Chapter Thirty four: The Throne of Cinders

The air inside the sanctum tasted like scorched copper, sweat, and absolute, unadulterated dominance.

With a wet, final choke, Adrian dropped the senior director to the marble floor. The man crumpled into a heap, gasping for oxygen, but before he could even crawl an inch, Kael’s heavy boot slammed squarely between his shoulder blades, pinning him hard to the deck. Kael’s combat knife drifted lazily down, the cold steel tracing the terrified executive’s cheek before biting deep enough to draw a thin, bright bead of blood.

"Should I fucking skin the little bastard now, Queen?" Kael murmured, his voice a low, gravelly purr of pure bloodlust as he glanced up at Mari, his dark eyes burning with fanatical, worshipful heat.

"Not yet," Mari hissed, her voice cutting through the panic-stricken silence of the room.

She stepped forward, her boots clicking against the blood-slicked floor. Ren flanked her left side, his tablet flashing a brilliant, triumphant green as he overrode the final sub-routines. "The damn mainframe is completely ours," Ren panted, a wild, manic grin splitting his face as he slammed his free hand against Mari's hip, dragging her flush against his side. "Every fucking firewall, every override, every backup satellite—they're all locked to your biometric signature, Mari. We own the goddamn world."

"And the perimeter is locked fucking tight," Sera added, her fingers trailing a delicate web of lethal, glittering frost across the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. The glass instantly fractured into a web of ice, sealing them inside a fortress of their own making. She glided behind Mari, pressing her freezing, shivering body hard against Mari's back, her sub-zero hands plunging viciously under Mari's vest to cup her bare breasts with bruising, agonizing friction. "Not a single motherfucker is interrupting us."

Lena was already at Mari's right, trembling so violently with unhinged, worshipful adoration that she dropped her datapad, throwing her arms around Mari's waist and burying her face in Mari's stomach, sobbing with ecstatic relief. "They're falling, Mari! Every corporate node across the continent is going dark. You burned the damn bastards to the ground."

Adrian closed in from behind like a tidal wave of muscle and heat. His massive, corded arms wrapped around Mari’s waist and lifted her bodily off her feet, crushing her against his burning chest. He buried his face in her damp hair, his heavy breathing hot and ragged against her neck.

"Look at them, Queen," Adrian growled, his hand sliding down to grip her ass through her tactical gear, grinding her frantically against his massive, aching erection. "They thought they were fucking gods. Look at what’s left of the pathetic shits."

Mari tilted her head back against Adrian’s shoulder, her pulse hammering wildly as her eyes swept over the cowering, bleeding members of the High Council.

She reached up, tangling her fingers in Adrian’s thick hair and wrenching him down into a fierce, punishing, open-mouthed kiss that tasted of smoke, blood, and absolute victory. Around them, Kael, Ren, Sera, and Lena crowded in a suffocating, hyper-charged crush of bodies, desperate for a touch, a glance, a shred of her attention.

"The empire is dead," Mari whispered against Adrian’s lips, her eyes flashing with dark, sovereign fire as she ground her hips back against his hardness. "Now we take every last fucking thing left."