Page 26 of Honey, I'm Home

I fly out of our secret hive in the garden and look for Dev and Arbor, wiggling as I go to make sure they know we have an issue.

I fly through the window and shift, finding Arbor in the kitchen cutting veggies and being all cute and domestic, and Dev at the computer off to the side working on client invoices.

“Incoming!”

They both freeze and stare at me, then start sniffing, eyes widening when they pick up the same thing I did.

We generally keep lots of windows open to let in fresh air when it’s warm enough, and seeing as how today is beautiful andsunny, all the pheromones from whoever is here to confront us are flooding into our home.

The next thing we hear is the squeal of multiple sets of tires and lots of closing of doors, and I have just enough time to slam back a honey stick and wrap an apron around my hips for modesty before Dev is answering the incredibly rude pounding at the door.

The door isn’t even open all the way before they start talking down to us. “We are here to summon all three of you to The Honeybee Court. It is imperative that you follow my instructions exactly and do not resist. If you do, we will be forced to smoke you out and tie you up.”

“What is this about?” Dev asks, making sure Arbor and I stay behind him.

The messenger is wearing a full traditional bee getup, massive metallic gray parachute pants with a business blazer on top and a black and yellow striped bowtie to denote his alignment. His hair is carefully slicked back and his mustache impeccably twirled, but his face sucks.

“We sent you multiple official correspondences without a single reply. You are hereby found to be in contempt of The Court of Honeybee and have used up all of our goodwill.”

I slap Arbor on the back of the head. “I told you we should have responded.”

He grabs my hand and squeezes it firmly, warning me. But no, we have too much on the line to deal with this.

“We have a queen. We apologize for failing to respond in a timely manner, but we had to be sure that she was settled before informing The Bee Court,” Dev calmly explains. He wasdefinitely the best choice to talk to them; he’s way better at keeping his cool when he’s pissed.

But yeah, he’spissed.

The bodies on the porch start being shoved to the side and a little angry thing in a bubblegum pink ball gown shoves her way to the front, face nearly the same hue as her clothing. “I willnotbe disrespected in such a way! By law, you all belong to me. Iwillhave you so I can beat that bitch Mara and have the bigger colony. This is nonnegotiable!”

Dev looks down at her, placidly, unimpressed. “And you are?”

She gasps, very dramatically, and takes a deep breath before stepping closer to him. “I am Princess Tara, you ass! The queen youwillbe swearing fealty to. You. Belong. To. Me!”

Dev lets out a disappointed huff and looks to Arbor and me briefly before taking a small step back and then simply shutting the door on her face, taking his time to draw the chain across the door so she can’t reopen it.

“Well. Anyone care for a cup of tea?”

Dev starts walking off with his hands in his pockets, whistling to himself.

The pounding on the door continues. “We can hear you! Get out here and impregnate me, you disloyal drones!”

“Now that’s just rude,” I say as I follow behind Dev.

I know what you’re thinking to yourself; why don’t they just shift and fly in through the open window? Or even crawl through the window Ijustmentioned a few paragraphs ago was wide open to let in a breeze?

You see, the answer is simple. Bee Court Officials will never, and I mean noteverenter where they’re not invited. Inundate uswith mail, sure; actually walk into our house and force us into compliance?

Ah, fuck.

A few bodyguards kick our door open, breaking Aster’s shiny new lock, and that’s so damn mean. That thing meant something to her, you know?

They immediately start firing at us with smoke guns, and I react instinctively, falling to my hands and knees to get away from the smoke while covering my mouth. My hive mates are doing the same, crawling towards the backyard where the air will circulate the smoke better.

All we have to do is make it a little further and their guns won’t do a damn thing.

Ah fuck, they also have tranquilizers.

I have just enough wherewithal to grab my phone and hit the emergency shortcut to call Aster, and it’s actually good I’m slightly psychotic, because I programmed her phone to automatically track us with an SOS signal when I did that.