Bee Epilogue
Three months later, the Athena Real Women campaign launch fills the penthouse event space with bodies, voices, cameras, perfume, champagne, and the hum of a magazine that has remembered how to matter.
I move through the crowd with my spine straight and my chin lifted, the posture I learned from Athena’s pages years ago, back when I was a teenager memorizing articles about women who refused to shrink themselves into acceptable shapes.
The lead feature stares back at me from every display screen, every printed program, and the massive projection behind the stage where Dr. Kenzie MacArthur’s face appears in unretouched detail, her skin showing the texture of actual human skin, her expression holding the calm intensity of a woman who has never learned to perform pleasantness for cameras and does not intend to start tonight.
Professor MacArthur. Mack, because she refuses the full formality of her title in professional spaces, partly because she likes efficiency and partly because she enjoys watching people miscalculate her before she corrects them.
The article covers coffee production’s environmental impact, deforestation in Brazil, ethical sourcing, and the women whose labor feeds the global economy without appearing in its narratives.
It is beautiful and hard-hitting. It is not fluff, not shame, not safe in the old Todd way.
It has my fingerprints all over it: heart, heat, brains, and teeth.
It also has a few carefully negotiated absences, which I agreed to after seeing evidence, not receiving orders.
No transport routes. No compound specifics.
No vulnerable facilities. No details that would put sick Layn children or the people protecting them in danger.
The difference matters. Three months ago, Skylor would have decided what I could know and called it protection.
Tonight, I know what I am not printing, why I am not printing it, and exactly who to drag into a conference room if the line moves without my consent.
Growth is beautiful.
Also exhausting.
People come to me for answers now. Writers quote my edits back to each other, turning phrases I spoke in passing into principles they apply to their own work.
Photographers know not to retouch bodies into lies because I fired the first one who tried, publicly and without apology, three weeks into my tenure.
The magazine feels alive again, pulsing with the specific energy of women who have been given permission to take up space.
I have built the thing I wanted.
Not alone.
Not by being rescued.
By being heard, trusted, argued with, and occasionally worshipped on the desk where the final editorial authority line still lives in my favorite folder.
That part did not make the press release.
Three months ago, I accidentally married an alien prince during what I thought was extremely committed dirty talk.
Tonight, I wear his ring because I know exactly what it means.
The stone is not a diamond, though Loora has opinions about that.
It is a dark Layn jewel that looks black until light hits it, then burns blue-gold from the center like a tiny trapped galaxy.
Skylor had offered me six official settings, three historical options, two royal ceremonial bands, and one terrifying family heirloom that came with a lecture from his father and a security escort.
I picked this one because it felt like mine.
Because that is what matters now.
Not what the bond declared.
Not what Layn law recorded.
What I chose with my eyes open, my work intact, my best friend present, and no part of my husband’s body inside mine at the time of agreement, which feels like an important legal distinction even if the royal registry remains emotionally unconcerned by my process.
“Editor-in-chief,” Loora says, appearing at my elbow with a plate of hors d’oeuvres she has already begun dismantling, her fingers selecting the most promising specimens with the strategic attention of a general surveying terrain.
She looks spectacular tonight in a sculptural copper dress that makes three donors, two photographers, and one nervous junior editor forget their sentences. “You know what that means, right?”
“It means I get the corner office with the window that actually opens.”
“It means you’re the one they blame when everything goes wrong.
” She pops something breaded and suspicious into her mouth, chewing with the satisfaction of someone who has never learned to eat delicately in professional spaces.
“Also, it means you have to talk to your terrifying alien husband before he eats all the decorative coffee beans and frightens the investors.”
I follow her gaze across the room to where Skylor stands near the bar, his blue-tinted glasses softening the alien gleam of his amber eyes, his skin carrying that faint bluish cast under the event lighting that makes him look like royalty from a dimension adjacent to ours.
He is wearing the suit I selected for him this morning, dark charcoal that complements his violet undertones, and he has positioned himself where he can observe the entire room without appearing to guard it.
