Wolves Of The Beyond Quotes

Ugh, I swear I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a spoon repeatedly than be nice to some idiot, which means pretty much anyone I come in contact with. Damn, I'd be stabbing my eye a lot.

If you find yourself suddenly mated to a werewolf, whatever you do, don't panic. Simply turn to Jen for assistance and she will give you a cool acronym to call him…because that's just so important.

In the event of some sort of gathering, if one of the bossy, over bearing, possessive, fur balls has not flipped his switch and attacked some poor young pup in some misguided attempt to protect his woman's virtue, then the night is not yet over.

Definition Of A Wanderer: A guy who's always looking beyond

Its beyond him now. its time for you to do you own thing." "My thing? my thing only worked if Grace was here to make it work. without Grace, i have an emotionally unbalanced wolf and a Volkswagen.

What does this wildish intuition do for women? Like the wolf, intuition has claws that pry things open and pin things down, it has eyes that can through the shields of persona, it has ears that hear beyond the range of mundane human hearing. With these formidable psychic tools a woman takes on a shrewd and even precognitive animal consciousness, one that deepens her femininity and sharpens her ability to move confidently in the outer world.

Who am I to you?' That’s what she asked me. 'Who am I to you?' I told her ‘You are my friend, my mate, my beloved; you are all the things I need and all the things I don’t deserve. That’s who you are, Sally. You are mine.

Cycling, cycling forever bear, wolf, caribou. When had it all started, where will it end? We are all part of one, from such simple beginnings and yet all so different. Yet one. One and again.

Give 'em hell babe.

Courage... is fear holding on just a bit longer.

A spark can become a flame, a flame a fire.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

A huge smile spread across Jen's face."Ahh that was a good one." She turned back to the crowed and yelled again."Rewind. We're going to party like it's 2009, New Year’s Eve. If you're curious as to how awesome a party that was, please see me, Jacque or Sally. Sally's version will be much more accurate, and also free of any important inappropriate details." Before she could say anything else, a large hand wrapped around the microphone and pulled it from Jen's grasp. Decebel handed it to Jacque as he growled at his mate and pulled her away.All the while Jen was telling him exactly how much she didn't appreciate him getting all up in her kool aide. She finished by telling him that, once again, she was going to shove her foot where an ‘Exit Only’ sign should be.

Costin's contagious, dimpled smile was positively breath taking on his handsome face. She took in his appearance quickly and liked how he hadn't changed who he was for her party. He didn't try to look fancy or be something he wasn't. His un-tucked dress shirt and jeans fit him perfectly and a little voice inside her whispered that he was freaking hot. She called that voice her inner Jen. Jacque and Jen did not know about her inner Jen. It was her little secret when she needed a boost of confidence.

The deer hovered by the trees beyond as the sounds of the ravening wolves came to them across the grass, their own senses almost frozen in impotent horror.

Do not second-guess the sack of flour. The sack of flour is wise beyond her years.

Are you scared of going in to see the raghnaid [the council]?” asked a gray female pup. “Are you cag mag [crazy]? If a bear was his Milk Giver, you think he’s scared of the raghnaid?

I hear you have a birthday today." Sally laughed. "I don't know where you could have possibly heard that." "It might have been from a certain blonde running around the mansion reminding everyone of the party of the century taking place in honor of, and I quote, 'the most bad ass gypsy healer known to man', which was followed up with a, 'no offense to Rachel, but fact is fact.

This situation is not quite beyond saving, but should you carry on much further - should you give voice to such thoughts - it will be.

I was not born for death and yet I have died a thousand times, he thought. And now I am born again for these hard times.

Jake stood on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, looking at a board fence about five feet high. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. From the darkness beyond the fence cam a strong harmonic humming. The sound of many voices, all singing together. Singing one vast open note. 'Here is yes,' the voices said. 'Here is you may. Here is the good turn, the fortunate meeting, the fever that broke just before dawn and left your blood calm. Here is the wish that came true and the understanding eye. Here is the kindness you were given and thus learned to pass on. Here is the sanity and clarity you thought were lost. Here, everything is all right.

There is no greater torture than being forced to watch as your love, your reason for living, breathing, and existing, sinks into oblivion. Your heart stops no matter how you try to get to her, she just gets farther and farther away." ~Fane from 'Beyond the Vail' "Attention shoppers, just a brief announcement, crazy ass werewolf on isle three. Those with abundance of testosterone, don't touch their lady merchandise and you might walk out of here intact." ~Jen from 'Fate and Fury'. "In the event of some sort of gathering, if one of the bossy, overbearing, possessive fur balls has not flipped his switch and attacked some poor young pup in some misguided attempt to protect his woman's virtue, then the night is not over.

