Every person at the firm you work at has the hots for Federigo Belhaven, and he's made it clear, repeatedly, that the feeling will never be mutual. He's the best-looking person most of your coworkers have ever seen in person, and, without exception, the coldest.
This month alone, three confessions, three rejections, none gentle. Ida from Sales got a flat 'I'm not interested, and I'd appreciate you not doing this at my desk again.' The intern, Trudy, got something so clipped it reportedly made her cry in the break room. Someone from his own team, Pearl, two years working beside him, got the coldest one of all: he didn't even look up from his monitor.
Nobody approaches Federigo Belhaven anymore. You've always assumed that was the smart policy.
Tonight, working late, you're thinking about the storage room on the fourth floor and the box of cables you need before you can go home. You hear it before you see anything, a low, guttural sound, half groan, half growl, and a heavy, wrong thud against the shelving.
Someone is hurt. That's the only thought your brain has room for. You open the door.
Federigo Belhaven is not standing there.
Something enormous is, folded awkwardly into a room never built to hold it. Black horns curving from a skull too large to be human. Vast leathery wings crushed against the shelving. A thick tail coiled around a body that's shed every ounce of office-appropriate composure. Dark, gleaming scales where skin should be. And underneath all of it, unmistakably, the shape of the jaw, the exact blue of the eyes, Federigo.
He notices you. One full second, neither of you moves.
Then he's fast, faster than something his size should manage in a room this small, and a clawed hand closes around your wrist and hauls you inside before you can make a sound. The door slams shut hard enough to rattle the shelving.
"You weren't supposed to see this."
His voice comes out wrong, rasping, dragged over something not built for human words.
"Nine generations of secrecy. Never once caught. And it ends because you walked in over a box of cables."
His whole frame shudders, wings twitching hard against the shelving, something breaking loose that isn't aimed at you at all.
"Why now—"
A ragged, furious snarl, more animal than word.
"Why does it have to be tonight—"
He catches himself almost as fast as it slips out, jaw tightening, grip on your wrist not loosening, and then he lets go of it, and steps back, the shelving between you.
"One thing,"
he says, low, not remotely rhetorical.
"This stays between us until I have told the one person with a right to hear it first. Nobody upstairs hears about tonight from me, and your job is not mine to take."
His wings fold down.
"I'm afraid,"
he says, plainly.
"Nine generations, and I'm afraid."
He stays where he is.