Page 12 of Dragon Chaos Around

“That,” she said, “might be the best performance review I’ve ever received.”

Rowan laughed. The sound broke the conference room’s held breath, and the three operations staff exhaled in unison, a synchronized release of tension that would have been comical in any other context. Crystal Yoo-Nores covered her mouth with her notebook. Giselle Torres wrote three lines on her clipboard without looking up.

Chaos straightened in his chair. The heat at the back of his neck refused to dissipate. His dragon was loud—the rumble in his chest deepening, his pulse running thick and hot—and his defenses were not, he noted with clinical alarm, holding at their usual specification.

“Your proposal requires further review,” he said, and his voice had recovered its measured distance, and the recovery was a performance so practiced, it cost him nothing visible and everything internal. “I’ll provide my counterpoints by end of business Friday.”

“I look forward to dismantling them.” She closed her laptop. Stood. Extended her hand across the table.

He took it. The warmth was there again—the contact point where his elevated body temperature met her skin and produced a reaction his dragon registered with an intensity that had no professional justification. Three seconds. The same three seconds as the walkthrough. An eternity in miniature.

She released first. Gathered her team with a look—Crystal rising, Giselle already moving toward the door with her materials organized for transit—and walked out of his conference room with the stride of a woman who had accomplished exactly what she came to accomplish and intended to do it again at the next opportunity.

The glass door closed behind her.

The conference room settled into silence.

Chaos sat at the head of his table in his cold, precisely calibrated space and stared at the presentation screen where her final slide still glowed—a projected revenue comparison that made his current numbers look anemic—and acknowledged, with the brutal self-honesty that eight centuries of introspection had made unavoidable, that his dragon was right.

She was a problem.

She was a problem that argued with data and smiled with her entire body and treated his convention as a living entity deserving of better and stood at the opposite end of a conference table built for intimidation and refused, fundamentally, to be intimidated.

“So.” Rowan’s voice arrived from the chair he hadn’t vacated, layered with centuries of friendship and the tone he saved for moments of maximum emotional leverage. “That went well.”

Chaos did not respond.

“She’s impressive.”

Silence.

“Your dragon likes her.”

“My dragon has no opinion.”

“Your dragon almost rattled the windows, Chaos. The static charge set off Delgado’s watch alarm.” Rowan nodded toward the door where the operations staff had fled. “His watch, old man. The one that’s rated for electromagnetic interference.”

Chaos picked up the pen he’d been holding during the meeting. Set it down. Picked it up. The fidget was unlike him. He noted it. Did not enjoy noting it.

“She’s wrong about the vendor grid timeline,” he said.

“She is. She’s right about almost everything else.”

“The fog machines⁠—”

“Cracked oil machines. She already cleared it. You heard her.” Rowan stood. Collected his tablet. Paused at the door with the deliberate timing of a man who had been delivering exit lines for years and had refined the art to surgical precision. “Seven centuries, Chaos. Seven centuries of ice and control and the most impressive emotional fortification I’ve ever watched a dragon build. And a woman in a green dress walked into your conference room and argued with you about panel formats and your dragon rattled the windows.”

He grinned. The full-wattage version. “I’m going to enjoy this so much.”

The door closed.

Chaos sat alone in his conference room. The presentation screen timed out and went dark. The air conditioning cycled through its steady rhythm, bringing the temperature back to the precise calibration he required for comfort.

It was not enough. The room was still too warm.

His phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number—no, not unknown. New. A contact his assistant had added to his directory this morning as part of the convention team’s communication setup.

ALANI NORES: For the record, the vendor grid timeline is four weeks, not three. I rounded down for the presentation because I wanted to see if you’d catch it. You did. I respect that.