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“I’ll route the schedule through you directly,” she said, already writing. “Anyone you want kept off the project?”

“No.”

“Understood.” She didn’t ask why. It was possibly the single most valuable skill she brought to the job.

She hesitated at the door on her way out, which she never did. “Whatever’s got you rerouting your entire calendar around one single contractor, sir — I hope it’s good news.”

He didn’t answer that. It was probably the best news he’d had in longer than he could remember. He wasn’t ready to say so out loud yet, not even to the one person in the building who’d likely earned the right to hear it first.

He walked back into his office, shut the door for the first time all day, and stood at the window with the file still under his arm. The city looked smaller than it had that morning. Not because anything about it had changed — because he now had one place in it he wanted to be, and it wasn’t behind this desk.

That night, for the first time in longer than he’d admit, Norden didn’t go to the penthouse. He went to the roof.

Victor caught him at the elevator, because Victor caught everyone at every elevator eventually. It was less a job skill at this point than a personality disorder.

“Going somewhere.”

“Up.”

“Should I clear the airspace, or are we pretending the FAA doesn’t exist again this week?”

“Again.”

“Wonderful. I’ll handle the noise complaints too, since that’s apparently also my job now.” Victor didn’t try to follow him into the elevator, which told Norden everything about how many times they’d already had this exact conversation. “Try not to set off every radar station on the coast. Again.”

“No promises.”

“That’s what you said last time. Also the time before that. You could just tell me what’s wrong. Novel concept, I know.”

“No.”

“Fine. Go set off a Coast Guard investigation. Very healthy. Very normal for a man who owns four hotels and a very good tailor.” Victor turned back toward his own office, calm as ever, the elevator doors sliding shut on Norden’s silence like they, too, had learned better than to wait around for an answer, having watched this exact routine play out more times than either of them cared to count.

The terrace sat empty, fire pits down to embers, the city laid out below like it existed purely to be looked down on. He didn’t linger. He crossed to the rail, checked that no one else had wandered up for air, and went over the edge before his better judgment could point out how many company assets a CEO going airborne technically put at risk.

The shift took him between one stride and the next, faster than thought, control and instinct swapping seats without asking permission. Scales instead of skin, dark enough to read as black except where moonlight caught an edge and lit it a deep, banked-ember red. Wings snapped out wide enough to rattle every piece of furniture on the terrace, and he was airborne before the echo finished.

The cold hit him like a wall and he leaned into it, because for once, the impact read as relief instead of a complication requiring his attention.

He flew low and fast, no destination, out over water black enough to swallow the city’s light whole. Wind screamed past his horns. His wingbeats alone could have grounded a small aircraft foolish enough to share his airspace tonight — eight hundred years of being the largest, oldest, most dangerous thing in any given sky had left him with zero patience for caution up here, and he’d never needed to apologize for it. He didn’t think — that was the entire point of coming up here, and most nights it worked.

Tonight it didn’t.

Mine.

The word chased him out over the water and refused to drown in it, no matter how low he flew or how hard the wind hit.

He banked hard, wingtip inches off the water, spray kicking up silver in the moonlight, and let himself, for as long as the maneuver lasted, think about nothing else.

It didn’t fully work. Nothing about today had fully worked. He climbed, leveled off, and let the cold scour out what the flying alone hadn’t managed to touch — the thing pacing behind his ribs since sunrise, quieter now. Not gone. Only quieter.

He turned back toward the hotel, because even a dragon had to land eventually, and touched down on the roof access platform hard enough to crack a tile Victor was absolutely going to invoice him for later, itemized, with interest.

Victor was waiting by the door, arms crossed. “Feel better?”

Norden shifted back mid-answer, because clothes didn’t reappear with him and dignity had never been the priority up here. “No.”

“Didn’t think so. You’ve got the face of someone who just found out the thing he wants doesn’t come with a returns policy.” Victor held the door. “Coast Guard wants a statement. I told them weather balloon.”