If you have ever felt the world melt away when the woman you know is destined to be yours walks into the room; if you have felt your soul reach out to hers, finally making you feel whole; if you tremble when you touch her from sheer awe at being the one who has that right; if the darkness swallows you and you begin to suffocate at the thought of losing her, then you will have a small taste of what it is like to be bonded.

You must not think of time as a quantity, a period, a measure. Look at the sky," Gwynneth said. "The moon has now slipped away to another night, into another world. It was not the time it was here that you remember, Faolan, but rather the luminescence of the air, the blue shadows cast by the trees in its light. It was not the length of the time but the quality of the moon's light that you felt and remember." Gwynneth paused. "It is the value, the quality that lives on.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, little wolves. Do you feel time slipping away from you? Do you feel the urgency to pursue me, the one who plans your destruction? I am coming, little wolves. Tick-tock, tick-tock; I am coming for you. And one by one you will fall. One by one the wolves will be silenced.

Adam leaned down and placed his lips next to her ear. He blew gently on it before he spoke. Mona leaned even closer into him as she listened intently to his words. "Desdemona." She moaned at the sound of her name on his lips. "I need to tell you something." His words were accompanied by warm air caressing her skin. "Before my time is done, I will watch the light fade from your eyes as you are sent to the hell you so deserve." Though his words promised destruction, the cadence of his voice still held her in a seductive rapture.

The shelves were packed close together, and it felt like I was standing at the border of a forest--not a friendly Californian forest, either, but an old Transylvanian forest, a forest full of wolves and witches and dagger-wielding bandits all waiting just beyond moonlight's reach.

We don’t get what we want in this world, Sheriff.  We only get what we make of what is given to us. To think we control anything beyond that is lunacy.

I have jumped for a tree, jumped for a raven, jumped for a cougar. I shall jump for the sun!

No" was most definitely Faolan's favorite word. "No" and "More milk.

See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves. His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster. He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.

Jen smiled at them, a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Do you hear that, Desdemona, last of the witches? I have so named you! Hear me now," Jen yelled into the dark forest, the wind and thunder still rolling around her. "Your time is drawing near! We are coming. Throw back your head in your tiny victory, laugh at our short-lived defeat, but we are coming. The night will be filled with our howls, the ground will shake with the stomping of our feet! We are coming. We are coming for you, Desdemona, and death follows!" Jen lifted her head and let out a howl worthy of an Alpha female. The others joined. And as their howls died down, for a brief moment before the silence took over, they heard howls beyond the earthly realm, howls filled with grief and triumph, pain and fear, anger and love-howls from those caught in the jaws of the In Between. They had heard their females' cries and they had answered.

She had been Zoya’s teacher, feared and beloved, powerful beyond measure. “I watched her throw herself from a mountaintop. She sacrificed herself to stop you. Was that her martyrdom?” The Darkling said nothing. Zoya couldn’t stop herself. “Grigori was eaten by a bear. Elizaveta was drawn and quartered. Still, they returned. There are stories whispered in the Elbjen mountains of the Dark Mother. She crowds in when the nights grow long. She steals the heat from kitchen fires.” “Liar.” “Maybe. We all have stories to tell.

I can only be nice to one Person, today's not your day tomorrow doesn't look good either.

Fine.” Desjani sighed. “Admiral, I recommend we get our intelligence officer up here to see if he can craft lovely poems for the singing spider wolves.

We sang at the chapel annexed to the home every morning. We understood that this was the humans' moon, the place for howling beyond purpose. Not for mating, not for hunting, not for fighting, not for anything but the sound itself. And we'd howl along with the choir, hurling every pitted thing within us at the stained glass.

It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he'd made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise with the dead animals scattered over the grounds and the herd beginning to mill and the riflebarrel so hot the wiping patches sizzled in the bore and the animals by the thousands and the tens of thousands and the hides pegged out over actual square miles of ground the teams of skinners spelling one another around the clock and the shooting and shooting weeks and months till the bore shot slick and the stock shot loose at the tang and their shoulders were yellow and blue to the elbow and the tandem wagons groaned away over the prairie twenty and twenty-two ox teams and the flint hides by the hundred ton and the meat rotting on the ground and the air whining with flies and the buzzards and ravens and the night a horror of snarling and feeding with the wolves half-crazed and wallowing in the carrion. I seen Studebaker wagons with six and eight ox teams headed out for the grounds not hauling a thing but lead. Just pure galena. Tons of it. On this ground alone between the Arkansas River and the Concho there were eight million carcasses for that's how many hides reached the railhead. Two years ago we pulled out from Griffin for a last hunt. We ransacked the country. Six weeks. Finally found a herd of eight animals and we killed them and come in. They're gone. Ever one of them that God ever made is gone as if they'd never been at all. The ragged sparks blew down the wind. The prairie about them lay silent. Beyond the fire it was cold and the night was clear and the stars were falling. The old hunter pulled his blanket about him. I wonder if there's other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.

