“Every girl would secretly want to be "the one" even though she might lie to herself that she did not.”

“The sexual attraction between a shifter and one of the marked was always strong and for some that was enough. Even though it might mean spending the rest of your life bound to a woman who wanted to screw you every time she looked at you, but hated you while she did it.”

“If a woman could take care of herself, would she still need a man? Would she even want one? And if she didn't want a man, what kind of woman would she be? Would she even be a woman? Because it seemed if you were a woman, the only thing you were really supposed to want was a man.”

“I was observing her closely as I talked, and after a while I began to get the impression that she was not, in fact, quite so merry and smiling a girl as I had been led to believe at first. She seemed to be coiled in herself, as though with a secret she was jealously guarding. The deep-blue eyes moved too quickly about the room, never settling or resting on one thing for more than a moment; and over all her face, though so faint that they might not even have been there, those small downward lines of sorrow.”

“She felt herself needing more and more sleep. When she awoke in the morning, she thought of when she might lie down again - and when she would sleep. She started going to the movies.”

“Contact would hurt, might be fatal, and yet she couldn’t stop herself. Obsession or compulsion, she didn’t know, but she did know that before this was over, she’d either end up in Dmitri’s bed . . . or one of them would bleed darkest red.”