Chapter 168: The Things We Do For Dick

A hologram materialized on the table. The footage played and Nova’s first thought was that has to be wrong.

Celeste was white-knuckling the side of Thunderfang Keep. Shimmying towards a balcony. Snow storm. Silk robe.

Captain Harlan zoomed out so the room could fully appreciate it.

Hologram Celeste was four stories up. Balcony reached. Doors locked. Fucking nope. Not today, Satan.

Nova blinked a few times at it in pure disbelief. Across the table, an elder removed his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on, and confirmed that he was in fact watching a princess scale a building in a silk robe during a snowstorm.

The holo feed fast forwarded.

Hologram Celeste continued crab-walking the ledge. Next balcony: also locked. She pressed on. Window. Unlocked.

Her voice filled the chamber, the audio picked up on one of the holo feeds. "Thank fuck. Finally, something that isn’t actively cockblocking me."

Tavian took a sip of his drink with the casual focus of a man watching his favorite show reach the second act.

The holo jumped to the corridor just in time to catch Celeste on the other side of a door yelling "Damn it" like the universe had personally fucked her over again.

"Wrong floor," Captain Harlan explained to the room.

Some of the elders gave knowing nods. They had walked into the wrong room before too and understood the frustration. Predictable and still funny as shit. Nova and Maria stared at the nodding. Then looked at each other. Then looked away before either of them started laughing.

"Round two," Harlan announced as the holo began to play the same thing, but one floor up.

Fifth floor. First balcony. Locked. Second. Her hand paused at the door. She turned around, noticing the mountain directly behind her.

The room was watching a woman treat a five-story keep like a jungle gym and no one could look away. The collective energy had shifted from shock to sporting event.

"Fuck!" she hissed. "The things we do for love, Landon."

Tavian closed his eyes the way a man closes his eyes at a five-star restaurant when the first bite lands. He was committing this to memory for later use. Next to him, Alpha Thunderfang’s expression, by comparison, was vacant.

"Wrong floor again?" an elder asked, genuinely confused.

"Correct floor. Wrong side of the keep entirely," Harlan replied.

Fast forward. Rooftop. Hologram Celeste came out of the corridor hunched low, crossed towards the edge. She slammed herself against a chimney stack just as a patrol ambled by, close enough to touch and dumber than a bag of hammers.

The table collectively winced like they’d all just watched someone get kicked in the dick.

"That was a close one," one of the elders said to the one next to him who was still holding his breath three seconds later.

Hologram Celeste scaled down the vines, correct side this time, and landed on Alpha Thunderfang’s actual balcony. Locked. She tried picking the lock. Nope.

Then she peered inside, nose against the pane. Her face went from normal to "I will kill everyone" in half a second.

Nova’s ears went hot. She had a strong suspicion of what.

"No, no, no. You absolute whore!" she cried before stomping both feet the way a child stomps a puddle, except the puddle was five stories above the ground and the child had syringes in her robe and the tantrum was about a boy.

She whined. She stomped again. Faster. Her arms windmilled once. Her head snapped back toward the sky. A sound left her mouth that was halfway between a growl and a whine and entirely the noise of a woman who had done everything right, in her opinion, and the world had done everything wrong.

"—did not climb five floors for this. She’s in there, in my bed, in my life. A cockroach that will not die, Landon. I had a five-year roadmap. I am the Luna of Thunderfang. Mark me first. Fine. Have your toy. I don’t care. I am a princess who is trying to provide Thunderfang an heir. That requires your dick inside of me, Landon. How the fuck am I supposed to do that with her here? Look at me. I am stunning. I am literally stunning on a ledge—"

The feed cut to her climbing the interior stair to the attic storage over the royal wing. Located the laundry chute. Shoved her head and shoulders in first, because why the fuck not.

She fell the entire way down. The holo changed to a laundry room where she landed in a basket of linens with a thud.

The war room collectively leaned forward, waiting for whatever word she was going to say.

"Son of a bitch!"

That did it.

The dam broke. Two captains lost it first, shoulders shaking, one of them turning away from the table. A high-ranking officer covered his mouth with his fist. Astra’s composure cracked for the first time Nova had ever witnessed. Even Alpha Thunderfang’s jaw moved once in a way that might have been a suppressed something.

"She went back up," Harlan narrated as the footage jumped ahead. "Attic, different chute, down again depositing her into a utility closet."

She climbed the utility closet shelves into an air duct.

"Shit. Landon. You are so lucky to have me. Seriously. This is ridiculous. The slave."

She elbow-crawled the length of it. The feed jumped to outside of Derek’s chambers. No Celeste in the feed. Just her voice.

"Damn it." Loud enough that the mic rang with it.

"That vent empties into Prince Derek’s closet," Harlan explained, wearing the expression of a man watching his professional legacy get dismantled by a woman in slippers. "Wrong room again. She had to wait and time her exit, because the hall was being patrolled." The footage showed Celeste frozen half-out of the vent, then dropping and rolling into an alcove a half-second before two guards rounded the corner and passed.

"Third chute attempt," Harlan announced. "Correct chute. The chute is smaller. Don’t ask me why."

An elder murmured, "Oh dear."

Hologram Celeste shoved into the laundry chute headfirst. Camera locked on two slippered feet kicking in open air, patient as a serial killer. She was stuck. Structurally stuck. Kicks went from measured to "I’m about to start screaming" furious.

An elder put both hands over his face and watched through his fingers like a man at a horror movie who was scared but couldn’t stop looking.

Fast forward. Hologram Celeste dropped down. New utility closet, adjacent to the one she had just been in. Air vent.

"How?" one of the elders asked.

"Hold." Alpha Thunderfang’s voice stopped the feed dead.

The hologram froze on Celeste mid-crawl.

"None of them caught her scent." It wasn’t a question so much as a demand for the reason. "Ten guards. A patrol that walked past her twice. My wolf would have had her from across the keep."