“What about this? A colony of nothing but Battle School grads. If they bred true, they'd be the smartest military minds in the galaxy.Then they'd come home and take over Earth.OK, not that.”

“School field trips had always been a welcome escape from routine, particularly when they'd involved aquariums or grown-ups dressed in colonial costumes.”

“Even if they'd known that an attack had just been struck by one of their parents, they'd also have known that it wasn't their battle.”

“Even officers who don't approve of your lifestyle choices would still take you as backup over Kirkland, or most anyone else. They'd say how you're bad for shaking up with vampires and wereleopards, but in a firefight they'd take your vampire-loving, furry-fucking ass over most anyone else's.”

“Although she was a logical, practical person, she believed that in books there existed a kind of magic. Between the aging covers on these shelves, contained in tiny, abstract black marks on sheets of paper, were voices from the past. Voices that reached into the future, into Claire's own heart and mind, to tell her what they knew, what they'd learned, what they'd seen, what they'd felt. Wasn't that magic?”

“The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they'd lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.”