Chapter 369: Pants Down. Figuratively. Also Literally.

DRAKENCREST WAR ROOM - ONE HOUR LATER

A dictator dragon princess waltzed into her war room with mimosas. The High Marshal, Third in Command, immediately told her that washighly inappropriate. The dragon princess said you’ll survive, Sterling.

To the room’s collective what the fuck, the High Marshal poured himself one and parked his ass directly across from her like this was a date.

Nobody recovered. No one could look away.

Ryker’s expression said are we addressing this? Kael’s expression said absolutely not. Griffin’s expression said I knew the mimosas were a good idea.

Then the date added one more.

A Beta wolf entered the war room, poured himself one, and sat on the princess’s right.

What came next had every person at that table clutching their glass like it was a life raft.

The debriefing was the first item. Marek’s intel was put on the table. Solveil. Blood Oath. And the part that had sucked every drop of warmth from the room: Guinevere Lunaris, being wanted for the murder of Landon Solveil.

Things got interesting when everyone was on their second mimosa.

Nicholas shook his head. The motion was slow, deliberate, the head-shake of a man who had processed the information and was sending it back to the kitchen.

"No. I can’t believe that." His voice was steady but the steadiness was load-bearing and the load was visible. "A few weeks ago, the night Drakencrest Keep was under siege, I was with her for part of the evening. Her flame killed and she was rattled because she had never killed anyone until right then and it was an accident. The woman who panicked over an accidental kill didn’t walk into the Kingdom of Light and attempt to murder a king."

"Seconded," Blair said. "We accidentally killed two people that night. Blades. Screaming. Head-in-a-box. Bodies shoved in a closet. It was a whole thing."

The room absorbed that.

Damon, who was sitting next to Blair, opened his mouth, then chose silence like a man choosing not to stick his dick in a blender.

Griffin looked at his emotional support mimosa, then back at Blair. "I’m sorry. The head went where."

"My point is," Blair continued. "If she tried to kill someone, she would have confessed to it immediately or screamed about it. That girl was way too calm earlier."

"There’s a chance she wasn’t aware when it was happening," Sterling cut in. "Possession is documented. We watched her in the library. She threw two grown dragons across a room with one hand and had zero memory of it afterward. If something similar happened in Solveil, she could have attacked Landon without any conscious participation."

Blair set her mimosa down with the careful precision of a woman about to disagree with someone who outranked her by three positions and had chosen violence.

"Yeah, I don’t believe that story," she said flatly. "I didn’t believe it the first time and I still don’t. There is zero chance THAT girl flung my brothers across the room. Grown warriors couldn’t accomplish that."

Every eye in the room moved to Kael.

Kael took a sip of his mimosa and said absolutely nothing, which was the most telling thing he could have done because Kael Ashenvale had an opinion about everything and the absence of one meant the truth was worse than the opinion and his pride was the casualty.

"Ashenvale. Tell the class. Did she or did she not throw you across a room?" Ryker asked.

"The physics of that encounter are still being reviewed," Kael replied without looking at anyone. "Moving on."

"She threw your ass," Ryker translated.

"I said moving on."

"Guinevere. Threw you and Maddox," Blair stated. "I’ve never been more proud."

"Blair, I will redecorate your chambers with Griffin’s taste level if you don’t drop this."

Griffin looked up from his mimosa, wounded. "What’s wrong with my taste?"

"Everything," Blair replied. "Your quarters look like a keg stand had a baby with a hunting lodge."

Kael drained his mimosa in one pull and set the glass down with the restrained fury of a man whose physical humiliation had just been workshopped by committee.

"She tossed me. Gently. I wasn’t ready. One foot. Two, if I’m being generous. She didn’t know she was doing it." Kael lifted one finger. "But that was different. She told me what happened in Solveil and I told her we’d handled it."

Nicholas’s jaw worked once. "Did she say it directly, Ashenvale? Out loud. To you. Verbatim."

"No," Kael conceded after a long moment. "She didn’t. She pointed at it. I caught it."

"Then you understood a hint and called it a confession. She was confessing things left and right to me all day. If she attacked Landon Solveil, she would have told me."

He was aware of how that sounded. Defensive. Like she had chosen to confess to Kael instead of to him and the hierarchy of that bothered him. That wasn’t the angle. The angle was simpler and more certain than ego: Guinevere Lunaris was a compulsive confessor. The woman volunteered information the way other people volunteered for charity. She had warned the cops about her contagious runes. She had identified herself as a terrorist. She had told him she was married while sitting naked in his lap in a magic tree. If she had stabbed Landon Solveil, she would have led with it, apologized for the inconvenience, and asked about his recovery.

"Then explain why she ran from the police to begin with," Kael countered.

"Listen to the behavior, Ashenvale," Nicholas replied. "She told me she was a terrorist. Reason: she ’destroyed their water supply.’ Translation: Fountains got taller. She also said she had committed genocide by trampling a flower garden because she assumed their culture treated plants as sentient beings. Case closed on that."

"Fine. You made your point, Shadowfell. Maddox and I initially said the same thing."

"Gods, you’re both exhausting," Blair breathed. "We ask her. Directly. The next person who tries to ’interpret’ her answer is removed from the war room."

Nicholas and Kael stared at her. She stared at Nicholas and Kael. Damon spotted her very full mimosa, picked it up, and killed it in one swallow.

"She’s with Maddox right now," Kael stated. "They both are exhausted and they need sleep. She had a long night and I’m being generous with that description."

The way he said long night carried weight that every person in the room felt and nobody touched because touching it meant asking what happened after they left and asking what happened after they left meant hearing the answer and the answer was behind a door that Kael had been kicked out of.

"Don’t you need to be there because of the flashes?" Blair asked, as if the fact that her sister-in-law periodically traveled across continents against her will was more of a scheduling concern rather than anything.

"Yes," Kael answered. "I don’t feel any of the light building right now, but it has a nasty habit of catching me with my pants down. Figuratively." He paused. "Also literally, once. Let’s move past that."