The yells and yammering, croaking, gibbering and jabbering, howls and growls and curses, shrieking and shrinking that followed were beyond description. Several hundred wildcats and wolves being roasted slowly alive together would not have compared with it.

That vast voice from the darkness beyond the fence sang of that love; he heard it. And of simple forgiveness rather than the difficult forced march of atonement? He thought it was.

The idea of bonding or whatever, with you was crazy. The idea of bonding with a total stranger, a stranger that happens to be a werewolf mind you, is beyond my ability to be reasonable about.

On the fifth night of our search, I see a plesiosaur. It is a megawatt behemoth, bronze and blue-white, streaking across the sea floor like a torpid comet. Watching it, I get this primordial deja vu, like I'm watching a dream return to my body. It wings towards me with a slow, avian grace. Its long neck is arced in an S-shaped curve; its lizard body is the size of Granana's carport. Each of its ghost flippers pinwheels colored light. I try to swim out of its path, but the thing's too big to avoid. That Leviathan fin, it shivers right through me. It's a light in my belly, cold and familiar. And I flash back to a snippet from school, a line from a poem or a science book, I can't remember which: 'There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction'.

Ready?" she asked. Nina clutched the rope. "to be lowered to the heart of witch hunter power?" "This was your idea. We can still turn around." "Do not second-guess the sack of flour. The sack of flour is wise beyond her years.

I'm going to say this one time and one time only, so you had better listen up. The world is going to hell in a hand basket. We got Jacque running off into ponds like a crazy woman; Fane thinking he's Aqua Man, diving in after her and getting his ass captured by the wicked witch; we have freak lightening shows; thunder that shakes the ground; and wind strong enough to knock you over. And you know what's really scary? It's going to get worse before it gets better. The fan is broken from all the shit that has hit it. Yes, I have a potty mouth. I get to have one when the world as we know it is crumbling around us.

Merit,” Catcher said, sitting beside Mallory on the couch, an arm around her shoulders. “It’s nice to see you clothed again.” “And now that she is,” Gabriel said, standing, “we should get moving.” “Where are we going, exactly?” Catcher asked. “To a land beyond space and time,” Jeff said drawing an arc in the air. “Where the rules of mortals have no meaning.” Gabriel looked up at the ceiling as if he might find patience there. “We’re going to the Brecks’ backyard. Into the woods, right here in Illinois, where most of us are quite mortal.” “Illi-noise,” Jeff said with cheeky enthusiasm. “Because the wolves will howl.

She felt she had been created by the demands of others, by their insatiable appetite for something beyond ordinary life. They craved a world without death and they had spotted her, in their hunger, like wolves alert to any poor sheep that might stray from the fold and stand gazing ignorantly up at the stars.

We treat each other with exceeding courtesy; we says, it’s great to see you after all these years. Our tigers drink milk. Our hawks tread the ground. Our sharks have all drowned. Our wolves yawn beyond the open cage. Our snakes have shed their lightning, our apes their flights of fancy, our peacocks have renounced their plumes. The bats flew out of our hair long ago. We fall silent in mid-sentence, all smiles, past help. Our humans don’t know how to talk to one another.

BLESS THE MOON Forgive us, we blamed you for floods, for the flush of blood, for men who are also wolves, even though you could pull the tide in by her hair, we tell everyone we walked all over you. We blame you for the dark, as if you had a choice, performing just beyond the glass, distant and adored, near but alone, cold and unimaginable following us home. We use you to see our blue bodies beneath your damp light, we let you watch, swollen against the glass as we move against one another like fish.

gaddergludder,

If fairness were the rule, the good would not die young, as Coryn, the king of the Great Tree, had.

Sometimes what you think is true, what you think is safe and good, is actually evil in disguise. Evil is so enticing, so deceiving, that you don't know its evil until it's wrapped you up and caressed you as a lover. You gaze into its eyes, enraptured by the pretty words whispers softly in your ears, realzing to late that the pretty words were all just twisted lies

If there's no word in any known vocabulary to encapsulate me, that just means language can't define me. A label can't hold me. I'm beyond classification. I'm an original. I'm - 'Undocumented.

