Later Bree found Jasper sulking on the porch which overlooked the west garden. He was sitting cross legged on a stone wall graced with ivy and jasmine.His long, jet black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, blending into his fine black suede shirt as the collar was lifted over his pale neck by the breeze. He was wearing a studded belt from which pewter colored and silver chains hung, and his leather jacket was tossed carelessly on the grass beside the wall.
Bree sighed, he was so much like his father.The way he dressed, the way he looked, the way he could so easily lose his temper, the way he hated his father’s – also now his – slaves.Her own husband and the son she bore for him out of her human body, how she loved them both beyond words, but they were also two ruthless vampires and sometimes she felt like the ice around their hearts regarding humans would never melt.No amount of her love and tenderness could break into that wall that Zane had built up over the course of a thousand years, or the one that he had ingrained into Jasper since the day he was born.How could she make them see?Granted, humans had their many flaws, but would they ever dare again to go against Zane?Of course not! He was too powerful, too strong, and too loved by the vampires in the empire.So, was his cruel treatment of humans necessary?Sure, humans outnumbered the vampires, but no human could equal the strength of even a common vampire, much less Zane or his son. Their son.And he ruled the humans as well as the vampires by fear.
The laws granted slaves no rights.Zane’s laws gave them no freedom and also the prospect of death at any given time for no reason whatsoever.They were only food for the vampires, food that worked the vampires’ fields, maintained their lavish homes and gardens, prepared their gourmet cuisine which the vampires didn’t even need, depriving the slaves of nearly everything, leaving them with the last pickings of whatever the vampires left behind. It wasn’t fair.Bree had been there once, she had been a slave once, and she had lived in the human world once. “The wild’, as the vampires liked to call it.Her world, a cold, painful world, but wild?That was pushing it.
Jasper heard Bree approaching him before he let on that he knew she was there.She was wearing a wool cloak, and he could hear it folding on the breeze as well as her soft footfalls in the grass.He smelled her, her warm human scent, the comforting scent of his mother, whose blood from which he had first fed.
“Jasper?”Bree came up behind him and laid her gentle hand on his shoulder.He could feel her warmth, her loving mother’s touch, through the suede of his shirt.He could hear the pain in her voice and it saddened him.
Bree lifted her skirts and jumped up onto the wall, sitting next to Jasper.“My beloved son, will you forgive me?” Bree’s gentle voice touched Jasper.He knew that he and Zane ganged up on her sometimes and it made him feel bad.“Jasper, please understand, I was a slave once, how can I not feel for them?”Jasper sighed, his only response. “I know the fear they all have, the fear that lives in every mortal in this great empire.I understand the fear they have of your father.It is a most terrible thing.”
Jasper turned to face Bree. “Mother, I know.But you are not like them anymore.There is a reason why Father chose to marry you.You have so much love, you were able to break the curse.You loved him even as he was being a beast to you.Most humans would not be so kind.”
“Well, maybe if you two weren’t so mean to them, they’d have more of a reason to be kind, too.” She rubbed his back. “Ruling by fear can cause more trouble than ruling by fairness and justice.”
