Page 3 of Prospect’s Curvy Beekeeper

And then, the air in the meadow changes.

It’s an immediate, violent drop in atmospheric pressure. The wind off the northern ridge stops howling. The hum of the two million bees fades into static. All the oxygen in the space between us simply vanishes, sucked into a vacuum that centers on the dark, heavy gravity of his gaze.

The earth tilts on its axis and violently rights itself.

A heavy, definitive weight slams down into my chest. It isn’t a spark. It isn’t a flutter. It’s the heavy, metallic sound of a vault door sliding shut, locking into place with terrifying permanence.

I stare at him through the white mesh of my veil, my hands trembling slightly around the steel tool.

I’m thirty years old. I’m exhausted. I’m fighting a losing war against the Syndicate, trying to hold onto a twelve-acre farm that’s slowly drowning me. I’ve fought everything alone for so long that I don't even know how to conceptualize surrender.

But this massive, feral biker is looking at me like he’s just found the center of the universe.

He looks at me like he knows who I am, what I carry, and how long I’ve been carrying it alone. He looks at me like a man who’s never had a single thing in his miserable, violent life worth protecting, and has just stumbled over the only treasure on earth.

He doesn't speak. He doesn't introduce himself. He just stands in my meadow, covered in my bees, letting his silence claim the space.

The Ignition, the club calls it. The fated, irreversible soul-tie that hits the prospects of the Broken Halos. I’ve heard the whispers from Christie at the Cozy Cup, from the girls who run the vintage shops down by the tracks. I always thought it was a myth. A romanticized excuse for possessive biker behavior.

It isn’t a myth. It’s a landslide. And it just hit both of us.

"You're standing on my clover," I tell him, my voice lacking the sharp bite I intended.

His jaw flexes. A muscle ticks high in his cheek. He takes one single, slow step closer to me. The heavy combat boot crushes the green stems beneath his weight. The bees on his arms ride the movement without lifting.

He still doesn't speak. He doesn't need to. The claim radiating off him is louder than a siren.

I swallow hard, the dry click sounding loud in my own ears. I grip the hive tool tighter, lifting my chin to maintain eye contact. I refuse to back down. I refuse to show weakness. I’m a third-generation beekeeper holding the line against a cartel; I can handle one prospect with an authority complex.

"I have work to do," I tell him, breaking the heavy stare to look back at the open, furious hive box of Colony D. "If you're going to stand there and play statue, stay out of my way."

I turn my back on him. It’s the most difficult physical movement I’ve ever executed. Every instinct screams at me to keep him in my line of sight. To watch him.

But I step back up to the wooden box, picking up the cold smoker. I pump the bellows, sending a fresh cloud of pine smoke over the frames. I reach down with my canvas gloves, catching the edges of the first wooden frame, and pull it straight up.

The golden wax glints in the early dawn light. The bees crawl over the honeycomb, thick and heavy.

I glance to my left.

He’s moved. He’s standing right beside me. Less than a foot away. The heat radiating off his massive body cuts through the morning chill, pressing against the canvas of my suit. He watches the frame in my hands, then shifts his dark gaze back to the side of my veiled face. Through the mesh, my eyes hold his. Steady. Unafraid.

He isn't going anywhere.

The realization settles deep into my bones, heavy and final. The Syndicate is trying to take my trail. The county is trying to take my queens. The whole mountain feels like it’s trying to break me.

But this man just walked through a swarm of venom to stand beside me, and for the first time in two years, the crushing, suffocating weight of being alone finally stops pressing down on my throat.

2

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.