Flash Marriage: In His Eyes-Chapter 348: The Queen’s Men

–Lore–

It’s been twenty hours. Twenty fucking hours.

And somehow, we’re still standing.

They managed to breach the property—clean insertion, minimal noise. Our outer guards pulled back exactly as Livana instructed. Textbook tactical retreat. Outside the mansion, at least fifty hostiles are roaming the perimeter like wolves sniffing blood. The dogs? Locked in their cages, going ballistic—barking, snarling, claws scraping metal. They feel it. They know intruders are on our ground.

Smartest creatures in this whole damn operation, honestly.

The guards are holed up in their own panic room beneath the barracks, monitoring perimeter controls. Watching. Waiting. My chest tightens—like wires twisting too hard inside me.

"Mom," I call through the speakers, trying to keep my voice steady.

From the system logs, I can tell—they’re moving the drives. Securing data. Priorities straight: records first, survival second.

"Hey, baby," Mom replies.

I grimace. "I’m not a baby, okay?"

Alyssa giggles beside me, her fingers dancing across the console. I taught her some of the controls—camera cycling, thermal scans, basic tracking. She picked it up fast. Too fast. And she’s enjoying it.

"Tell me that you’re safe," I press.

Because all I can see are coordinates. Dots on a map. Not them. Not really.

"We are safe," she confirms.

Dad’s voice cuts in, warm and alive. "How’s Aly? Hello, Aly!"

Alyssa lights up. "Hi, Dad! I’m doing fine here. I’m helping Lore."

"Wow, that’s great!"

God. Hearing them again—it’s like oxygen flooding back into my lungs.

"Dad... you know the wedding, right?"

"Yes, yes! Don’t worry. After this, your mom and I will take a long break. Then we’ll help prepare everything."

"I’m counting on it, Mom, Dad," Aly says softly.

And yeah—they love her. That much is obvious.

I glance at my fiancée. She gives me that look—steady, grounding, like she’s anchoring me in place.

"I love you both," I murmur.

"We love you too, Lore. You, your brother, and Aly."

I bite my lip, exhaling slowly—

Then freeze.

Contact.

One hostile just breached the house.

Everything goes dead silent.

They’re safe in the panic room. And that device Livana gave them? Yeah—I know it. Motion detection, bio-signature sweeps, probably layered with countermeasures. She planned this. Of course she did.

The alarm’s already been triggered.

They thought they had the police under control. Cute.

We brought our own army.

"Go! Go!" one of the intruders shouts. "There could be tunnels here!"

Yeah. Just like our first nest—they tracked it. Too bad it was already a ghost town when they got there.

The King’s Men don’t get caught.

They vanish.

Like magicians. Like myths.

And Damon?

He turned this house into a damn masterpiece.

They’re sweeping everything—thermal, sound, ground vibration sensors. Even underground noise detectors.

What they don’t know?

The panic room isn’t under the house.

It’s in the maze garden.

This place? Just the front door.

They tear through everything—drawers, cabinets, shelves. Jewelry? Gone. Valuables? Relocated to a cave-like vault.

Now they’re in Sky’s room. Then the twins’.

Then—Alyssa’s room.

And oh, this is where it gets good.

Right there on the table: the tentacle dildo.

Our little prank.

"Man, look at this! Disgusting. Rich people are disgusting."

Alyssa and I burst out laughing.

"That was something," Aunt Ines chimes in over comms, clearly entertained.

"I’m bored, guys," David mutters. Useless at the moment.

Of course, the one actually running the family business right now? My brother. Blackwell and Braxton—both. No pressure.

"But seriously," I add, grinning, "where did you even get that, Alyssa?"

"Online," she says proudly.

Naturally.

I tap a command.

The dildo activates—

—and blasts white fluid straight onto the armed idiots in full tactical gear.

"Wow, that’s gross," David laughs. "I never would’ve thought of that." He shakes his head. "Damn it. I should’ve booby-trapped my room too."

Amateur.

They move on—finally reaching the master bedroom. Livana and Damon’s territory.