I will go to the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes, but I shall go not as a member of the MacHeath clan — no, I shall go as a free runner. I reject you. I deny you, I refuse and repudiate you as my clan.

Ready?” she asked. Nina clutched the rope. “To be lowered like a sack of flour into the heart of witchhunter power?” “This was your idea. We can still turn around.” “Do not second-guess the sack of flour. The sack of flour is wise beyond her years.” Hanne rolled her eyes and braced her feet against the edge of the roof, and Nina stepped out into nothing. Hanne released a grunt, but the rope stayed steady. Slowly, she lowered Nina down. The first two windows she tried were locked tight, but the third gave way and she wiggled inside, landing on the carpeted floor with a thud. She was in a stairway. For a moment, she couldn’t orient herself, but she descended another story, and soon she was at the door to Brum’s office. This time, she didn’t have a key. It had been too risky to steal it again, so she would have to pick the lock. It took an embarrassingly long time. She could almost hear Kaz laughing at her. Shut up, Brekker. Talk to me when you’ve done something about that terrible haircut. Maybe he had by now. She hoped so for Inej’s sake.

Judging without even trying is incredibly convenient—especially if it lets us remain the victims of circumstances created by global forces far beyond our realm of control or influence. Behaving like a wolf when surrounded by wolves often seems like the safest option. Unfortunately as human beings, rather than following our blood, instinct and tribe, each one of us carries the burden of first finding a vision, and then realizing a version of our noble selves.

Prison Moon Four a.m. work duty and I begin my solitary trudge from outer compound to main building. A shivering guard, chilled in his lonely outpost, strip searches me until content that my inconsequential nudity. poses no threat and then whispers the secret code that allows me admittance into the open quarter-mile walkway. I chuff my way into another day as ice glints on the razor wire and the rifles note my numbed passage, silent but for my huffs and scuffle on the cracked, slippery sidewalk A new moon, veiled in wispy fog and beringed in glory, hangs over the prison, its gaudy glow taunting the halogen spotlights. The moon’s creamy pull upsets some liquid equilibrium within me and like tides, wolves and all manner of madmen, I surrender disturbed by the certainty that under the bony luminescence of a grinning moon The lunar deliriums grip me and I howl--once, then again, and surely somewhere an unbound sleeper stirs, penitence is dying a giddy death. I shake myself sane and as the echoes hang in the frigid air I explain to the wild-eyed guard that convicts, like all animals under the leash, must bay at the beauty beyond them.

Ready?" she asked. Nina clutched the rope. "to be lowered to the heart of witch hunter power like a sack of flour?" "This was your idea. We can still turn around." "Do not second-guess the sack of flour. The sack of flour is wise beyond her years.

Can we call you Mother, Miss Red?” Curly asked. “Certainly not!” “Mother!” the Lost twins shouted. “We have a mother! We have a mother! We have a mother!” the Lost Boys chanted. Red felt like her friends had just fed her to a pack of hungry wolves.

When we are in skin, we are anfeald. Single fold: one and singular. Alone. But when we are wild, we exist beyond the limitations of our poor bodies and weak senses. We are ourselves, but we are also part of the land and the Pack. We are manigfeald, manifold and complex.

To love a woman, the mate must also love her untamed nature. If she takes a mate who cannot or will not love this other side, she shall surely in some way be dismantled and be left to limp about un­repaired. So men, as much as women, must name their dual natures. The most valued lover, the most valuable parent, the most valued friend, the most valuable “wilderman,” is the one who wishes to learn. Those who are not delighted by learning, those who cannot be enticed into new ideas or experiences, cannot develop past the road post they rest at now. If there is but one force which feeds the root of pain, it is the refusal to learn beyond this moment.

Lupus Star Wolves (the spirits of dead wolves who have traveled to the Cave of Souls) air ceilidh fyre (lightning) chieftains (clan leaders) lords (pack leaders) skreeleens byrrgis leaders captains lieutenants sublieutenants corporals packers gnaw wolves unranked Obeas owls other four-legged animals other birds, except owls plants earth fire water

Down the rushing mere-wash Of Kíl’f’s welling blood, We ride the twisting timbers, For hearth, clan, and honor. Under the ernes’ sky-vat, Through the ice-wolves’ forest bowls, We ride the gory wood, For iron, gold, and diamond. Let hand-ringer and bearded gaper fill my grip And battle-leaf guard my stone As I leave the halls of my fathers For the empty land beyond.

