Uriel carried Auriel into the sitting room, the baby's weight settled comfortably against his chest, solid and warm in a way that made the past two months feel both impossibly long and strangely distant. He sat on the couch, and Lin Yue sat beside him, close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm.
Auriel stared up at him with those gold eyes—his gold eyes, Uriel thought, the same shade as his own—and for a long moment, father and son simply looked at each other. The baby's platinum curls had grown longer, falling over his forehead in soft waves, and his wolf ears, once small tufts of fur, now stood out clearly from his head, white and soft and twitching at every sound. His face was no longer round with newborn softness; the sharp lines of Uriel's jaw were beginning to emerge, and there was something in his expression, something alert and aware, that had not been there two months ago.
