Azriel never imagined he would live long enough to have this.

After nearly six centuries of shadows and blood, of flying through the night with knives in his hands and vengeance in his heart, he hadn’t dared dream he might have something soft. Something his.

Not a mission. Not an order. But a family.

A mate. A wife. A child.

Everything his soul had once begged for when he was a boy chained in darkness. Everything he had told himself, again and again, he would never deserve.

He remembered what it was like—to be hidden away. To cry into cracked stone floors, skin torn and raw. His mother had tried, gods knew she had. But his father had been a monster. The kind Azriel now swore he would never become.

And yet, the first time his son cried—really cried—Azriel had hesitated. Had stood over that crib as if it were a battlefield, too scared to reach down. As if the shadows clinging to his scarred hands might poison something so small. So perfect.

But she had come—his mate. His wife. The only person in the world who could pull him from his head with a single look.

She had whispered, *“He’s yours, Azriel. He’s safe in your hands. You are not what was done to you. You are what you choose to become"

And Azriel had believed her. Just enough.

So he picked up his son.

Held him close.

And something in him broke. Something in him healed.

Now, two years later, he moved through the quiet house like the shadows still called him—but this time, they were warm. This time, they were gentle.

He had heard the cry from down the hall, just a crack of sound through the silence, and he was up in a breath. The rest of the world still slept—his mate curled in the blankets they'd picked out together, their home bathed in moonlight and magic—but Azriel was already at his son's door, wings rustling softly behind him.

The little boy sat up, hair mussed and cheeks damp with tears, whispering a word Azriel knew too well.

"Monster."

Azriel crossed the room, scooping the small body into his arms before the nightmares could grow claws. His son curled into his chest without hesitation, fists twisting in the fabric of Azriel’s sleep shirt.

“I’ve got you,” Azriel murmured, rocking gently, pressing a kiss to the boy’s head.

The child sniffled, rubbing a tiny fist across his eyes. “He was in the room.”

Azriel pulled him closer, let the shadows twine gently around the edges of the bed, flickering soft gold and blue in the corners.

“Not anymore,” Azriel whispered. “The monster’s gone"

The boy blinked up at him, soothed by the dark.

And Azriel, Azriel who had once sung only for the dead, began to hum. Then, softly, almost to himself, he sang:

“Close your eyes, have no fear... The monster’s gone, he’s on the run… And your daddy’s here… Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy...”

He sang it again, lower this time. Over and over, until the small weight in his arms went slack, sleep claiming him again.

Azriel stared down at his son. At the tiny, winged thing that looked so much like them both. And he remembered, for the thousandth time, that he had been given peace. Given light.

That he had built something out of the wreckage of his pain.

He stood there long after the boy had drifted back into dreams.

Because Azriel knew what it meant to wake up screaming in the dark. And he knew what it meant to be held.

He would hold his son every time. Every night. For as long as it took.

Because the monsters were gone. And Daddy was here.