He chuckles, a scintillating sound across the skin, and leans back in his chair. Jean-Claude folds his hands on his lap, long fingers laced together.

"For some, danger is an attraction. You are disagreeable, oui, but that does not make you unknowable. I agree it will not be all that simple, but it is much better than locking you in a basement and offering you scraps, and affecting surprise that this creates an amoral predator. What you describe is similar to how I would punish one of my vampires."

In vampires, the meaningful connections they make tend to be human servants, or lycanthropes that they can call, or other vampires of their line. Jean-Claude has been close to all of those, and still is to some. He will never be able to stop loving Asher, and it is beyond a miracle that he has returned to him. If he'd let himself become a monster in truth, he'd never have regained Asher's affections; he'd never have Anita in his life at all; and certainly, his wolves would not show him the sincere loyalty they do. Not to say that Jean-Claude doesn't do monstrous things on a regular basis, but they are all perfectly controlled, and deliberate.

For humans, getting some friends might well be good enough.