Page 97 of Mane Rival in Store

They looked at each other.

“She knows,” Lark whispered.

“She can’t possibly⁠—”

“She KNOWS. Breezy knows everything. Breezy has a sixth sense for property damage and unauthorized inventory loss. It’s her superpower.”

The phone rang a second time. A third. Lark reached for it—stretching across the cape, naked, laughing so hard her shoulder shook—and answered.

“Breezy.”

“The store alarm triggered.” Breezy’s voice was flat, measured, fully operational despite having been woken from sleep. “I’m receiving the alert on the security app. The alarm code corresponds to the Sterling & Mane stockroom sensor. I need to know if this is a break-in or if this is what I think it is.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I think you and Rune are in the stockroom after hours and something fell over.”

“Define ‘something.’”

“I’m looking at the security camera feed, Lark. The stockroom camera. The one I installed last month for inventory monitoring.”

Dead silence. The alarm continued to scream.

“There’s a camera.”

“There’s a camera. I’m not looking at the live feed because I have boundaries, but the motion sensor log shows two heat signatures entering the stockroom and a cascade event not long after. The damage radius appears to involve the promotional display section and the candle inventory. I’ve opened a second insurance file. ‘Lion altercation, Navy Yard’ was the first. This one is ‘stockroom incident, personal.’ They live in the same folder. I’ve labeled the folder ‘Ongoing.’ That’s a new folder.”

Rune, from beside Lark, his face pressed into the crook of her neck: “Tell her I’ll cover the damages.”

“She can hear you. The stockroom has excellent acoustics.” Breezy paused. “I’m disabling the alarm remotely. Please don’t break anything else. The insurance carrier is already reviewing our file with what I can only describe as concern.”

The alarm cut off. Silence flooded the space—warm, ringing, the stunned quiet that follows a catastrophe when the dust settles and the survivors take stock.

Lark dropped the phone on the cape. Looked at Rune. His hair was standing up—not the happy lift, not the aroused spike, but the mortified version, which she had never seen before and which involved the strands at both temples rising straight up and quivering.

“New category,” she breathed. “‘The Mortification Spike.’ Triggered by post-intimate property destruction witnessed by personal assistant via security feed.”

He groaned.

She kissed the groan off his mouth. He tasted like laughter and embarrassment and a man who had controlled every variable in his life and had chosen—deliberately, joyfully, with full awareness of the consequences—a woman who was the variable he couldn’t control and didn’t want to.

The candle puddle reached the edge of the cape.

The authentication solution reached his trousers.

The Celestial Ronin standee lay across the floor like a fallen soldier.

“This is the best night of my life,” she informed him.

“We are naked on the floor surrounded by merchandise damage.”

“Correct. The best night. Of my entire life.” She pulled his face to hers. “And you asked me to wear the cape without me having to suggest it.”

His expression shifted. The mortification faded. The thing underneath—the warmth, the openness, the man who existed beneath the king—surfaced. He brushed her hair from her face. Traced the line of her jaw with his thumb. The touch was gentle and proprietary and entirely without the performance of gentleness—he was gentle because he was gentle, and she was the reason he’d learned to stop hiding it.

His phone buzzed on the floor. Then hers again. Then both at once.

Dekel: The alarm notification went to my phone. I’m not asking questions. I’m simply noting that the last time I received a stockroom alarm at this hour, someone had broken in and stolen a first-edition Spider-Man. I assume this is not that. I am going back to sleep. Good night.