Page 33 of The Wild Wolf's Rejected Mate

Annie didn’t spare a look for me.

I have no choice. I walk away again.

5

ANNIE, ONE YEAR LATER

I hate beekeeping.I hate varroa mites more. I hate testing for varroa mites the most.

I shake a few hundred workers out onto a double thick sheet of newspaper and fold the paper like a funnel. Then, very carefully, I pour a cup of bees into the shake jar.

Is the queen in there? Better check.

No. I already checked a dozen times.

Better check again.

I know for a fact that the queen isn’t in the batch of bees I took out for testing. I found her before I started, and I kept an eye on her as I drew other frames from their slots in the box. Then I went back and made sure she was safe and sound.

But are you really, really sure? Better check again.

Iknowthat the queen is on a frame I left in the box.

But you should check one more time. Just to be sure.

I let the voice babble her litany of doom and gloom in the background and focus on the task at hand.

Even though it’s early spring and in the low sixties outside, it’s hot as hell inside my white suit, and loose strands of hair are sticking to my sweaty face. There’s nothing I can do with themesh veil covering my head. I try to huff the hair away, but it’s plastered to my cheek.

As quickly as I can wearing these thick gloves, I fill the jar halfway with alcohol. The bees panic while I screw on the lid, and my nose wrinkles at the chemical stink.

I hate murdering bees. Not because I’m fond of them or anything. They sting, and even when they’re relatively calm, they buzz around you, skulking at the verge of your peripheral vision, and honestly, I don’t know which is worse—a sting hurts, but it feels better once you slap some mud on it. The skulking gives me headaches and drives my wolf nuts.

Somehow, this job defaulted to me after Una mated Killian. Mari point blank refused to take over bee duty, and then she mated Darragh Ryan. Kennedy is really good at not being around when conversations about the divvying up of duties happen.

I’m an unenthusiastic beekeeper, but I’m a truly reluctant bee murderess. No matter how necessary I know it is, drowning them feels awful. I shake the jar as hard as I can, trying to give them as quick a death as possible. They’re dying for the greater good, but they don’t know that, and even if they did, I bet they wouldn’t have volunteered.

I hate playing Fate.

After two minutes of shaking, I let the jar sit for the requisite two additional minutes. While the last of the bees give up the ghost, I survey our little kingdom.

Abertha is off on her travels, so her cottage windows are shut despite the warm weather. There’s no one around except her cat Appollonia, although she’s nowhere to be found at the moment.

These days, Una works down at the new greenhouse that Killian built for her near the commons. He wants her close to home, and now that she has a pup, she doesn’t fight him on it. Mari still comes up here sometimes, but she lives with Darraghin a treehouse out in the woods, and since that’s closer to our shop in Chapel Bell, she spends most of her time working there.

If Kennedy’s not on patrol or training with the males, she’s usually trudging around, doing something. She’s handy, and she knows what needs doing, but she refuses to be pinned down to a schedule. It’s always a surprise when I show up and the garden is tilled, or she’s got buckets set up with spawn for a fresh crop of oyster mushrooms. I don’t see or smell her now, though. I’m alone.

Always alone.

The hole in my chest aches, like cold water is pouring from it, but I can stand loneliness.

It’s better this way. Safer.

It’s beautiful up here at this time of year. Tender shoots and leaves and buds tremble in the breeze, and the ground is soft and dark and rich. There is a feeling that things are about to begin.

Not for me, of course, but for the world at large.

It’s better that way.

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