t put my neck back in it.
Skylor reaches for the binder. Our fingers do not quite touch.
My pulse does not care about the distinction.
It slams once, hard, and I breathe through the aftershock as he opens the report.
Pages turn fast. Too fast. His eyes move over charts, projections, margin notes, source references and budget anomalies.
He is not reading. He is processing. There’s a difference. He knows it. So do I.
“These projections,” he says. “They’re yours.”
“Yes.”
“He put his name on them.”
“He always does.”
The room goes so quiet that Todd’s inhale cuts through it.
Skylor closes the folder and looks at Todd with the particular expression of someone who has already made up his mind and is simply allowing the formality to complete.
“You were made editor seven years ago. In seven years, nothing indicates you are doing more than throwing good money after bad. You blamed your staff. You misrepresented data. You concealed expenses. You did not accept responsibility.”
Todd’s mouth opens. “Of course I accept—”
“My mother founded Athena Magazine.” Quiet. Final. “I did not come to this city to hear a man blame his assistants for his failures.”
Todd goes still. The room tightens around him, every polished surface turned into a witness. Skylor sets the binder on the table.
“You are relieved of your duties, Mr. Childs.”
The silence that follows is thick enough to bite.
Todd turns and looks directly at me. The look on his face is a decision. “You did this. Working behind my back, you conniving little—”
“Mr. Childs.”
Skylor’s voice has not gotten louder. It has gotten quieter, which is so much worse. He moves, unhurried and deliberate. Todd registers too late what’s happening. Skylor reaches him in three steps, closes one hand around the front of Todd’s jacket, and lifts.
Todd’s shoes leave the floor. Not high. Not dramatic. Just enough to turn all the arrogance in his face into fear. Just enough to remind everyone in the room that Skylor Ak Layn is not human and has never needed to be.
“I was prepared,” Skylor says, very calm, “to give you a dignified exit. No one speaks to my staff that way.”
My staff.
The words strike below my sternum. I do not have time to examine why.