Page 57 of Fall Before Her Throne

My lips pressed together as emotion welled in my chest. After spending so much of my life lonely and isolated, excluded from the camaraderie around me, this was…a lot. I could never have imagined I’d have friends like this. I knew in my soul that if they ever needed me, I’d come running.

Leona: Thanks, Queens. I’ll keep you all posted on how things are going, but I know you only really want the juicy details about my love life

Zoya: Pretty much. That’s at least why I hang around the group chat anyway

Willow: Just please don’t tell me anything about my brother

Fallon: I want to know the logistics of six men in bed. Please let me know how you all manage that. Three is nice and simple. But six? Boggles the mind

My cheeks burned, and I put the phone face down onto the table so I could shake the images from my head. My five guys were enough… but six? Nope. I doubted that would ever happen.

17

CIEL

Blaring alarms woke me with a start. Blurry red lights flashed from my computer screens. I snatched my glasses from the end table and cursed when the warning became crystal clear.

We were under attack.

I glanced at the clock as I leapt out of bed and yanked on a pair of shorts. It was mid-morning. Everyone else had to be awake by now. Dashing to the door, I yanked it open.

“Leona!” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Come—come here!”

I collapsed into my computer chair as fast as I could and started typing. Thank God I’d gotten everything basically set up again. Otherwise, I’d have no way to fight this off. Terminal windows popped up one after the other. My hand ached while I furiously typed commands, trying to patch the breach.

Footsteps thundered up the stairs. The door opened.

“What is it?” Obi asked first.

“Cyberattack,” I said without even looking. My eyes darted across the screen. Line after line of code flooded the monitor. “Someone is trying to ha—hack us.”

Bodies crammed into the room, but nothing registered. Only the blinking red lights of servers under attack. Shit.

“Ciel?” Leona asked, voice tight as she popped into my periphery. “How can I help?”

Papers, desk, what can she do… I shoved off the stacks of research I’d left on my desk. “He—here. Pull up a chair.” I hadn’t got her secondary setup attached yet, but as fast as I could, I snagged my extra keyboard and handed it to her. “Plug in.”

Someone helped her materialize a chair out of thin air. She sat down in it. Wynn’s face popped up on my other side.

“What’s happening?”

“There was some kind of vulnerability in our wifi network,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m trying to patch it, but they’re quick. Every time I put up a wall, they try to find a way around it.”

“What else can we do?” Obi asked from behind me.

I didn’t respond. There wasn’t time. Someone was trying to breach my servers, and there was no fucking way I’d let them get inside.

“Ready,” Leona said. “What do you need?”

I rattled off instructions for her to save segments of our important files and move them to a physical solid state storage drive. That way, if I couldn’t fight off the breach, I could wipe the whole server and we wouldn’t lose everything. Some, maybe, but not everything.

I did not want to do that. We’d lose so much if I had to wipe this server. It was a last resort.

“Ciel,” Obi said again. “What can we do?”

“I don’t know!” I snapped without looking away from my screens. “Go make sure we’re not being surrounded as we speak.”

“Ryu and I will walk the perimeters,” Cas said, voice disappearing outside the door. Obi answered him, but I didn’t have the capacity to pay attention.