This is progress. Early in our marriage, he would have called it surveillance and made a spreadsheet.
Now he calls it “standing near available exits while respecting the autonomy of the event host,” which is longer, worse, and somehow an improvement.
His hand moves to the small bowl on the bar, the premium roasted beans he crunches with unsettling calm. Three separate people notice, hesitate, and decide not to ask. Good. Athena may be committed to difficult questions, but some mysteries can remain between a man, his dental structure, and God.
Loora leans closer. “He’s doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“Where he looks civilized but radiates I could end your bloodline if my wife’s champagne is too warm.”
“That is just his face.”
“No, his face is cheekbones and intergalactic tax bracket. This is a threat aura.”
I glance back at Skylor. His eyes find mine across the room instantly, as if the crowd is decorative and I am the only actual object.
The bond warms low in my body, familiar now, no longer a command but a current.
His gaze drops briefly to my ring, then returns to my face.
He does not smile in public often, but his expression shifts in the private way I know. Mine, it says.
Mine too, I think back, because I am petty and possessive in several languages now.
Loora makes a sound. “Gross. You two are doing silent alien married flirting.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“You absolutely do. Also, when you do the Earth paperwork, I am still maid of honor.”
“We are not discussing wedding logistics at my launch.”
“We are always discussing wedding logistics. I have a folder.”
“Of course you do.”
“It has tabs.”
“Of course it does.”
“And I refuse to wear lavender.”
I laugh, and because he is impossible, Skylor’s ears angle toward the sound across the room. Loora notices and sighs into her plate. “A girl could get used to that kind of attention.”
The words are light, but I hear what sits under them. Months ago, I cut her with the cruelest version of that truth. She forgave me. She also made me buy apology chocolate for six consecutive weeks, which was fair.
I bump her shoulder gently. “You deserve someone who tracks your laugh across a crowded room.”
“I know.” She lifts her chin. “And until he arrives, I deserve these appetizers.”
“Or she.”
“Or she. Or they. Or an emotionally available alien with a title and excellent hands. I am open to being surprised.”
“Noted.”
“No, legally. Put it in the magazine’s dating supplement.”
I leave her laughing and cross the room to my husband.
I love that word now.
It still scares me some mornings, usually when Skylor says something like my wife in that low voice while reaching across the bed, and my body temporarily abandons feminism for a breeding program.
But fear no longer lives in the center of the word.
Choice does. Work does. The everyday comedy of sharing a life with a male who believes drawer space should be allocated by nesting efficiency and who once tried to replace my mattress without asking, remembered the rule halfway through the purchase, and stood in the doorway of the bedroom looking so morally offended by his own personal growth that I had to sit down laughing.
He did not surrender his life to me. That would have been another grand gesture in the wrong shape. He did something harder. He stayed powerful and learned where his power stopped.
Most days.
Some days, I still have to remind him that urgency is not authority.
Some days, he repeats it back through clenched teeth like a prayer he resents.
Some days, I kiss him for trying before I correct the thing he did wrong, because partnership is not a trophy we won in Chapter Seven and placed on a shelf.
It is a practice. A rhythm. A stride we keep adjusting.
Skylor’s hand finds the small of my back when I reach him, the touch claiming without confining, his thumb tracing the curve of my spine through the silk of my dress.
“You are magnificent tonight,” he says, voice low enough for me alone.
“The room moves around you. They do not realize they are orbiting.”
“They’re orbiting the open bar.”
“They are orbiting your gravity.”
“That line is almost too good. Did you practice?”
“Yes.”
My mouth falls open. “You practiced flirting?”
“I practice all important skills.”
“That is both flattering and deeply weird.”
“I also practiced not threatening the man in the blue jacket who touched your arm near the donor wall.”
“Skylor.”
“I did not threaten him.”
“Because?”
His jaw tightens. “Because urgency is not authority, and you can handle an overfriendly donor without my assistance unless you request destruction.”
“Very good.”
“I hated it.”
“I know.”