“There wasn't an in-between for me. I lived at extremes. And maybe I'd die at them too.”

“What I really needed wasn't a dose of school spirit; it was a glass of water, an aspirin the size of my fist, and the answers to the history exam that I hadn't studied for the night before. "As long as I'm dreaming," I muttered, my words lost to the cacophony of the gym, "I'd also like a pony, a convertible, and a couple of friends.""That's a tall order." I'd known that there were people sitting next to me, but I couldn't begin to imagine how one of them had heard me. I hadn't even heard me. "Would you settle for a piece of gum, an orange Tic Tac, and an introduction the the school slut?”

“I wasn't built for running away from monsters. I wanted desperately to run toward them--track them down, kill them. Luckily, I was used to restraining myself, used to acting human even when I wasn't, and the human part of my brain reminded me that right now, preternatural beasties weren't exactly my primary concern. Someone had made a strong attempt at killing me this morning....”

“She'd let me in, and for the first time, I actually wanted to do the same, to tell someone the truth. That I wasn't normal. That I wasn't human.”

“I had no weapons. No plan. Nothing but my blood and my hands. They were coming, and there were more of them than I'd realized.”

“In the end,” Callum said, his voice soft, gentle, “it all comes back to you. You protect them [your pack], you love them, you live for them, and someday, you die. That’s what it means, Bryn-girl, to be what we are [to be Alpha]. It’s lonely. It’s impossible. It’s all-consuming.” It is what it is.”

“Luckily for me, I didn't know precisely what it was that I'd done to merit a visit from our pack's leader. There were any number of possibilities, none of which I wanted to openly admit on the off chance that there was something I'd done that he hadn't found out yet.”