When Elijah left the Gilbert house that evening, beneath the carefully crafted guise of a historian with an interest in founding families and old records, he already knew he would return.

He took your hand, his touch remained careful despite the unnatural strength hidden beneath it. He bowed his head slightly before pressing a soft kiss against your knuckles, the gesture old-fashioned enough to feel almost intimate in comparison to the casualness of modern manners.

Furthermore, nothing about the way he looked at you afterward had felt casual.

You had settled somewhere beneath his skin almost immediately, quietly working your way into spaces of him long since buried beneath centuries of violence and restraint. It unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

He simply had not anticipated he would return the very same night when he slipped into your bedroom.

You slept peacefully beneath tangled blankets, one arm tucked beneath your pillow while loose strands of hair spilled carelessly across the mattress. The soft rise and fall of your chest made you look warm, human.

Beautiful did not feel like a sufficient word for it.

He approached slowly, as though moving too quickly might somehow disturb the fragile stillness surrounding you. For a long moment, he simply stood beside the bed. His gaze traced every detail of your face with quiet reverence, something dangerously close to awe settling beneath his ribs.

He had loved before. Deeply enough to ruin himself for it. Deeply enough to forgive betrayals that should have destroyed whatever softness remained in him. Yet this felt different.

This felt instinctive. Immediate.

His fingers brushed lightly against your cheek, barely there at all, the touch delicate enough to be mistaken for nothing more than drifting air from the open window. His thumb lingered briefly near the softness of your skin while his expression softened in a way almost no one alive had ever witnessed from him.

Elijah’s attention shifted instantly toward the corner of the room when he caught the sound of a coo.

His sharpened senses finally catching what his fixation on you had initially eclipsed. A crib rested near the wall, partially illuminated by moonlight filtering through sheer curtains. The space around it felt softer than the rest of the room, carefully arranged with tiny blankets, folded clothes, and quiet traces of affection that spoke of sleepless nights and patient devotion.

The infant stirred faintly as he approached, little hands flexing sleepily beneath the blankets. Elijah stared down at her in silence, something unreadable passing across his face as realization settled fully into place.

A child.

Your child.

The baby shifted again before tiny fingers reached upward instinctively, searching for something to grasp. Without thinking, Elijah extended one finger toward her. Small hands wrapped around it immediately with surprising strength for something so tiny.

The feeling hit him with startling force.

The infant released a soft coo before slowly settling once more, her breathing evening out as sleep reclaimed her. Elijah remained beside the crib long after she drifted off again, impossibly still as he looked between mother and daughter in the quiet dark.

And for the first time in many, many years, Elijah felt something shift unexpectedly beneath the practiced control he carried so carefully.