3. Susan #2
"You've been fighting a war by yourself, Susan," Carol continues, her voice softening. "You don't have to put the sword down. But you have to let him stand beside you. We watch out for each other now. That includes you."
She doesn't wait for me to argue. She gives me a curt nod, turns on her heel, and walks back to her sedan.
I stand in the damp grass, clutching the thermos of cinnamon coffee, listening to the crunch of her tires as she drives away.
We watch out for each other now.
The words echo in the quiet morning.
I look down at the canvas bag of clean clothes. I look at the towering windbreak.
I’m losing my isolation. The armor is being dismantled, piece by piece, by a man who refuses to speak and refuses to leave.
I grab the canvas bag and the thermos, walking back to the honey shed to toss them inside. Then I pick up my smoker, give the bellows a few hard pumps, and march down to the hive line.
The girls are already awake. A low, continuous hum vibrates through the air, a sound that’s lived in my bones since I was ten years old following Grandpa through the clover.
Without the northern wind battering the boxes, the bees are flying clean, straight lines out of the bottom entrances, heading out to forage the late-season asters and goldenrod.
I stop at Colony D. The Russian hybrids.
The most aggressive, stubborn, unforgiving box of insects on the ridge.
Most beekeepers would have requeened them or split them just to dilute the aggression.
I kept them because they are tough enough to survive the winters without dying off. They match my disposition perfectly.
I blow a few puffs of cool, white smoke across the entrance. The guard bees retreat, the smoke masking their alarm pheromones. I pry the wooden lid off with my hive tool, the propolis cracking with a sharp snap.
I pull the first frame.
The bees boil over the top bars, agitated, but they don't strike. I hold the frame up to the morning sun, scanning the golden, capped brood cells.
My mind immediately flashes to yesterday. Alas standing where I’m standing. Bare arms. Bare knuckles. The bees landing on him like he was a part of the environment, reading his terrifying stillness as safety.
I spent years learning how to move around them. How to control my breathing, how to mask my anxiety, how to project calm. I have to work at it.
Alas just exists.
The Ignition. That's what the gossip network calls it. Christie at the Cozy Cup whispered it to me once when Kevin Reyes first dragged Lexi out of the weekend market. A click that happens to the prospects in the Broken Halos MC. A soul-deep lock that rewires their existence around one person.
I told Christie it sounded like a psychiatric condition.
Now, holding a frame of brood in the shadow of a fortress built by a man who looked at me like I was the only breathing thing on the mountain, the psychiatric condition sounds terrifyingly real.
I slide the frame back into the box and pull the next one. The queen is there, a long, dark abdomen moving gracefully over the comb. She's laying winter bees. The fat, healthy workers that will keep the cluster warm until spring. She's secure. Guarded. Safe.
I slide the frame back and replace the lid, pressing my palm flat against the wood. The vibration hums through my skin.
I look south, toward the tree line. The dense pine corridor that leads to the Ridge Road, and eventually, to Crimson Hollow.
The Syndicate has been marking my trees with neon orange tape for fourteen months.
Every time I find a marker, I scrape it off.
Every time they cut a wire on my fence, I patch it.
I’ve called the sheriff, filed the reports, and been ignored.
The men from Crimson Hollow use my land as a thoroughfare, a strategic chokepoint into Pine Valley, and I’ve been standing in their way with nothing but a hive tool and a stubborn refusal to yield.
Alas is out there right now.
A knife-wielding prospect who found a place to aim his rage.
My stomach tightens. A low heat coils in my center, distinct from the cold morning air. It’s the memory of his frame filling the doorway. The dark intensity in his eyes when that single bee landed on his thumb and he didn't flinch.
He didn't claim the property. He claimed the war.
I pick up my smoker, the metal handle warm against my canvas glove. I move down the line to the next hive. Box after box, frame after frame. The routine grounds me. The smell of wax and smoke settles my racing pulse.
By the time I finish inspecting the twentieth box, the sun is fully over the eastern ridge, casting long, golden shadows across the meadow.
I wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of my wrist. I’m exhausted, but the creeping, icy dread that usually accompanies my morning inspections is gone. The windbreak does what it was designed to do. My bees are safe from the downdraft.
I start walking back toward the honey shed, my boots kicking through the tall grass.
Then I see him.
Alas emerges from the southern tree line.
He moves in silence, his shoulders rolling with a fluid, terrifying grace. He’s wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, exposing the ropes of muscle and the dark ink crisscrossing his forearms. He’s carrying a coil of neon orange surveyor's tape in his left hand.
He pulled down their markers. Every single one.
He doesn't walk toward the farmhouse. He walks straight toward me.
I stop by the uncapping tank just outside the shed, my hand tightening on the smoker. My heart hammers against my ribs, a fast, frantic rhythm that has nothing to do with fear.
He closes the distance, his boots crushing the grass. His face is a hard, emotionless mask of stone, but his eyes—dark, burning with an unanchored intensity—are locked onto my face. He doesn't look at the hives. He doesn't look at the windbreak he spent the night building. He just looks at me.
He stops two feet away. He drops the ball of crushed orange tape onto the ground between us.
"South trail is clear," he says. His voice is a low scrape that vibrates through every bone in my back.
He doesn't elaborate. He doesn't boast. He just states a fact. The boundary is held.
I look down at the tape, then up at his face. The dark circles under his eyes give away his exhaustion, but his posture is rigid, ready to deploy violence at a moment's notice.
I think about the isolation I’ve clung to for two years. The desperate, suffocating need to do everything myself.
I look at the windbreak behind him.
"You built a wall," I say, my voice embarrassingly breathless.
He doesn't blink. He just stares down at me, his chest rising and falling in slow, measured breaths.
"Downdraft was hitting the boxes," he replies flatly. "Fixed it."
"You didn't ask me."
"I don't need permission to protect what's mine."
The words land between us, final.
The sassy, sharp comeback I usually keep loaded on my tongue dissolves into ash. The edge in his tone leaves no room for argument. He isn't claiming the farm. He's claiming the burden.
I step closer, eliminating the remaining space between us. I tilt my chin up, refusing to back down from the overwhelming heat rolling off his frame.
"My grandfather built this farm," I say, my voice steadying, the steel returning to my voice. "I run it. I make the calls on the colonies. You don't touch the hives without my say-so."
Alas leans down, his face inches from mine. The scent of pine needles, dark roast coffee, and raw violence surrounds him.
"I don't give a fuck about the hives, Susan," he rumbles, his eyes dropping briefly to my mouth before snapping back to my gaze. "I care about the woman tending them."
He doesn't look away. He holds my stare, the heat of him pouring off his frame, and waits.
I stand by the honey shed, the cold smoker hanging loosely from my hand, my body humming with the same frequency as the colonies behind me.
I fought this mountain for two years. I fought the Syndicate, the winters, and the crushing weight of grief.
And in one night, a feral prospect from the Broken Halos wiped it all away with a pile of scavenged lumber and a ball of orange tape.
I look at the perfect, staggered boards of the windbreak.
I’ve lost the war for my isolation.
And God help me, I’ve never been more relieved to lose.
I turn back toward the hive line. He moves with me, a silent shadow at my shoulder, and for once I don't tell him to keep his distance.