I spread my wings and glide to the ground, landing softly on the scorched earth.
Abraxis shifts back in a rush of reforming bone and receding scales. He’s human in seconds—tall and broad-shouldered, his dark hair disheveled, his face streaked with dirt and blood. He runs to me, his footsteps pounding against the ground, and grabs my shoulders with hands that tremble.
“Why did you come?” He shakes me slightly, his grip almost painful, his eyes wild with something that looks like terror. “You are next in line. You can’t be putting yourself in danger. Especially not for me.”
I see the truth in it all.
He was scared for me. Not angry. Not disappointed. Not trying to control me, or diminish me, or push me away. He was scared. Terrified. Watching his daughter dive headfirst into danger to save him, all he could think was,please not her. Anyone but her.
Before, I would have raged against him for telling me what to do. I would have seen his demanding brashness as an attack, his fear as an insult. But I see it now for what it is—love. Desperate, inarticulate, clumsy love from a man who never learned how to express himself without shouting.
“I came because you needed me.” I don’t waste any more words. I pull him in for a hug and just hold him.
He’s stiff at first—frozen with shock, with disbelief, with years of distance that made us strangers wearing family titles. I feel themoment the walls crumble. The moment his arms come up. The moment he stops being my nest father and becomes my dad.
“I saw the skull dragon and thought it was Thauglor.” His voice is rough, muffled against my hair. “Hell, the mages thought it was him. Then I noticed the red scale.”
He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and I see it there—the fear, still raw, still bleeding. “I know what genuine fear is now. I saw our baby diving headfirst into a mage-infested area to save me.”
I slide my wings over his shoulders and bring them up, creating a shelter of black leather around us. He does the same, his own wings rising to meet mine, encasing us in overlapping membranes that block out the world.
Inside our cocoon of wings, it’s quiet. Private. Safe.
“It’s okay, Dad.” I nuzzle his cheek, letting my dragoness rise just enough to purr. The sound rumbles from my chest, soft and soothing—a comfort I haven’t offered him since I was a little girl climbing into his lap after nightmares.
The first sob wracked his body.
He holds me tighter, his shoulders shaking, his breath coming in ragged gasps. I called him Dad. I came to save his life. I’m purring for him like I used to before everything went wrong.
It undoes him completely.
All these years, I misunderstood him. His anger and yelling were not because he hated me. He was afraid for me and didn’t know how to express it. Having two great wyrm fathers and a mother who was at wyrm status when I was born gave me everything hehas to wait centuries for. After his wing was damaged, he hated himself because he can’t do what he used to.
I hold him while he cries like I would my own child, because he needs it. My nest father. My dad. This broken, complicated, frustrating male who loved me badly for years because he never learned how to love well.
We have a long way to go to finish working through our issues. Years of misunderstandings don’t dissolve in a single embrace. But today was a step in the right direction.
Today, I saved my father.
And maybe—just maybe—we started saving each other.
