7. Bee #2
His expression does not change much. His ears do. One angles back. The other flattens. The combination makes him look wounded and annoyed, which is unfortunately one of his best looks.
“I have asked,” he says.
“Yes.”
“I have waited.”
“Yes.”
“I have not demanded the word mate again.”
“No.”
“I have not entered until invited.”
“No.”
His jaw tightens. “Then I am confused.”
“That is clear.”
“Beatrice.”
I sit up, dragging the sheet with me. The room cools immediately where his body leaves mine. “You learned how to ask before you touch my body. Now learn how to ask before you touch my life.”
The sentence lands hard.
He goes very still.
Good. Some sentences should leave a dent.
At 8:47, seven minutes earlier than my usual pattern because apparently unresolved alien marriage crises make me punctual, I walk into Layn Corporate with my laptop bag over one shoulder and my chin where my mother raised it to be.
Skylor arrives separately, which is either respectful or absurd since the scent of him is still all over my skin and the inside of my thighs.
The elevator recognizes my credentials with a soft chime.
The forty-seventh floor opens around me, polished stone, smoked glass, and expensive quiet.
Except it is not quiet anymore.
It is waiting.
A conversation dies near the assistants’ station as I pass.
Someone suddenly becomes fascinated by the copier.
Martin from marketing makes direct eye contact with my left shoulder and says good morning to it.
Loora stands outside her office with a yogurt cup in one hand and a spoon in the other, watching me with the solemn concern of a woman witnessing both a crisis and prime entertainment.
“You look well-rested,” she says.
“I slept.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Do not mm-hmm me before nine.”
“I would never.” She lowers her voice. “Is he still alive?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Is your bed?”
“Barely.”
Her spoon pauses halfway to her mouth. “I will light a candle for the fallen.”
I keep walking because laughing will only encourage her, and Loora requires no encouragement.
My office waits with its door, its window, its desk, and its suspicious normalcy.
My login still works. My access remains active.
My paycheck landed with mechanical indifference.
Nobody has boxed my files or replaced me with Martin from marketing and his weaponized cologne, so either I still have a job or Layn fires people with enough elegance to let a woman update spreadsheets first.
I sit and open the files I have avoided with great determination and absolutely no success.
The Real Women campaign has two approvals pending.
The MacArthur feature sits in suspended status, its original release dead, its bones still good enough to hurt.
The Brazil investigation sprawls across my desktop in color-coded tabs: deforestation statistics, displacement interviews, plantation maps, ownership shells, and a folder titled QUESTIONS FOR SKYLOR that now reads like the opening act of a tragedy where the heroine ignored several red flags because the villain had excellent shoulders and a tongue that should require federal licensing.
The budget spreadsheet opens last.
The freeze is gone.
Not reduced. Not partially restored. Gone. Every line I requested in my relaunch proposal has returned, with two increases marked under investigative support and legal review. A new tab sits at the bottom.
Editorial Independence Allocation.
My cursor hovers over it, but before I click, my doorframe fills with the man who spent last night in my bed and this morning apparently decided to become a governance event.
I do not need the bond to identify him. The air changes first. Coffee, clean skin, winter wool, and that deeper Alpha musk my body greets with humiliating enthusiasm. My pulse rises. My face remains employed.
“Good morning, Beatrice,” Skylor says.
CEO voice. Prince voice. Controlled, level, suitable for rooms with glass walls and employees who do not need to know he once licked a bite mark on my throat until I begged him to stop being so good at being awful.
I keep my eyes on the spreadsheet. “Good morning.”
“I need you to open the new allocation.”
There he is. The Alpha. Not loud. Not rough. Just certain. A male who expects the door to open because he has found the correct key.
I turn in my chair. “Try again.”
His jaw tightens. His eyes, bare today without the blue-tinted lenses, burn soft yellow around black pupils. A gold thread moves through them, not arousal exactly. Discipline. “Please open it.”
Better.
I click.
The tab expands into numbers I understand too well to dismiss.
Independent legal counsel. Outside environmental consultants not selected by Layn.
Protected travel budget for Brazil. Translation services.
Secure communications. Emergency publication insurance.
A disclosure protocol requiring Layn to bring medical-security concerns to Athena before any source, budget, or coverage decision changes.
