As they left his family behind, Vail glanced once back over his shoulder at his parents, who had already turned away from them to take solace in each other’s company. He knew they were still upset with him and with Victoria over their decision to be together, but he’d been hoping that they would at least set their disappointment aside while there were more pressing issues to take care of. Peter and Katherine were unwavering traditionalists. They believed in doing things a certain way and balked at the thought of allowing anyone or anything to disrupt their way of life.

For a long time, their beliefs had rubbed off on him too, but since he’d met and gotten to know Victoria, he’d realized that his family had some glaring flaws. They were inflexible. Centuries of falling into strict routine had made them blind to the possibility that there was more than one right way to do things. Their stubbornness had cost them dearly when Mikael had attacked, and now it was potentially going to cost them the affection of their future daughter in law. He exhaled softly as he turned away from them again. Disliking the tension between his parents and the woman he loved, he hoped they would come around eventually, but it was difficult to tell what would happen this early on.

“Well, it sounds like we’ll have plenty of that,” Vail mused when Victoria told him that she was hungry. It was interesting to him that she still craved solid food even though she had woken up as a vampire. Occasionally, he had a taste for something other than blood, but he would never equate it to genuine hunger. When he dined on the food and drink that sustained mortals, it was always by choice, since he didn’t need enough of the nutrients in it to consider it essential to his diet. Human meals just gave him a bit of a short-term energy boost.

Approaching the manor, he inhaled the strong aroma of blood and realized that their human hosts had prepared more than just a classic dinner for them to feast on that evening. He walked by Victoria’s side the rest of the way to the dining room and surveyed the banquet from the doorway. After eating nothing for the past week, the food and blood that had been set out for them all would be an exceptional meal to fill his empty stomach, and his mouth watered at just the thought of it. Even though he didn’t need human food to survive, he still appreciated the way the mortals cooked and seasoned it.

He joined Victoria on the far end of the table while the rest of the vampires who had been invited filled in the center. A few of his cousins eyes their own wine glasses hungrily, barely restraining themselves from downing the blood inside before everyone was seated. They had all fed recently, but they were still slaves to their nature. The pungent scent of blood in the air and the generous portions that had been provided to each of them was a test to the wills of the clan members with less self-control.

Vail’s only task was to make sure that none of his relatives attacked the humans in the room, and since his cousins were merely slavering over their drinks, he fixed his attention on Victoria, who seemed to have the opposite reaction to the glass in front of her. “If you still have an appetite for the food you ate when you were human, it may be too soon,” he suggested, resting a hand supportively on her leg. “We still don’t know exactly what your transformation is going to look like, so there’s no need to force it if you aren’t ready. The blood is just there for you as an option. Enjoy your dinner, and don’t feel obligated to finish your drink if you have no taste for it yet.”