We always vilify what we don’t understand.

A quick and brutal fuck from behind usually served as an effective reminder of where you stood in the pack hierarchy.

A geas was a contract with the goddess of Fate. Sometimes one was born indentured, other times it was bestowed upon one as a curse. Because if one did not fulfill the terms of one’s geas, one died. It was old magic, the magic of the gods, spoken in the tongues of those who controlled...

It wasn’t that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired.

I wasn’t a complete bastard. If she liked to think she saw good in me, if she wanted to take credit for it, I’d let her. She deserved that much.

You mean you don’t want to come in and hold my hand while I piss?

All lines are gray in the dark.

Darlin, you don’t even know how to pleasure yourself.

Heritage was everything: it was a golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to get the wielder through any number of locked doors; it was the christening of the marriage bed with virgin blood on snow-white sheets; it was the benediction of a pristine pedigree, refined through ages of selective breeding and the occasional mercy...

We hunger in earnest for that which we cannot consume.

how romantic.

a purveyor of insipid wet-dreams.

People say hate is like a poison — but they’re wrong. It’s like a drug. You never forget your first hit, how it seduces you with its strength and power, and takes you completely by storm. It colors your world in light and meaning, until you wonder how you ever managed to get by without...

Yes, fuck Christina. I think she’d like that.

I’m not going to force you into anything you don’t want. But I’m also not going to take a vow of chastity and pine away for you, or whatever the hell it is that men do in romance novels these days. I have needs. I’d rather satisfy them with you, but if you don’t want...

Being a victim is supposed to set you free; it acquits you of any agency, any sense of responsibility to the person who did you harm. It’s not your fault, they say. Leave him, they say. Nobody ever tells you what to do if leaving isn’t an option.They just call you stupid. A dumb bitch.Sympathy...

There was something delightfully intimate about the relationship between predator and prey.

You’re like a half-tamed creature, still shy of the bridle. ‘Except you enthrall me, never shall be free.’ But freedom is an illusion, anyway.

Girls can fight with swords, too. Sometimes, even better than men can. They just have to want it badly enough that they’re willing to work harder at it.

Only the cruelest hunters set their traps with terror and trepidation.

Locking eyes with a shape-shifter was aggressive. Very aggressive. One generally didn’t do that unless one wanted to fight. Or fuck.

I am the rightful ruler of this world And now that I, too, have awakened, like my dragons, I have come to take back what is mine.

Words were the bane of her existence. She drowned in them when all she wanted was silence, only to have them recede when one desperately-sought phrase would be the key to her salvation. Most things were like that: excess in times of abundance, and shortages in times of dearth. Life, she realized, was an unbalanced...

That’s not cruel. This is. You come here in the middle of the night, expecting me to be awake, and ask—no, demand—me to give you things that belong to me as much as they belong to you. Never mind what it does to me. Never mind that each time I see you, I wonder if...

You gonna count ’em out now? Because I’ll save you the trouble. There’s two.

Humanity is a cage, and our puritanical sensibilities comprise the bars. We are confined by our own reason and intellect, and yet most of us don’t even know it.

Solus walked over to the young brown-haired man and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, ignoring the look of panic he received in return. “You can call me Solus.” His golden eyes trailed meaningfully down the mortal’s body before he added, softly, “I’ve been told it’s easier to scream.

But fairytales were, at best, dirty mirrors whose warped and pitted surfaces reflected a highly distorted view of the truth, quite different from reality.

Be careful what you wish for. Especially out loud.

and I am the air beneath your wings, never rending, never ending.

He was right. The annoying Disney song was right. The universe was too fucking small.

What was it about us, as humans, that drove us to make apologies for beautiful things?

You will not mock me—and you will let me finish. I have owned and lost a kingdom, and I have battled death. I have been through all that, and I will not chase after you like some lovesick poet spouting verse. If you wish to call me yours, then you will have to act as...

Out running errands—be back before noon. I made a list of some things I like. Check the ones you’re interested in, underline any maybes, and cross off your no’s. I’m going to do two of the things on that list to you when I get back—your choice. Surprise me.-M

Men who thought of themselves as gods fell the farthest, and the hardest.

Don’t tell me it’s going to fucking be okay! I am not okay with being that fucker’s pinata!

She has built her whole life on the foundation of beauty: each chiseled plane, each sloping dimple, each soft curve as crucial as keystones in the cathedral of her body.

In her view, there were threeoptions for a woman. If you were beautiful, you got married. If youwere ugly, you became a nun. If you were beautiful and stupid, orugly and dishonorable, you became a whore.

Death was not the scariest thing out there; no, the denial of it could be far worse.

I’m just playing coy; try harder.

In a fight between a shifter and a witch, the shifter would often win—but only if they could keep the witch from speaking, usually by severing the throat or tearing out the tongue. If the witch was powerful enough, and quick enough, physical size didn’t matter. Catherine had heard of the horrible ways the witches...

When we mated I felt your heart stop beating and it was as if the world had stopped turning. It was only while surrounded by death that I realized I had never felt more alive.

Hatred is as easy as slipping on a well-worn woolen cloak. If only it provided the comfort of one.

I take my babies rare, and my virgins over easy.

You think you’re superior to the others, don’t you? We’ll you’re not. In fact you’re worse for mistaking basic human decency for moral superiority.

Hatred is about possession. It is all-consuming, cruel, and vainglorious. When love is allowed to fester, it becomes twisted and corrupt; it settles deep in the heart…and metastasizes, sending its dark roots through the body to raze all that stands in its way. Love is chaste and pure. Love is banal….No, hatred has infinitely more...

We spend much of our lives going about completely blind to reality, and yet we still have the gall to act victimized when it invariably catches up to us.

He was a phoenix of blood, rising from the ashes of those who had fallen and suffered before him.

She said my glasses made me look like a butch jock’s locker room bitch.

Vol picks up the cup of tea in both hands and takes a long sip. Mm, grass-clippings. Her favourite.