"Two months ago, I thought we mentioned?" he says, which is kind of just a social nicety because they all have perfect memory of the time she mentioned it. He's also at that same pitch inaudible to Aurene and also at a speed that can go between his soothing words to her.

"Yes. It was rhetorical." He is now having many thoughts. Many, many, many thoughts.

She still isn't a mind reader. She blinks up at him, painfully aware that he still hasn't put his shirt back on.

"..... I can fix your ring now if you want. With the um, bear?"

"Okay."

"I've seen newborns before."

Ohhhhh that's the epiphany he's having, yes he'll be very smug about their mate even though he has nothing to do with any of that and it is entirely Yvette's achievement. Nevertheless, watching Alexei have thoughts strung together like this is very nice.

The thing isn't even that he has that much more space, it's just that he can—put it away—the mate bond, too, everything is a lot less loud so the thoughts don't get interrupted.

And so he is now properly boggled by how the fuck his two-month-old mate is. Is. Like this.

She takes and kisses his hand, removes the ring she gave him, and then gets to plunging it into bear viscera to make the whole thing more structurally sound and perfect to even vampire sensibilities. She's keeping the character, of course, the outside appearance ring is staying almost exactly the same, but also now all of the little strands of her hair that got turned to rose gold can actually meld together properly and be a cohesive unit. ... With a vampire tooth enamel core, actually, because if she's building this she's building it right. This will not break, ever, not if she can help it, and she can.

"I get the impression they need to be constantly managed? Which just sounds annoying for everyone involved."

"Yeah."

"...that was a bit more vehement than I'd expected, should we change the subject?"

He does not respond.

The ring is now fixed! She cleans it of any remaining bear viscera, returns it to the proper finger with another kiss, and then nestles against her unhappy mate because he is clearly having at least one emotion and she doesn't understand why. Hugging is allowed, so she will do that.

(Aurene, meanwhile, is starting to calm down. Mostly what mollified her is the reassurance that she's still very young, and might get faster as she gets older. But now she's upset that she's not older now, because she wants to be as fast as they are now, too.)

(James suspects she is never really going to be as fast as they are but hopefully by then she will no longer care so much about it. To be perfectly honest he doesn't really care about it and would trade with her if he could and if that were not a horrible idea.)

(...he thinks the him of red eyes would not have agreed. That's kind of disorienting.)

"I was turned in 1682," Alexei says eventually, after doing some maths in his head that he—could have done before but would not really have cared to.

The mate in his arms goes still.

"You're...? Oh. Then you're, um. Older than all of us put together, including Blair, even if we count human lifetimes before turning."

That's such a boggling difference of experience, what the fuck, he was alone for that long?

"Oh." Well he can't let go of his daughter now but he really really wants to hug his mate. Especially because... "Late 1600 Russia, weren't there..."

"Wars. Revolts. Yes. I was turned in one.

"Me and dozens of other people."

"Oh you were in a newborn army Jesus fuck—"

Not letting Aurene hear this, nope, hug hug soothe soothe yep.

A trace of an angry hiss escapes Yvette's lips, but she cuts it off before it gets much of anywhere and instead focus on snuggling Alexei. Her poor, poor Alexei who suffered all alone for so long, and was turned and used callously as a weapon. She'd thought it was cruel before, in a vague detached sort of way, but now that this wrong has been done to someone she loves, she hates it. She would absolutely dust and incinerate the person responsible right this second if it were at all plausible that they were still alive, which they probably aren't, but. ... She should verify that. Or she has a problem to go solve.

"Those responsible are already centuries cooled ashes and we don't need to go solve that right this instant, yes?" she confirms, in a pitch Aurene can definitely not hear because her daughter should probably not be exposed to her mother being quite this murderous. Yvette's not really sure what to do with being quite this murderous, actually, this is a bit confusing.

He shrugs. "I have not been back to Russia since. Most of the others were killed. I... was harder to kill.

"But you are not how other newborns are."

She wants to go check right this instant, wants to dig up whatever evidence could possibly remain and burn everyone involved with this horrible injustice to cinders and this is such a stupid instinct shut up vampire head, at two months old you probably can't take on anyone involved if they're still alive, even if you could directly transmute vampire flesh to lava, which you can't. (Actually, she should probably get on that, that sounds useful. Note to self for later.)

"I'm," and she has to take a careful breath and keep control of herself, but she does, "extremely, absurdly lucky, and had a lot of chances at the very beginning to have it painfully obvious to me that my innate vampire instincts are dumb and should be ignored most of the time. And, uh, motherhood also helps, I don't have room to throw tantrums, I. Need to be okay."

...are innate vampire instincts dumb? Alexei had not thought of them that way before.

They kept him alive.

He might've been able to be alive even without them, if, if the way this, if the way he feels right now...

...he really needs time to think.

He should stop talking and just hug his mate. ...and, right, put his shirt on, she went through all that trouble.

(This elicits a small, amused snort from Yvette.)

"Do we still want to go to the lake?" she asks all assembled, at a pitch Aurene can actually hear.

"Mmhmmnn," sniffles Aurene, from her daddy's arms where she's nestled. She has calmed down a bit, but she's noticed that her parents are unhappy about something, and she doesn't know why. Clearly the only thing to do about it was hug her daddy about it. "Mummy, hug?"

"Coming, sweetness." At a higher pitch, she adds a somewhat wry: "Duty calls," and instead of disentangling from Alexei she can just gently steer him over to James, who certainly also wants to hug their mate right now. Then she can trade with him, and scoop Aurene out of his arms, and snuggle her close and try not to think murderous thoughts.