Beneath that, one line makes my fingers go still.
Final editorial authority: Editor-in-Chief, Beatrice Watson.
Skylor places a thick folder on my desk. Paper, because he knows me. Because paper has weight. Because promises printed, signed, and countersigned are harder to pretend into mist.
“The Athena Editorial Independence Charter,” he says. “Executed this morning.”
I do not touch it. “Executed by whom?”
“Layn Corporate executive committee, outside counsel, and the foundation trustees who will replace me as direct oversight authority.”
My gaze lifts. “Replace you?”
“Yes.”
The word cuts too cleanly.
He stands across from my desk in a dark suit, shoulders squared, hands behind his back.
No collapse. No pleading. No fever ghost on my threshold asking permission to come inside.
Today he looks like the man from the first meeting, the corporate executioner with royal blood and no patience for weakness.
Except his ears shift once, betraying the strain beneath all that polish.
“I am resigning from Athena’s editorial board,” he says.
“Effective immediately. You will no longer report to me. You are editor-in-chief with full authority over editorial direction, staffing, budget use, and publication timing. Layn may request delay or redaction on narrowly defined medical-security grounds, but no unilateral freeze. No source removal without disclosure. No override from my office.”
My fingers rest on the folder. “You did all this.”
“Yes.”
“Without talking to me.”
His expression does not change fast enough to hide the impact.
There it is. The heart of us. He spends three nights asking permission to enter my apartment and still manages to rebuild my professional life without asking where I wanted the walls.
Somehow my alien husband has turned a grand romantic gesture and a procedural violation into the same signed document.
“You restructured my job, my reporting line, my budget, my authority, and the entire oversight process for the magazine without consulting me.”
His ears angle back. “I fixed the structure that harmed you.”
“You acted.”
“Yes.”
“Again.”
His eyes flare gold. “I restored what I damaged.”
“You made another huge decision and brought it to me finished.”
The folder sits between us, beautiful, expensive, and signed. It is proof. It is also evidence.
Skylor steps closer, not enough to crowd, enough to make the air remember him. “Beatrice, I will not apologize for protecting you.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“No.” The word comes rougher. “You asked to be in the room. You asked to be consulted. I understand the request. I do not understand the method. On Layn, when an Alpha sees danger, he acts. When a mate suffers, he moves. When a wife is hurt, he does not stand in the next room taking notes on her preferred repair timeline while the wound stays open.”
My mouth opens, but nothing useful arrives.
His control thins, not breaking, but burning hot enough to show the metal underneath.
“I know how to defend. I know how to strike. I know how to build walls, reroute fleets, silence boards, replace systems before they fail. I know how to keep what is mine safe. I have spent three nights asking at your door until the word may I feels carved into my bones, and still, when I saw the thing I broke, every instinct in me said fix it before she has to look at the wreckage again.”
“Skylor.”
“No.” He catches himself, jaw hard, and drags in a breath. “I am trying. I am. But you keep asking for a thing my instincts treat like negligence. Wait. Ask. Discuss. Meanwhile, the problem continues existing. Meanwhile, you are unprotected. Meanwhile, my skull cracks open with the need to fix it.”
The words hit low because they are honest. Not right. Not enough. Honest.
He rubs a hand over the back of his neck, a rare gesture of visible frustration.
His ears flatten, then lift again, restless and expressive and entirely too beautiful for someone currently making me want to throw office supplies.
“I will do anything to make you happy,” he says.
“Anything to keep you safe. Anything to keep you mine. But no, Beatrice, I do not know how to ask fucking permission to protect my mate.”
The curse lands like a crack in glass.
Skylor Ak Layn does not sound polished now. He sounds feverless and fully dangerous. More controlled than in my apartment, but not less Alpha. Not softened. Not smaller. His love still has teeth. The problem is, I never wanted a toothless man. I wanted one who knew where not to bite.
I lean back against my desk and sigh. “Unfortunately, this is not as alien as you think.”
His eyes narrow. “Explain.”
“Human Alphas do this too.”
“I am not human.”
“No, but apparently bossy men are a universal pest species.” I tap the folder. “You see a problem, you solve it, you present the solution like a gift, and then act stunned when the woman asks why she was treated like a beneficiary instead of a partner.”