Sable snuggles her squishy human mate carefully, sighing fondly. "Yeah, well, you're both cute and unreasonably pretty. So there."

And no, Alethia won't be alone. Any time she doesn't want to be alone, she has five eager vampires whose highest priority is making her happy. She only has to be alone when she absolutely wants to, otherwise Sable and her headmates will be thrilled to spend time with her.

That look on her face.

They're- dependant on her, aren't they? Yeah.

She intellectually understood that, from their explanation, but right now she feels it.

A lot of responsibility, to have suddenly land on her shoulders. She'll have to do her best to be worthy of it.

No, see, Alethia's the one who just had complicated and unexpected things happen to her. This means that they need to make sure that they're worth the complication. They knew about the risks of unexpected matebonds. Alethia was in no way prepared in advance for Sudden Romantically Attached Vampires, so it's the vampires' job to make the surprise a good one.

If Alethia was hearing those thoughts, they would really just be proving her point. Being tremendously vulnerable to her is a very good way to make her very invested in doing right by you. She'd be apologetic about this, but actually no, she wouldn't be, that's just part of being the kind of person she wants to be.

"Well, we can both be cute then. A tragedy, but I suppose we'll have to find some way to cope."

"I expect our coping methods will involve some degree of gazing sappily at each other. Maybe I'll dust off long-disused poetry skills and write you a sonnet."

"A sonnet! That would be so cute. Although I am not actually particularly a poetry person, really."

Wait, no, why did she add that last bit. It's true, but it makes it sound like she dislikes poetry. And maybe she sort of does? It's never been as fun as prose to her. All those restrictions! And then you don't even get a thousand page long fantasy novel out of it! Much preferable not to bother with the rhyme schemes and everything. But that's a mean thing to say to someone who likes poetry! And anyway, she never really gave it a proper chance, for all she knows there's a lot of it that's really really cool! And maybe now Sable thinks she hates it! Or that Alethia is judging her for liking it!

"Oh, no, that came out wrong, I don't mean to say poetry is bad or that there is anything wrong with liking poetry, it's fine if you do-"

Wait, she is being silly, probably it didn't sound to Sable like she meant it like that.

"Oh wow, even your anxious flailing is cute. How are you this adorable?"

She grins and shakes her head. "It's fine. I only ever dabbled, and there are very few poems that really grab us, anyway.

"No need to panic, love," she finishes, leaning in close to press a soft kiss to Alethia's forehead. "It's okay. Breathe."

Oh, good, that's much better than many possible reactions she could have had. The forehead kiss banishes the lingering unpleasant feelings rather handily.

"Okay."

She relaxes for a long moment and lets out a slow happy sigh.

"I'm glad you find it cute."

Also, she called her love. That's nice. Also a lot quickly, but that's kind of the executive summary of this entire experience, it's baked in at this point.

"We've yet to find anything about you that isn't cute. Or gorgeous. Or charming. Everything is at least one of those. And we're good enough at modeling minds that we're pretty confident that's what we'd think even without the bond involved."

She leans a bit lower and kisses Alethia's nose, smiling.