Retreating into his thoughts, Vail wrapped one arm around Victoria’s back as she agreed that the ritual didn’t sound as promising as they had hoped it would. There were a number of details about it that deterred him. Firstly, he disliked the idea of bleeding her until her heart stopped. Every time he’d bitten her before, he had done everything he could to make the feeding process as tolerable as possible, since he didn’t want to cause her pain. But he knew of no way to take away the suffering of death. He was torn between his distrust of letting another vampire turn her and the discomfort of knowing that he would be the one to cause her to endure such misery.

Secondly, the fact that it could take up to a week for a human to turn was off putting to him. There were many people, both human and vampire, who would go out of their way to make sure she never woke up. The Order would oppose the creation of a new [i]demon[/i], and the Wynters would surely do everything in their power to prevent a member of their rival clan from taking the Crest heiress, whom they had deemed as their property, away from them. Even his own father couldn’t be trusted, since the leader of the Hygraces had made it perfectly clear that he wanted her out of his son’s life. Vail was uncertain if he had the fortitude to fend off all of the opposition by himself while she was in such a vulnerable state.

The final nail in the coffin was that the ritual only had a success rate of fifty percent. If the first risks weren’t daunting enough, the chance that he could lose her if her heart rejected his blood was enough to make him quail at going through with it at all. He turned his head to bury his face in her hair, closing his eyes as he breathed in her familiar, calming scent. There were still obstacles to be faced if she remained mortal, namely her possessive fiancé and his antagonistic father, but they seemed miniscule compared to the possibility that she could die if the transformation went wrong. He didn’t want to bear the burden of knowing he had killed the woman he had grown so fond of when there were other options left to be tried.

“I don’t think so,” he murmured into Victoria’s long tresses when she asked if they would become related. He knew little about the field of medicine, but Peter had told him about human surgeries before. Organs and blood could be donated to save the lives of people who needed them. If this ritual was anything like that, then the DNA that made up their bodies would still be entirely separate aside from the cells that traveled through her veins. Based on the context of the book, it seemed like turned humans were adopted into clans for the purpose of reproducing too. He wasn’t sure what else the author could have meant by diversifying family lines.

“It doesn’t matter though,” he sighed, softly stoking her back as she yawned. “I don’t think this is a good idea. I don’t want to lose you if it doesn’t work.” He turned his head away from her again and swallowed, salivating reflexively as his predatory urges tempted him to feed on the weary prey in his arms. She had been his exclusive food source for a while now, but after she went home tomorrow, he had a feeling he would need to go hunting in the city to quell his blood cravings so he wouldn’t lose control and attack one of the servants.

For now, though, a distraction was good.

Shifting his weight on the bed, Vail turned back to Victoria and pressed his lips against hers, driven by a need to redirect the impulse to sink his fangs into her neck and a desire to make the most of the time they had left before Peter forcibly removed her from the property. Unsure when they would be able to see each other again, his movements were marked with passion as he leaned over her and held the back of her leg with his free hand.