"She's a quick study! It's not my fault that the half-vampire, half-human bone breaking baby needed creative solutions to boredom!" he replies brightly.

Where Aurene can hear: "Do you want to go again?"

Okay, that one is definitely just to needle his sister.

"Eeeeee!"

Yvette focuses very hard on how much she does not want to rip Blair apart in front of her daughter, and keeps herself from doing so. Even if he does actually deserve it.

James on the other hand has been entirely convinced by Blair's line of logic by now and is more than happy to indulge his daughter in her not-actually-dangerous-at-all bird catching past times.

Look, it's really more of the principle of the matter. She is this child's mother and Blair absolutely just did a social wizardry to outplay her, and she sees what he's doing and she's grumpy about it.

While Aurene is flying through the air and far too distracted to notice, she detaches a bit of her mutilated sleeve and transmutes it into an extremely rudimentary facsimile of Blair with clever use of transmutation. Then she rips its head off while staring directly at him.

Blair snorts, and replies (in a pitch Aurene can't hear, naturally) "Somebody's mad about lying in the bed she made for herself. Don't want your brother to throw your kid? Have a normal one!"

"I hate you, you're the worst," she sighs, but she continues to not rip him apart. "... But thank you. Really."

"Never, ever do it again," says Blair, sagely.

"Yeah, that's physically impossible."

"Exactly!"

Meanwhile Aurene is having herself a lovely time and is so proud of how many birds she's caught, look, look, everyone! She got another!!!

Aww. Okay, this is admittedly pretty cute. In a slightly terrifying murder child sort of way.

Honestly they're all slightly terrifying murder people here, stones and glass houses and all in his opinion.

Aurene is extremely delighted to be the center of attention for all of her grownups for as long as possible!! Fortunately for her, the grownups are all content to just play with their small, slightly terrifying murder child for a little while.

Then, at about 8 PM, she goes out like a light. One moment, she's perfectly awake, and then the next, bam. In a sleep so deep she could plausibly be dead to the world, if they couldn't hear her fast heartbeat and steady breathing.

"Awwww, baby," coos Yvette softly, charmed.

"Right on time." At Yvette's confused expression, he explains: "She does this every night, exact same time. I can't tell if it's a half vampire thing or an Aurene thing." Clearly, he is charmed either way.

Blair was the latest one to have been holding her, so he can go tuck her into her bassinet.

"Being a half vampire had to have some drawback," James reasons, moving to hug Yvette. ...a bit tightly. He maybe is still feeling somewhat terrified.

Yep! Tight vampire hugs, because they are both feeling somewhat terrified.

Blair gets Aurene sorted, and then he returns, his expression back to a business-like chill.

“So,” he says, and that is all he says.

Sigh.

"A while back," he says, pulling away from the hug but keeping a firm hold of Yvette's hand, "when I just started being vegetarian, I mentioned that most vampires are loners and most covens don't get larger than three or four people... and that eating animals dampened that instinct a fair amount. The Volturi have... many more people than that... and still eat humans. As a piece of evidence."

Whine.

“Achieved via copious use of mind control? How charming.”

“It’s probably also perfectly comfortable for all members on a material level, and I can’t imagine they’d have lasted very long if any of them were really mistreated.”

“I do not want to raise my daughter surrounded by unrepentant murderers with a lot of reason to want her to like them very, very much. Instead of letting her form her own opinions.”

"And... our own opinions, too. I am not sure we would feel as strongly about that once Chelsea had had her way with us."

“No. But we don’t have many options, here.”