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Notes:

IDK if you can believe it but we know absolutely nothing about construction sites or rules and regulations around that, so just…gasp and be shocked at the appropriate times. There’s dragons, we’re not gunning for “most realistic” awards.

Rowan

“What the fuck do you mean he chained himself to a tree?” Rowan asked, quickly lifting his hand off his expensive oak desk to avoid scratching it with his claws. He shook his hand to get them to retract as he stood up.

“I don’t know how else to say it, boss,” his foreman, Jeff, said with a sigh over the line. “There is a tree. There is a guy. There are chains. Guy used chains to attach himself to tree.”

Rowan began to pace around his office while Jeff talked. His foot snagged on an upturned corner of his burgundy carpet, and for a second, his wings burst out, ripping his shirt into confetti and flapping around to help him remain upright. The wind his wings produced caught the stack of papers on the edge of his desk and sent them flying all around the room.

He watched in horror as they landed on top of his shelves, under his desk, behind the wide sofa, and fluttered through the crack under his door and out into the hallway.

Rowan sank onto the armrest of the sofa and propped his elbow on his knee, pinching the bridge of his nose and poking himself in the eye with a wayward claw. He opted for a few select curse words—very classy, nothing too crazy—before standing up again.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Keep an eye on the lunatic.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s going anywhere.” Jeff clicked his tongue. Rowan swore he could hear screaming in the background.

“Jesus Christ.” He cut the call, shoved his phone into his pocket and ran a hand through his neatly tied hair. The ginger bun at the nape of his neck came undone and he groaned before pulling the hair tie out and redoing it as best as he could without a comb or a mirror to assist.

“Tied to a tree,” he muttered to himself as he headed toward the door. “Of course there’s a guy tied to MY damn tree. Why not someone else’s tree? Any other tree. There are so many trees in this damn city.”

He pulled his door open and stormed out, attempting to wave off the nosy lift of his secretary’s eyebrow as he rushed into the elevator. He’d find out in five seconds flat anyway. Terry just pointed to his bare chest and produced a fresh shirt out of thin air, shaking his head in quiet disapproval.

Rowan ignored the disapproval and put the shirt on mid-stride because he had no time to waste.

The project had been stalled multiple times already. The tenants of the condemned building had filed a motion to declare the building a historical landmark. That took months and had been denied in the end with an explanation that not every dilapidated stack of bricks was historically significant.

That was followed by an anonymous tip that the building had been built on the fire dragons’ sacred burial site, long forgotten and never mentioned anywhere. Rowan had scoffed, but the damage was done. The Association for Preservation of the Dragon Heritage had descended like locusts.

They’d scheduled excavations, they’d poked and prodded and searched every inch of the site until they begrudgingly had to concede there was never a single dragon buried there. Or anywhere near there.

Then came the outlandish claims that the waterline under the building was toxic, that the soil itself was filled with poison and that digging into any of it would cause damage to whoever chose to live there.

Rowan had lost several potential clients thanks to those claims.

So he was already absolutely and completely done with it.

And now, when construction could finally start, THERE WAS A MAN CHAINED TO A FUCKING TREE.

Any patience he’d had was long gone. He’d lost money. He’d lost time. He’d lost clients. And on top of that, he was tired of fielding his father’s questions about his projects and wanted something to show for the efforts he was putting into the family business.

He just couldn’t catch a damn break.

He stormed out of the elevator, catching his own reflection in the mirror opposite and realizing his eyes were blazing, the slitted pupils eclipsed by the scarlet red irises. He blinked once to get them to behave, but there was no helping it. He glanced down at his exposed forearms and realized his scales were also fully visible and the claws were back.

Rowan spent most of his time in his beta shift, the mixed form of dragon and human feeling most comfortable for his day to day. It was rare to see him, or any of his family for that matter, without red irises or some patch of scales peeking through their human skins.

When those patches of scales spread and added claws was another matter entirely for Rowan, tipping everyone off that he was pissed.

His throat rumbled with a slow growl, and he realized there would be no getting himself under control anytime soon.

He just needed to make sure he didn’t alpha shift into a full dragon.

Something flew at his head from the side, and he snatched it out of air before realizing it was a pretzel wrapped in a napkin. He turned to glare at whoever had thrown it and realized it was one of their human IT techs heading back from the cafeteria. He’d been one of Rowan’s first hires, and over the years they’d developed a decently friendly relationship.