“They locked gazes in that moment, the mother and the rake. Neither doubted that a battle had been joined”

“She'd been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn't know how to let go. From the moment she'd first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle.”

“Firepaw held the menacing amber gaze for few moments. Warrior and apprentice, for a heartbeat their eyes were locked as enemies.”

“Whatever was about, whoever I had seen, and heard rocking, and who had passed me by just now, whoever had opened the locked door was not 'real'. No. But what was 'real'? At that moment I began to doubt my own reality.”

“I had officially joined the cacophony of sick mother fuckers.”

“Neither of us moves for a moment, locked instead in each other's eyes and in the branches of this Hill we might never finish climbing.”