They scan devices, pick through everything.

They probably found the tablet.

Big mistake.

It’s bait.

One connection—and boom. Viral payload. System corruption. Total wipe.

"There’s no one here," one of them reports over the radio.

They’ve surrounded the house top to bottom. Now they’re hunting for the basement.

We gave them a basement.

Game room.

Nothing else.

No access points. No secrets.

"There’s nothing here."

"Rich bastards."

"They already evacuated. Damn it! Find those guards! Kill them!"

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Those "guards"?

Assassins.

The moment they step outside—

Control flips.

Hard.

If they’d paid attention, they might’ve noticed the statues. Gothic designs all over the property. Decorative, right?

Wrong.

The griffins?

Lion heads. Open mouths.

Hidden nozzles.

Motion-activated machine guns.

"What’s going on?!" one of them panics.

"We are under attack!"

They don’t even see where it’s coming from.

Alyssa steps closer behind me, eyes wide. Not scared—mesmerized.

"Wow..."

One by one—headshots. Neck shots. Clean, precise.

They scatter, trying to find cover. Trying to locate the shooter.

There is no shooter.

"Damn it! There are machine guns in the statues!"

Took you long enough.

They had no idea Damon built this place like a fortress.

Originally?

To imprison his wife.

Yeah. Irony’s a bitch.

"It’s so cool!" David exclaims. "I wish I could control one!"

"Me too!" Aly adds.

I snort. "You’re not a killer, baby."

Still, I route control through auxiliary systems—activating more units from the tower nodes. Supporting the guards. Cleaning house.

They’re armored, sure. Tactical gear. But nothing’s perfect.

Every defense has a gap.

Neck mobility? That’s your weakness. Always.

No heavy plating there. Can’t afford it.

Balaclavas. Helmets. Doesn’t matter.

Machine guns don’t care.

A few of them stay inside, camping like rats too scared to leave.

"Just deploy gas," David says, finally sitting down. "I’m bored, Lore. It’s been four hours."

I ignore him.

Instead, I look at Alyssa.

She’s staring at the bodies on the lawn.

No fear. No flinching.

Maybe it’s in her blood.

Still... they tried to shield her from this.

"What are you thinking, baby?" I ask softly.

"Would they find out we’re in the mansion?"

I switch screens—pull up feeds from the Braxton estate.

Same story.

Intruders dropping—headshots, clean kills.

Then Blackwell.

Same outcome.

"They won’t," I tell her.

Because if they do—

We’re not just targets anymore.

We become leverage.

Hostages.

–Jane–

My arm throbbed—dull, persistent. For the past few days, we’d been hunting those two traitors, and every lead only unraveled into something bigger, something far more organized than we anticipated. They weren’t just connected—they were embedded. And not with the usual powers. Not Tyrona. Not the Russians. Not the Americans.

What the hell did we just walk into?

The thought barely settled when I felt a hand rest on my lower back. Firm. Familiar. Grounding.

I froze—my body reacting before my mind caught up. Then it clicked. My husband.

I hadn’t even realized how far my focus had drifted.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

His voice was steady, but I caught the slight strain beneath it—the way his shoulders subtly favored one side, the faint tension in his jaw. He was still in pain. Still limping from shielding me earlier. And yet, he stood straight, as if nothing had happened.

I nodded, though my eyes had already shifted elsewhere.

To Livana.

She stood before the Knights now.

They were exactly what rumors described—broad-shouldered, lean, unmoving. Their expressions were carved from stone, eyes empty in a way that spoke not of calm, but of absence. Not a flicker of humanity. Just obedience. Just execution.

Assassins without souls.

And us?

We weren’t much different.

We were the Queen’s birds.

King or Queen—it didn’t matter. Both were Livana.

She turned toward the monitor.

The live feed flickered—cold, clinical. The statues had begun firing. Machine guns embedded within carved stone, spitting death across the estate.

Forty men dropped across the lawns.

Ten more inside.

No hesitation. No mercy.

It had already begun in the Braxton and Blackwell estates too. Coordinated. Precise. Ruthless.

