Bee
The elevator doors open onto the executive floor, and Skylor’s distress hits me before I take a single step. Not through sound. Not through sight. Through the ring. It has been burning against my finger since I left my apartment, pulsing in restless bursts of blue-gold heat that climb into my hand and wrap around my wrist like a live wire.
At first, I thought it was checking on me again. Being nosy. Letting the ring do its spy tech job while he was supposed to be staying away. Then the pulse changed. Flared.
My Alpha is upset.
I’m pulled from a place in me. From a place I have only visited in Skylor’s bed, with his mouth on my skin and his knot locked deep inside me. I stop just outside the elevator, one hand pressed to the ring, my breath catching in my throat.
Skylor needs me. Not wants. Needs.
The realization moves through me with a soft, terrifying click. He’s in a rage. That can’t be good for someone. I need to get to him before he kills someone or unleashes a planetary mass casualty event.
I press the ring once, twice, like it came with a hidden answer button. Nothing. Apparently alien mate jewelry can monitor my pulse but not provide basic instructions. Fine. I follow the pull instead.
Loora said there was a MacArthur problem. Which could only mean that my work and Athena’s relaunch are tied up in whatever mess Todd has cooked up. But under all of that, the ring has been pulling. Skylor has been pulling. And I came.
I stand on the mostly empty executive floor of Layn Corporate, my curls half-feral, my boots damp from the sidewalk. But inside I’m melting toward the male raging beyond these glass walls and chrome doors.
His fury is a flame and everything omega in me says I’m the one to extinguish it.
Skylor’s office sits at the end of the corridor, its private door closed, the one that leads to the penthouse residence tucked discreetly behind it. Not where I’m going. The pull comes from the conference wing. A sharp pulse snaps against my finger.
I press my thumb to the ring. “I’m coming,” I whisper.
The warmth answering me is immediate. Relief. Hunger. Rage. Restraint so tight it hurts me through the bond.
My pace quickens.
For the first time, I get why Skylor moved so fast after the bite. This pull is not a cute romantic impulse. It is a barbed wire lasso. If this is what he felt when I sat alone in my empty apartment, if this is what distance does to a newly bonded Alpha, then no wonder he looked at my old life and saw threats.
He was wrong. He is still going to hear about it. But now, walking toward him with the ring burning on my finger and his distress scraping along my nerves, I get it.
He brought me close because closeness feels safe. Protective. And the terrible part? I want to be close. And not for any other reason than because he is there. That should scare me. It does.
It also steadies me.
The closer I get to the conference room, the stronger the bond becomes. Something has scraped him raw. Something has shoved his alpha instincts so close to the edge that every pulse of the ring feels like a hand tightening around mine.
I came to comfort him. The thought should embarrass me. It doesn’t.
I am not coming to soothe his ego or pat the big scary alien until he stops making the lawyers nervous. I am coming because an alpha does not only hold an omega together. Sometimes the omega is the hand on his chest. The breath he follows back from the ledge. The place where the storm can hit and not destroy the room. An epiphany dawns. I can be that, and not lose myself.
I am that as myself.
His voice cuts through the conference room door. “I want Todd Childs found.”
A man answers, strained and nervous. “Sir, legal strongly recommends we avoid direct contact until we establish—”
“I did not ask what legal recommends. I asked for his location.”
Another voice, Layn this time. Calm. Too calm. “We can obtain it within three minutes.”
My heart kicks. Todd. MacArthur. Athena. The ring burns. I push open the conference room door. Every head turns.
Skylor stands at the far end of the room, his jacket discarded over the back of a chair, his hair too perfect and his eyes too gold. Three projection screens float behind him: Todd’s old employee record, an email chain from MacArthur’s office, and a draft legal action.
I barely recognize the two lawyers sitting at the conference table. Their names should be changed to Harassed and Harried because that’s the energy they’re giving. Martin sits pale and sweating near the corner, clutching a tablet like a shield.
