After the battle, there were a few days of peace but they all knew that it was only a matter of time before another coven decided to attack them. And that were not wrong, luckily it wasn't a strong coven that attacked them, the coven had thought that Maria's coven would be weakened after fighting a battle and had foolishly attacked them without much preparation or information. Maria kept converting people into newborns to make up her army as there were many deaths. Meanwhile Jasper and Simon knew that they had stepped into a much harsher world where they could be hunted by anyone vampires, humans or shifters. So they did the most obvious thing to increase their strength, train their gifts.
Jasper had lost control in the last battle and had started to attack allies and enemies alike and he stayed in that state until the battle ended and the emotions he could feel changed from anger to relief and happiness. According to him it was not a pleasant feeling and the thought of losing control over himself just made it worse. He started to practice on the newborns that Maria had been bringing inorder to make another army which was to protect themselves. Jasper was also made responsible for their training as he had the most experience and the qualifications to teach. While developing his gift he also learned that he could not only feel emotions but also influence them to to his advantage. He started to make the newborns loyal to the coven which greatly pleased Maria as she had started to give him rewards for his work.
Simon had understood that the power-up he gained from his gift was only until he had blood in his body so he had two choices either make a way with which he could keep blood in his body or find another way to use his gift. He thought about how could try to manipulate the blood in his opponents body to cause them pain or even make their blood explode complete obliterating their bodies but this too was only a limited solution as he could only use it against enemies who had blood meaning it would be useless against vampires who had passed their newborn phase. In the end he decided to use blood as a weapon he would either make bullets or a knife out blood that he would need to keep with himself. So he started experimenting.
It was pretty easy as there was not a long time of peace in the South occasional wars were common so both Simon and Jasper developed their gift the way they had intended to.
Jasper and Simon had been staying with Maria the whole time fighting, making their abilities better or doing just whatever they wanted. They both had developed a much closer relationship and considered each other as real brothers. Simon also started to gain a bit of his cheerful side back. He had become unaffected by people's lives and had started to become tired of the way he stayed indifferent about everything and with Jasper influencing his emotions on his request he changed from a totally emotionless boy to a boy who would show emotions to people he is close to.
Another thing that happened was Maria became Jasper's mate. Although it was already obvious from the start that they had a thing for each other it became official a lot later.
Simon had once walked in on them while looking for Jasper to ask for which newborns he could test his powers on. He saw Jasper going deep within Maria while both shared an pleasurable look as they looked in each other's eyes. Sensing Simon's presence they both were startled as they quickly separated only to come in full view naked in front of Simon. Simon had to admit Maria's body was truly desirable as even he got excited looking at it what else could he expect he was only 15 when he turned the age when his hormones were going haywire. He had taken his eyes off Maria's body to look at Jasper, he saw Jasper's package and let out a snort, "no wonder you like short women."
This had caused Jasper to become red with whatever little blood was left in him and not allow him to use any newborn for practice of his abilities.