And the Carrington mansion...

They didn’t even need this level of force.

"Do you want to see them?"

The voice came from the commander—the smallest among the Knights.

Small, but not weak. Not even close.

She stood nearly the same height as Livana, yet beside the others, Livana almost looked... young. Fragile, even. But I knew better. We all did.

Livana nodded once.

Sharp. Final.

The Knights moved in perfect unison, heels striking the floor in a crisp echo as they parted for her.

We followed.

The transition was jarring.

From polished, modern corridors filled with silent, humming technology... to the dungeon.

Even here, everything was advanced—clean, calculated. No rust. No decay. Just controlled suffering.

We stepped into the holding area.

And there they were.

Carrie. Casey.

And Gregory.

"L-Livana!"

Gregory shot to his feet so abruptly the chair behind him screeched. His face crumpled almost instantly—relief, disbelief, desperation all colliding at once. He rushed forward and pulled her into a tight embrace.

"I knew it," he choked. "It’s you."

Livana didn’t move.

Not a single muscle responded. No arms lifting. No softening.

Nothing.

But Gregory...

The way his hands trembled against her back, the uneven rhythm of his breathing, the tears he didn’t even try to hide—

He loved her.

That much was real.

Whatever he had done, whatever role he played—he wasn’t hollow. He wasn’t like the others.

He was her father.

I shifted my gaze to Carrie and Casey.

Shock had drained the color from their faces, but it didn’t last. Not with Carrie.

"The bitch is still alive," she scoffed.

Gregory’s head snapped toward her, his glare sharp enough to cut.

"What?" Carrie shrugged, lips curling. "It’s all her doing. Don’t be stupid, Greg."

Livana moved then.

She pressed a hand against Gregory’s chest—not gently, not harshly. Just enough to push him aside.

A boundary.

Her focus locked onto Carrie and Casey.

Their bodies reacted instantly.

Shoulders tightening. Fingers twitching. Breaths growing shallow and uneven. Their pupils dilated—not with fear alone, but with the instinct to attack.

They wanted to lunge at her.

But they couldn’t.

Restraint held them in place.

Power kept them there.

Livana stepped closer.

Her eyes—red. Not just from exhaustion. From something deeper. Something burning.

Her hands trembled slightly at her sides, but her face...

Her face was ice.

A tyrant’s calm.

"I might have given you a few days of your life, Casey."

She smiled.

And something inside me snapped.

It wasn’t a normal smile. Not even close. It was sharp. Twisted. Beautiful in the most terrifying way.

A chill crawled from the nape of my neck down my spine.

I had never seen her like this.

Not once.

"Stay here," she said, glancing briefly at Gregory. "I have a surprise in a few days."

The softness in her tone didn’t match her eyes. Not at all.

Those eyes still belonged to a tyrant.

I looked toward Lore.

For once, she was silent.

Completely still.

Her gaze was fixed on Livana—wide, calculating, shaken in a way she didn’t bother to hide.

And then it hit me.

Livana was pregnant.

And yet—nothing in her posture, her movements, her expression gave it away. No hesitation. No vulnerability.

Just control.

Just power.

"They are hunting you all," Livana murmured as she turned away. "Anyone involved in that society."

Then, softer—almost as an afterthought:

"Dad, you can stay with your parents."

She gestured slightly, signaling the Knights.

Gregory reached for her hand.

"Liva, sweetie..."

His voice broke as he pulled her into another embrace, pressing a kiss to her head.

"I don’t care what you’re going to do to me. Just... let me hug you."

Livana didn’t respond.

Didn’t react.

Her face remained blank—void of everything.

Then, with a small motion of her fingers, she signaled the Knights.

They moved instantly, pulling Gregory away, holding him in place.

She didn’t look back.

Not once.

She simply walked out.

Logan’s hand found mine as we followed.

Warm. Steady.

A silent reassurance.

That everything would be fine.

But the way Livana walked ahead of us—cold, untouchable, already ten steps beyond whatever we were still trying to process—

Told me otherwise.