“Be reasonable? Fuck you. How’s that for calm and reasonable?”
“You stayed,” he murmured...
Her softly whispered answer sifted into his hair where her lips rested against the top of his head. “You didn’t let go.”
“Kellan’s hand found hers, took it into his strong grasp. “There,” he said, pressing a kiss to the center of her palm. “I’ve got you, Mouse.”
“Yes, you do,” she replied.”
“I love you, Mira…my Mate. My life. You’re my everything.”
“As a girl, Mira had held his hand and led him out of a dark place. As a woman, she’d held his heart, despite his efforts to prove himself from caring for someone he could never bear to lose. Now he only hoped he’d find the strength to push Mira away, when all he wanted was to pull her close and never let her go.”
“For us. Kellan, you have to promise me you’ll give me that chance-”
“I can’t promise you that, Mira. I can’t promise to put you through any more hurt or distress than I already have.” He took her face between his palms, tenderly smoothing his thumbs over her cheeks and her trembling mouth. “But I will promise you this: I love you. God, I always have.”
“Maybe there’s a place for a rebel ghost within the Order’s ranks after all.” - Lucan”
“It felt right, seeing them joined as a mated couple. A partnership that had been tested more than most, and hard-won. Lucan”
“From this moment forward, we play by our own rules. Whatever it takes, whatever the cost. Our new mission begins now.”
“After everything I’ve done,” he whispered harshly, “not only today, or eight years ago, when I left, letting you believe I was dead, but since the first day we met, Mouse. Ever since then, since the very beginning, you’ve stayed with me. You’ve always had my back.” - Kellan
“I always will,” she replied. Her voice was quiet, but her eyes were resolute. “When you love someone, that’s what you do.” - Mira”
“You were great tonight, helping with Candice’s wound and the funeral ceremony for Chaz . . . such as it was.”
“I only did what needed doing, and as for your friend’s funeral, it was a beautiful good-bye you all gave him,” she murmured. “Simple but pure. You honored him well, Kellan.”
The phrase she used—one reserved for the solemnest occasions in Breed traditions—touched him in a way he couldn’t express. Instead, he tipped her chin up on the edge of his hand and kissed her. Not the hungered kind of kiss that they’d been sharing each time they’d connected since her arrival back in his life a few days ago but a kiss shaped by tender caring and gratitude, by profound respect . . . and, yes, love.
He loved this woman.
His woman.”
“You honor us well, warrior." - Lucan”
“. . . and what if I did drink too much? Whose business is that? Who knows how much I didn't drink?”
“..and if you're reckless enough to back talk me, you're reckless enough to think you understand girls like June Watermark, and you don't understand her because she's crazy and crazy people-they're misunderstood. It's why they are called crazy. And you probably think you're in love with her-it's what Boystar told me you said in the Office, and that's a fine thing to say to a girl, but if you think you mean it, it's a different story. Because what's love without understanding Gurion? A fucken lie it is.”
“At least she had a handle on her family. Arthur was convalescing on the couch in the Apple Store stockroom and Lexi was sitting next to him helping to type in the population database she’d asked them to create. It was nice having all of the Rosses on the same page.”
“The entire history of humanity is marked by a single inexorable movement - from animal instinct toward rational thought, from inborn behavior toward acquired knowledge. A half-grown panther abandoned in the wilderness will grow up to be a perfectly normal panther. But a half-grown child similarly abandoned will grow up into an unrecognizable savage, unfit for normal society. Yet there are those who insist the opposite: that we are creatures of instinct, like wolves.”
“A memory: Isola as a toddler, sugarlump teeth, skin still smelling of milk. Hair that curled without use of an iron and sweet dresses that didn’t matter were dirtied. When she was old enough, she demanded the usual suspects at bedtime: The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast.
Even then, Mother’s contempt for non-Pardieu fairytales was obvious.
‘Hmph,’ she snorted derisively, folding up her knees to perch on Isola’s bed. ‘Listen to me, Isola. The original Beauty’s just an encouragement to young women to accept arranged marriages. What it’s really saying to impressionable girls is, “Don’t worry if your new husband is decades older than you, or ugly, or horrid. If you’re sweet and obedient enough, you might just discover he’s a prince in disguise!’’
Mother’s Most Lasting Advice
‘Never be that girl, Isola. Never pick the beast or the wolf on the off-chance he won’t devour you.”
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