In the sanctuary of his own room, Vail flipped through the pages of the tome he had read last night with Victoria. It was still early in the day, but he couldn’t sleep. Not after Peter had threatened to remove him from the Hygrace line if he refused to bow down to his rules. He had known from the start that he would eventually be pitted against his own family if he decided to be with Lady Crest, but the time had come sooner than he felt prepared to handle. If his father banished him now, he had nowhere else to go, and no one else to fall back on for protection from the Saints. A lone vampire was a dead vampire. It was common knowledge, and it was the reason why his kind operated in groups. He wasn’t ready to sever ties with the Hygraces, especially when he would only have a few decades at most with Victoria before old age or illness claimed her. After that, he would be truly and completely on his own. It was a depressing end to his long life.

He lifted his gaze from the book to the window, unable to focus on the words on the page long enough to get through a whole sentence without rereading it a dozen times. There had been a part of him that had hoped—foolishly, he now realized—that Peter would come around to his side. Perhaps the affection in his voice when he spoke of her or the determination he showed when his loyalty to her was questioned would persuade his father that she wasn’t as bad for him as he’d thought. Instead, Peter was steadfast in his beliefs and had proven that he would go so far as disown his only son to preserve the traditions he believed were best for their kind.

A knock on his door interrupted his musings, and he called out, “Come in.” At first, he thought the visitor was his father, come with the expectation of getting an answer from him already. However, the person who stepped inside was his mother, Katherine. Vail stared at her quizzically. Until now, the quieter vampire had kept to herself. She often deferred to her husband’s decisions, and as such, had allowed Peter to have full control over the situation with their rebellious son. She hadn’t stopped by when Victoria had been present, and he had assumed she wanted as little to do with the human woman as her partner. Her appearance now was unexpected.

“Can we chat?” she offered him a smile, closing the door behind her.

Vail hesitated for a moment longer before he nodded. Katherine stepped over to sit on the edge of his bed. Her hazel eyes lingered on the unmade sheets a half second too long, and he knew she had figured out what had happened between the couple overnight as well. “I don’t like it when you and Peter fight,” she said, looking away from the mattress to meet his gaze. There was a weariness to her tone that belied her exhaustion. “And I don’t like that he’s on the verge of disowning you.”

“Did you come here to convince me to take his side?” Vail asked dryly.

“Not necessarily,” Katherine shook her head, earning a look of surprise from her son. “I would prefer it if you did, but from what I understand, you’re quite fond of Alexander’s daughter.”

“I am,” he confirmed tentatively, unsure where his mother was going with this.

“Well, then I think you should be permitted to see where it goes,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I agree with Peter that getting romantically involved with a human is a mistake, but you’re capable of making your own decisions and learning from them. It will make you a better leader for having done so. It’s certainly better than forcing you to bend to our ways without giving you the chance to see why those ways are right, and if everyone is more transparent moving forward, we’ll be better equipped to keep you safe if something goes wrong. I’ve already spoken to your father about it, and he’s considering my words.”

“That’s shocking,” Vail muttered. His mother was slightly more reasonable than his father, but her choice of phrasing made it clear that she was still on Peter’s side. “He’s so terrified of conflict with the Wynters that I thought he wouldn’t budge on the matter.”

Katherine pursed her lips, “He’s still in denial, but I believe we’re beyond the point of avoiding conflict with the Wynters if they’re meddling with the Order. There’s nothing you could do to change what is already coming.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him,” Vail’s eyes widened as he grew excitable. “It isn’t my fault that the Wynters are moving. If we let them have Lady Victoria, we’ll be playing right into their hands. She’s a cog in their machine, and if I take her away from them, it might throw off whatever they’ve been putting together in the shadows. I don’t understand why father can’t see that.”

“Remember, Vail, they took his brother,” she said gently, though a mixture of sorrow and anger flashed in her bright eyes. “Peter has worked tirelessly to protect our family from another massacre, and he fears the day our enemies will try to overpower us again. By turning a blind eye to the Wynters, he hopes that they will lose interest in us altogether.”

“But they won’t,” Vail asserted. “All he’s doing is leaving us vulnerable to the attack that will inevitably come. We should be rallying our forces, not cowering like bugs beneath a rock in the hopes that our enemies won’t step on us.” Setting his book aside, he stood up from his chair. “If father won’t do that, then I will.”