Page 3
Rowan jerked his head up to look at the man, who stared at him as if he didn’t have a mouthful of his arm hair.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Rowan asked, arm still suspended in the air, his brain too shocked to take any steps to detach him from the bite.
“Me?!” The man spat out his arm and glared. “What am I doing?? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? There are people living in this building. People who have nowhere else to go! Have you learned nothing from all the motions and complaints about this? We do not want this building destroyed!!”
“I have all the permits,” Rowan said.
“And zero heart, apparently,” the twig said. “These people are old. Alone in the world. Did your rich, reality-challenged ass ever stop to think about where they would go?”
“No,” Rowan said honestly, because it was the truth. He had a job to do under his father’s watchful eye and his stamp of approval to do it. Outside of that, he hadn’t spared it much thought.
“Brilliant.” Disgust was written clearly on the guy’s face. “Of course they put a fucking psycho in charge. God forbid a human emotion manifest anywhere near you.”
That stung. Rowan didn’t consider himself a bad person.
“I’m not human,” he said instead, because what else was he supposed to say?
“I can see that, sasquatch.”
“I’m a dragon, not a sasquatch.” Rowan frowned. What the fuck was his brain even doing?
“You’re a fucking moron is what you are. A heartless, callous, cruel, immoral moron.”
Rowan scowled.
“Don’t think the smolder will help.” A bony finger dug into the tip of his nose. “You think being hot exempts you from human decency and it doesn’t.”
Rowan perked up. “You think I’m hot?” He shook his head. The fuck is wrong with me? “You really need to not be here,” he said instead of waiting for an answer he didn’t know why he wanted to hear.
“You really need to not be here too, and you ain’t leaving, so…”
Rowan sighed. “Look…” He trailed off, raising an eyebrow in question.
“Milo Tobitt.”
“Milo.” Rowan nodded. “I understand you care for these people, but—”
“NOPE!” Milo shook his head. “The ‘but’ erases everything you were going to say. You do not understand. You clearly have never been homeless and left with no resources and it fucking shows.”
“I have a job to do!” Rowan said.
“And I have a job to stop you from doing, big guy, so…”
Rowan threw his hands in the air and scoffed, turning his back on Milo for a moment to compose himself. The guy could talk circles around him and he had no idea how to get himself out of it.
“What if I paid you?” He whirled around, the bright idea taking shape midsentence.
“To do what?”
“To let us proceed with the project,” Rowan said, and Milo glared so hard Rowan thought his wings might have shriveled up and fallen off his back from the strength of it.
“Fuck. You,” Milo spat, and Rowan felt the venom in it sting in his gut. He didn’t like it at all.
“Hey now…”
“I will not let you tear this building down! I will not allow it. I will stay chained to this tree until the end of time if I have to, but you will NOT do it. So you can go back and tell all your rich little asshole friends to find an empty piece of land to build on, because this place is already fucking taken. Got it?”
Rowan held the intense eye contact for a suspended moment, matching wills and realizing this was a tougher opponent than anyone he had ever come across before.
