Page 10 of Mane Rival in Store

“How?”

“Her tone.”

“Describe her tone.”

Rune stopped polishing. His lion paced. The tingling in his hands had migrated to a low heat in his chest that expanded every time the bass from next door thumped through the wall—a rhythmic reminder that Lark Coleman existed sixteen inches of plaster away and was not, based on the increasing volume, considering adjusting anything.

“Her tone was… disarming.” The word escaped before he could filter it. He pressed his mouth shut.

Dekel sat up in the chair. Slowly. Like a man who has spotted a rare animal in the wild and does not want to startle it.

“Disarming,” Dekel repeated.

“In a challenging way.”

“Disarming in a challenging way.”

“She was being deliberately pleasant to undermine my position. It’s a negotiation technique.”

“It’s called flirting.”

“It is not—” Rune caught himself. Recalibrated. Buttoned and unbuttoned his jacket cuff—a gesture he didn’t realize he was making until Dekel’s gaze tracked to his wrist and the grin threatened to split his face in half. “I need to call Aspen.”

“About the music situation?”

“About the… general situation.”

“The general situation that is warm in a challenging way and has good cheekbones.” Dekel stood. “I’ll hold the floor. Take your time. Tell your sister I said hi.”

Rune retreated to the back office. Closed the door. The room was small, organized with military precision—authentication equipment on the left wall, reference materials on shelves, a desk that held nothing except a laptop, a phone, and a framed photo of his family that he told himself was for professional ambiance and not sentiment.

He dialed Aspen. She picked up on the second ring, which meant she was between fittings at her Stockholm atelier. Or she’d been waiting for his call. With Aspen, both were equally likely.

“Brother.” Her voice was bright, animated, and carried the faint background noise of scissors on fabric. “It’s eleven o’clock here. At night. This had better be dramatic.”

“The neighboring storefront opened today.”

“The villain lipstick store? Dekel texted me about it. He used the word ‘colorful.’ Dekel never uses the word ‘colorful.’ What happened?”

Rune sat on the edge of his desk. Ran a hand through his hair—the hair that would not lie flat, that had been refusing to cooperate since the moment Lark Coleman’s gaze had met his across sixteen hundred square feet of violet neon. “The store is… commercial. The merchandise is mass-market. The aesthetic is the opposite of everything we represent. The music is a genuine operational concern. Their bass frequencies are compromising the acoustic integrity of my⁠—”

“Rune.”

“—controlled environment, and the window display is a rotating villain outfit showcase that is generating pedestrian traffic that partially blocks our⁠—”

“Rune.”

“—storefront visibility, which is a zoning-adjacent concern at minimum⁠—”

“What does she look like?”

He stopped. The lion pressed against his ribs.

Caramel skin. Hazel eyes that shifted between green and amber under the neon. A smile that dismantled him in ninety seconds. Curves that her leather jacket didn’t hide because she dressed to celebrate, not conceal. Hair—long, black, blown out straight and swinging when she moved, the kind of hair that people stopped on the street to compliment, and he understood why because he’d watched it catch the light while she leaned against the counter and called him Your Majesty and he’d lost approximately forty percent of his cognitive function.

“She has competent branding instincts,” he said.

Aspen was quiet for three full seconds. An eternity, for his sister. “What was she wearing?”