2. Alas
Alas
The insect crawls across the scar tissue on my left knuckle. Its wings vibrate, a low, continuous hum that matches the frequency in my blood. It doesn’t sting. It just settles there, tiny hooks gripping my skin, treating my hand like a solid, immovable object.
The woman in the white canvas suit stops breathing. Her face is obscured by the white mesh veil, but her posture snaps rigid. Her gloved hands freeze over the open wooden box.
The lock clicks over.
It’s an actual, physical mechanism locking into place inside me.
An iron deadbolt sliding home. Kevin tried to explain it once.
Joey tried to map it out. Cage just nodded, and River treated it like a medical fact.
Earning the fire. Striking the match. All my life—thirty-four years of formless, aimless burning—the rage inside me has been a wildfire with no borders.
I wake up swinging. I sleep with a Ka-Bar knife under my pillow because the violence never shuts off.
I’m the unstable one. The broken dog the Broken Halos MC keeps on a short leash until they need something torn to shreds.
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."
"You can't stay here," she argues, her voice rising in frustration. "I don't have a guest room. I don't have a team of bodyguards. I have a honey shed and a farmhouse that hasn't had the heat fixed since my grandfather died."
"I don't need heat."
"I work eighteen-hour days."
"I don't sleep."
She lets out a sharp breath. The sound hits me like a fist. She turns fully away, grabbing the smoker and pumping the bellows.
Sweet-smelling pine smoke billows over the open hive.
She uses the smoke to drive the remaining bees down into the frames, then grabs the wooden lid and drops it into place.
"Do whatever you want," she mutters. "Just stay out of my way."
She grabs the handle of her wagon and starts hauling it up the hill toward a small, weathered wooden structure. The honey shed. A single window faces the mountain ridge. The structure leans slightly to the left, battered by years of mountain storms, but standing firm. Just like her.
I watch her walk away. The sway of her hips under the bulky canvas suit. The determined, exhausted set of her shoulders.
My jaw locks. Heat crawls up my neck. The three bees finally lift off my hand, buzzing back toward their wooden home.
I’m never leaving this mountain.
Gravel crunches at the bottom of the long driveway. The unmistakable rumble of a modified diesel engine breaks the quiet hum of the apiary. A battered truck hauls itself up the incline, pulling to a stop right in front of the farmhouse.
Mac.
The retired military mechanic cuts the engine.
He steps out of the cab, his boots hitting the dirt with a thud.
He doesn't look at me immediately. He walks to the bed of the truck, unlatches the tailgate, and hauls out a folded military-issue canvas cot.
He carries it up the wooden steps of the farmhouse and drops it on the porch.
Next comes a brick-heavy tactical radio. It lands on the railing with a solid clack.
Finally, he reaches into the cab and pulls out three fully loaded extended magazines of 9mm ammunition. He walks up the steps and sets them neatly beside the radio. Black steel gleaming against the weathered wood.
Mac turns. He looks down the hill at the hive line. He looks at me standing there, wearing no protective gear, surrounded by the hum of thousands of agitated insects. He looks at my bare hands.
He doesn't say a damn word about the missing veil. He doesn't mention the lack of distance between me and the beekeeper. He doesn't ask if I'm coming back to the bunkhouse.
Mac just snorts softly. A quiet, knowing sound. He shakes his head, turns around, gets back in his truck, and drives off.
The club knows. The brotherhood always knows when the fire catches. They sent Mac to drop the supplies because Logan knew the second I laid eyes on this woman, the evacuation order was dead.
I walk up the hill. The high-altitude wind bites through my plain black t-shirt, carrying the chill of the coming evening. The sun is beginning to dip behind the jagged peaks of the western ridge, casting long, bruised purple shadows across the meadow.
I reach the porch. The farmhouse is old, the white paint peeling in long strips.
The wood groans under my boots. I grab the canvas cot and snap it open, the fabric pulling taut with a sharp crack.
I set it against the wall, right beside the front door.
The ultimate chokepoint. Nothing gets through that door without stepping over my dead body.
The relief of that fact is staggering.
All my life, the violence inside me had no container. I fought in the dirt, I bled in the clubhouse ring, I took assignments that required broken bones and shattered teeth, but there was never a reason behind it. I was just angry. A stray dog snapping at the air.
Now, I have a door to guard.
I sit on the edge of the cot. I pull the Ka-Bar knife from my boot sheath.
The steel is cold. I slide it under the thin canvas pillow.
I pick up the three magazines and stack them within arm's reach.
I turn on the tactical radio, twisting the volume dial down to a low, barely audible static hiss. Channel four. The club frequency.
Down the hill, the door to the honey shed opens.
Susan steps out. She’s finally stripped off the bulky canvas suit and the mesh veil. She’s wearing worn, faded jeans and an oversized wool sweater. Her hair is dark, messy, pulled into a knot at the base of her neck. Stray strands stick to her cheek, caught in a smear of golden honey and dirt.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
The breath stops. The bond hums louder, a frantic demand behind my sternum. My hands grip the edge of the cot. The wood splinters slightly under my fingers.