Page 74 of Mane Rival in Store

“He looks like someone who knows how to reproduce a 1987 binding adhesive with molecular accuracy.” Rune zoomed into the spectrographic overlay. “The printing pressure is also diagnostic. Every press has a signature—micro-variations in plate alignment that create unique impression patterns. I’ve been comparing the forgeries against authenticated editions from the same era.” He highlighted two imaging layers. “The forgeries don’t match any known press from the original publication runs. But they DO match each other. All five editions came from the same equipment.”

“So one printer. One person with restoration-level expertise. One guy in the Bronx with a vanishing act.” Her thumb traced a circle on the back of his neck. His concentration flickered like a lamp in a windstorm. “Can you prove it’s him?”

“Not yet. The adhesive narrows the field. The press signature narrows it further. But we need to find his operation to match the equipment.” He reached for the coffee—her coffee, the cinnamon assault—and caught her watching him drink it with visible satisfaction. “You’re enjoying this.”

“You drinking my terrible coffee or us hunting a comics forger?”

“Both seem to bring you joy.”

“Both do.” She kissed the side of his head. His hair rose sharply at the contact point and she laughed—the quick, warm sound that he’d stopped pretending didn’t rearrange his priorities—and walked back through the service door with one final observation tossed over her shoulder: “Your hair just said hello, by the way. I’m keeping a tally.”

He pressed his hair down with one hand. It resisted.

She’s keeping a tally

Of course, she is.

His phone buzzed. Dekel.

Dekel: Council meeting at noon. Yara requested it. Formal session, full quorum. She’s invoking advisory privilege on the mate question.

The coffee turned to lead in his stomach.

Dekel: I know. I’m already at the den. Torsten and Maren confirmed. Your mother is handling the room setup. Your father called from Norway to say, and I quote, “Tell him to say what he means and mean what he says. Lions who speak around a thing instead of to it lose the room.”

Rune: My father should write fortune cookies.

Dekel: Your father should run a therapy practice. See you at noon. Wear the charcoal.

He set down the phone. The investigation could wait three hours. The council could not.

The Sterling den’s receiving room at noon held the tension of a courtroom before a verdict—all the furniture in place, all the principals seated, and the air thick with outcomes that hadn’t been spoken yet.

Rune took the alpha’s chair. Charcoal suit, as instructed. He’d kissed Lark goodbye at the service door before leaving, and she’d straightened his collar and said, “Go handle your court, Your Majesty. I’ll handle ours.” The ours had settled in his ribcage and stayed there, warm, as he’d cabbed uptown in Friday traffic.

Five council members occupied the curved arrangement of chairs that had served as the Pride’s deliberative seating for two generations. Torsten—gray-bearded, measured, the council’s historian and its conscience. Maren—sharp-featured, pragmatic, the voice of the Pride’s younger faction. Eric—broad and quiet, a former soldier who voted on principle and spoke only when the principle required defense. Solveig—Astrid’s contemporary, elegant, who had been quietly supportive of Rune’s leadership since the transition and whose quiet counted for more than most people’s noise.

And Yara.

She sat in the senior councilwoman’s position—the chair closest to the alpha’s, the one that carried both advisory authority and adversarial tradition. Her signet ring was already tapping. The sound filled the pauses between greetings like a metronome counting down to the movement everyone was here to hear.

Dekel stood behind Rune’s chair. Beta’s position. His face was easy, relaxed—the practiced calm of a man who could escalate from casual to lethal in the space between heartbeats and preferred not to advertise it.

“The council is convened at the request of Councilwoman Vender-Lindgren.” Rune kept his voice level. “Advisory privilege is recognized. Speak.”

Yara stood. The room contracted around her the way it always did—not through intimidation but through sheer specificity of presence. She held a single page. No folder. No evidence. One page, which meant this was not an argument. It was a position statement.

“The alpha has taken a mate.”

The room held still. Rune did not confirm or deny. The confirmation was unnecessary—every lion in the room had registered the change in his scent three days ago. The roar would come later, at the formal ceremony, but the biological markers were already broadcasting what the ceremony would formalize.

“A human mate.” Yara’s gaze held his. “An American. A woman who sells themed lipstick.”

The characterization was reductive and she knew it. That was the point. Reduce the argument to its most dismissive framing and force the alpha to elevate it.

“The council’s advisory privilege extends to concerns about the Pride’s future.” Rune let his gaze move across the five chairs. “State the concern.”

“My concern is precedent.” She set the page on the table between them. He didn’t look at it. “In four generations, no Sterling alpha has mated outside the Pride. The tradition exists for reasons of continuity, cultural preservation, and political stability. An external mate—particularly a human mate with no knowledge of Pride governance—introduces variables that this council has a duty to address.”