5. Bee #3
“I know.” Her mouth wriggles into a laugh, and I can breathe again. “That was rhetorical. Mostly.” She taps the chocolate against the desk. “Being an Omega sucks.”
The words settle between us, too honest to decorate. So, I go around the desk and hug her. For one second, she stays stiff. Then she exhales and hugs me back, tight and fierce and smelling like perfume, sugar, and the snack drawer she pretends is communal.
“I am scared,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“I want him.”
“Well, duh.”
“I don’t want to disappear inside what he wants.”
Loora pulls back enough to pin me with a look. “Then don’t. But stop pretending wanting him is the disappearing part. You disappear when you lie to yourself.”
That one goes clean through.
She pushes half the chocolate bar into my hand. “Now go be an accidentally married disaster somewhere else. I have work.”
“I love you.”
“Again, duh. What's not to love? You’re just lucky I’m emotionally generous and food-motivated.”
“You’re my best friend forever.”
Her mouth softens. “Obviously. But if you ever say something that stupid to me again, I will string you up before I walk away.”
“I wouldn't if I were you. He offered to destroy whoever hurt me.”
Loora brightens. “Did he?”
“Do not look so pleased.”
“I’m not pleased.” She takes another bite of chocolate. “I’m romantically concerned.”
I leave her office lighter than when I entered, though not fixed. Fixed is too clean a word for the mess my life has become. But Loora and I are breathing again. That matters.
By the time I return to my desk, the new message from Dr. Kenzie MacArthur is waiting.
Subject: Release Withdrawal
For a second, the words do not make sense.
Then the rest of the email opens beneath them, neat and professional and devastating.
She thanks me for my work. She regrets the timing.
She can no longer participate in the feature under the current terms. She will not sign the final release.
Any prior recorded interviews are no longer available for publication.
My stomach drops. Rookie mistake. Trusting the subject before the release. Trusting momentum. Trusting that the story would still be there because I had built so much of the issue around it.
A video-call request appears before I finish rereading.
Mack’s face fills my screen a moment later, sharp and tired, her curls pinned back messily, boxes stacked behind her instead of the familiar organized shelves of her office. The room has already been half dismantled.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
Her mouth tightens.
“Mack.”
“I’m sorry, Bea. I accepted a research position. The work is time-sensitive.”
“Where?”
A beat passes. “Layn.”
Brazil. Coffee. Layn. Skylor.
My mark pulses at my throat.
“I was going to make your article the lead,” I say. My voice sounds too calm, too professional. “That was my main feature. I have less than thirty days to rebuild an issue centered around you.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, and this time the words are stronger, but not enough to hold up the ceiling falling on me.
“Did he contact you?”
Her silence answers before her mouth does. “Mack?”
“The offer came through Layn-affiliated channels.”
Of course it did. Of course.
The bond twists, not toward comfort this time, but direction. Across the hall. Through the glass. To the male who put a mark on my neck, a ring in my future, and a knife through my career. “I can’t believe this,” I say.
“I wanted to tell you myself.”
“You’re telling me after the fact.”
Her face tightens. The call ends soon after, not because the conversation is finished, but because there is nothing left in it that does not taste like betrayal.
I sit with both hands on my desk and stare at the dead screen.
Loora’s words still ache. Skylor’s wife still rings in my head.
Mack’s Brazil boxes stack themselves in my mind like evidence.
The three crises do not stay separate. They braid.
He says I am his mate, his wife, his princess, but when pressure comes, decisions happen elsewhere.
With brothers. With doctors. With everyone except me.
I stand. The bond pulls hard, and this time I do not resist it. I follow it through my door, across the corridor, past his assistant, who rises with alarm I have no space to honor. Skylor’s inner door opens under my hand.
His office has become a command center. Bryklor’s image occupies the left projection, his expression severe, his surroundings sun-bright and green enough to scream Brazil.
Another projection flickers beside him: Zymlor, thinner, sharper, still on Layn if the strange blue architecture behind him means anything.
Both brothers talk at once until Skylor lifts one hand.
“MacArthur confirmed,” Bryklor says. “She'll arrive in Layn soon. I’ve arranged secure housing near the northern facility. She is concerned about Beatrice.”
“She will understand once I explain,” Skylor says. The words are a slap. Open-handed.
Bryklor’s gaze shifts past Skylor and finds me. His face changes. “Brother,” he says quietly. “You have company.”
Skylor turns. For one heartbeat, the professional mask cracks. Pain flashes through him, then fear, then something softer that almost hurts more. Then the prince returns, careful and controlled, which is exactly the wrong face to show me.
“Beatrice,” he says. “I was going to explain.”
His brothers disappear from the projections, granting privacy like gentlemen fleeing a burning building.
I step inside and let the door shut behind me. “When?”
His jaw tightens. “After I had contained the immediate risk.”
“After you moved my source.”
“After I protected the operation.”
"You killed my lead feature.”
His ears flatten. “I did not kill it. I delayed it.”
“She withdrew her release.”
“I can find you another lead.”
“A replacement feature is not a repaired breach,” I say. “You do understand that, right? You cannot swap in a new story like flowers after an argument.”
“I am trying to preserve your issue and Layn’s survival.”
“No, you are trying to solve the problem you created without telling me what the problem is. Without giving me a chance to solve it.”