Page 25 of Dragon Chaos Around

Not through hacking, not through charm—through Rowan Ashveil, who answered his phone on the first ring at nine-thirty in the morning with the vocal warmth of a man who had been waiting for exactly this call for approximately four hundred years.

“Rowan. I need penthouse access.”

“Good morning to you too, Alani. My morning is lovely, thank you for asking. I had an excellent scone.”

“Rowan.”

“I’m sending the clearance now.” A pause. She heard the delight in his voice. “Should I clear his schedule?”

“For how long?”

“How angry are you?”

“I’m not angry. I’m—” She jabbed the elevator button. The doors opened. “I’ll define the emotion when I’ve identified it. Clear an hour.”

“Cleared. Alani?”

“What.”

“You should know that I’ve been waiting for someone to storm that penthouse since approximately 1847. Please don’t hold back.”

He hung up. The elevator ascended.

Alani stood in the mirrored box and watched her reflection rise forty-two stories above Manhattan. Her hair was down today—loose waves she hadn’t had time to style because she’d spent the morning staring at a film canister like it had proposed marriage. She wore a rust-colored blouse tucked into high-waisted trousers, gold hoops, the heels that meant she was not messing around. The outfit had been chosen for construction oversight and vendor meetings. It was now serving as armor for a conversation she hadn’t planned and couldn’t postpone.

In her right hand: the transport case. On the transport case: the Silverscale crest, embossed in silver, glinting under the elevator lights like evidence at a crime scene.

In her left hand: a mental inventory that had been building since she’d woken up to a text from Giselle that read: “Check your desk before you caffeinate. You’ll need to be sitting down.”

First gift: a first edition of her favorite manga. The single volume that had started her love affair with villain stories. Left without a note. Denied with a transparency so thin, it was practically an admission.

Second gift: an original 1944 film print she’d mentioned in a meeting. Sourced from what could only be a private archive of staggering depth. Also left without a note, in a case monogrammed with the gifter’s family crest because even eight-hundred-year-old dragons made mistakes when their instincts outpaced their strategy.

The pattern was unmistakable.

The elevator opened.

The penthouse corridor stretched ahead—a single hallway, midnight-carpeted, leading to a door that looked like it had been designed by an architect who understood that the last fifty feet before entering a dragon’s territory should make the visitor reconsider. Atmospheric. Deliberate. The kind of space that communicated “you are approaching the apex of the food chain; proceed accordingly.”

Alani proceeded.

She knocked once. The door opened before she could knock twice—opened by the man himself, not a butler, not an assistant, which meant he’d been standing behind it. Waiting. He had been waiting behind his own front door like a man bracing for impact.

He filled the doorframe. White shirt today. Sleeves rolled to his forearms—the first time she’d seen his forearms bare, and the revelation was distracting enough to nearly derail the entire confrontation. The cords of muscle and tendon beneath skin that carried a faint metallic sheen in the morning light. Veins running blue-green over warm-toned flesh. The silver cufflinks absent, which made his wrists look exposed in a way that bordered on indecent.

Focus. You are here for accountability, not forearms.

His silver eyes met hers. The gold flicker—the one she’d learned to watch for, the one that signaled his dragon rising to the surface—was already there. Not a flicker this time. A glow. Steady, warm, burning at the edges of his irises like embers banked in pewter.

“Ms. Nores.”

“Mr. Silverscale.” She held up the transport case. Let the crest catch the hallway light. “I believe this is yours.”

“I’ve stated that I am not⁠—”

“You’re courting me.” She stepped forward. He stepped back. The involuntary retreat—a dragon ceding ground to a human woman holding a film canister—was the most satisfying physical response she had ever provoked in another person, and she had once made a studio executive flinch by declining his offer twice. “With treasure.”

His jaw locked. The temperature in the hallway ticked up—not her imagination, not adrenaline. The actual ambient temperature increased by at least two degrees, and she watched it happen in real time: the faint shimmer of heat rising off his shoulders like a mirage over asphalt.