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She laughed, sharp and startled out of her, and the knot behind his ribs eased another degree at the sound — proof, however small, that the woman standing in front of him was still entirely herself underneath the blood and the wreckage.

“I’ve survived far worse than a security pat-down tonight. I’ll allow it.”

“Generous of you, all things considered.”

“I have my moments.”

She was looking at him the way she’d never once looked at him.

He understood, watching her face, exactly what she was seeing. He’d never shifted fully in front of her, not like this — not the contained CEO, not even the dragon that had gone furious and brutal in a hotel corridor, but the entire, enormous truth of what all those centuries of restraint had been built to hold back. She’d learned him for weeks now, piece by piece, the way she cataloged everything — the control, the certainty, the flying at night as the one unmanaged hour of his existence. Tonight she’d seen the thing underneath all of it, unfiltered, and he had no idea which way this reckoning was going to land.

“That was you.” Her voice came out quieter than he’d ever heard it, working through more than one thing at once — fear, unmistakably, and underneath the fear a look far closer to awe.

“Yes.”

“That was always you.”

“Yes.”

She sat with that a long moment, glass shard still loose in one hand, blood drying dark across both of them. She didn’t flinch away. She didn’t run. She reached out instead, slow, and laid her hand flat over his heart, its pace finally beginning to slow toward ordinary underneath her palm.

“I need a minute. Not because of you. Because of everything.” She exhaled, long and unsteady, the first crack in the composure she’d been holding since the corridor. “I just watched you turn into an actual dragon and dismantle a building with your bare hands. Or claws. I’m allowed a minute to process that, and I’m taking it whether you approve or not.”

“Take two, if you need them.”

“I might need a good deal more than two.”

“Take however many you require. I’m not going anywhere.”

She took three. He counted every one of them, the way he’d counted the eleven seconds of her argument at the penthouse door, and found he didn’t mind the counting nearly as much this time.

That, more than anything else that had happened in this building tonight, was the detail he intended to remember for the rest of however many centuries he had left.

Darius was waiting at the penthouse door when they finally made it back, drink in hand, taking in the state of both of them with an expression that managed surprise and complete lack of surprise simultaneously.

“He went full shift. In a financial district office building.” Darius looked at Romily when he said it, not at Norden. “With you standing right there, apparently, holding a piece of glass like a woman with a personal grudge and excellent aim.”

“I was there.”

“Are you⁠—”

“Still standing,” she said, before he could finish asking.

“I was going to ask if you needed a drink, but sure, we can do the dramatic version first.”

Darius glanced at Norden, who was watching her with the same steady, total certainty he’d carried since the day her photograph first landed on his desk. Darius’s face shifted, the usual performance dropping away for a rare, unguarded second.

“You watched him shift for the first time tonight. Fully. Teeth and all.”

“I did.”

“And you’re standing in his doorway at two in the morning covered in someone else’s blood instead of sprinting for the nearest exit.”

“I am.”

“That’s not nothing.” The usual performance stayed dropped, his voice quieter than she’d heard it in six weeks of knowing him. “I’ve watched dragons lose far less impressive women over far smaller reveals. More than once. Wasn’t pretty either time.”

“I’m aware it’s not nothing. I’m still working out what it is, exactly, but I can confirm running isn’t currently on the list, and I don’t expect that to change.”