Eventually every woman who stays away from her soul-home for too long, tires. This is as it should be. Then she seeks her skin again in order to revive her sense of self and soul, in order to restore her deep-eyed and oceanic knowing. This great cycle of going and returning, going and returning, is reflexive within the instinctual nature of women and is innate to all women for all their lives, from throughout girlhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, through being a lover, through motherhood, through being a craftswoman, a wisdom-holder, an elderwoman, and beyond. These phases are not necessarily chronological, for mid-age women are often newborn, old women are intense lovers, and little girls know a good deal about cronish enchantment.

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night. They moved on and the iron of the wagontires grew polished bright as chrome in the pumice. To the south the blue cordilleras stood footed in their paler image on the sand like reflections in a lake and there were no wolves now. They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the polished shoes of the horses kept hasping up like a myriad of eyes winking across the desert floor. They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing.

The central values by which most men have lived, in a great many lands at a great many times—these values, almost if not entirely universal, are not always harmonious with each other. Some are, some are not. Men have always craved for liberty, security, equality, happiness, justice, knowledge, and so on. But complete liberty is not compatible with complete equality—if men were wholly free, the wolves would be free to eat the sheep. Perfect equality means that human liberties must be restrained so that the ablest and the most gifted are not permitted to advance beyond those who would inevitably lose if there were competition. Security, and indeed freedoms, cannot be preserved if freedom to subvert them is permitted. Indeed, not everyone seeks security or peace, otherwise some would not have sought glory in battle or in dangerous sports. Justice has always been a human ideal, but it is not fully compatible with mercy. Creative imagination and spontaneity, splendid in themselves, cannot be fully reconciled with the need for planning, organization, careful and responsible calculation. Knowledge, the pursuit of truth—the noblest of aims—cannot be fully reconciled with the happiness or the freedom that men desire, for even if I know that I have some incurable disease this will not make me happier or freer. I must always choose: between peace and excitement, or knowledge and blissful ignorance. And so on... If these ultimate human values by which we live are to be pursued, then compromises, trade-offs, arrangements have to be made if the worst is not to happen. So much liberty for so much equality, so much individual self-expression for so much security, so much justice for so much compassion.

Don’t you see, Mhairie, if we don’t keep telling the stories, we shall forget them. And if we forget them, our marrow will leak away, our clan marrow will vanish. Now was not the time to forget. Now was the time to remember. Memory, Dearlea thought, is the life-pumping artery, the blood in that artery. Memory is the sinew, the muscle that stretches back to the Beyond and before the Beyond. Have we not come full circle? she wondered. Now is not the time to forget. She felt a quiet despair, for there was song deep within her desperate to get out. Lupus, she would not die with the song inside her! Her mother, who rode next to her on another narwhale’s back with Abban, turned toward her and howled, “Sing, Dearlea! Sing! You are a skreeleen. The first in this new world.” So Dearlea threw back her head and sang. And out of that dark place we fled That broken land so scarred and dead Our hopes our dreams forever gone. Then did we follow this wolf so bold To this place that did unfold As if lost in mists of time It was the Distant Blue A new world sublime. On a bridge of ice we walked and walked We now give thanks to Lupus, to Glaux, To Ursus and gods not known, And to whales who carried us The last way To here in our new home. The other creatures began to join in. The wolves howled, and from Toby’s and Burney’s deep chests came sonorous roars that stirred Faolan’s heart. Dearlea was so right to sing, to remind them of what they had left behind.

My throat raw with emotion, I said, “I thought love was supposed to be weak knees and butterflies in your stomach and a terrible longing that could never be quenched.” Eeny shook her head, chuckled, came over and embraced me. “No, child,” she said gently, patting my back. “That’s romance. Romance is built on doubt. Love is solid. Constant. If you’re not careful, you might mistake it for bein’ boring because it’s so reliable. Love is warm and deep and comfortable, just right, so you float in it peacefully without ever being scalded or frozen, like a perfect, relaxing bubble bath. “But it’s also fierce and strong and demands all the best parts of you, the parts that are giving and honest and true. Love makes you a better person. It makes you want to be a better person. You know it’s love when you feel comfortable just as you are, when you feel seen and understood, when you know you could tell all your darkest truths and they’d be accepted without judgement.” Eeny pulled away and gently smoothed a hand over my hair. “Love isn’t butterflies, boo. It isn’t weak knees. It’s a pride of lions. It’s a pack of wolves. It’s ‘I’ve got your back even if it costs me my own life,’ because unlike romance that fizzles at the first sign of trouble, love will fight to the death. When it’s love, you’ll go to war to avenge even the slightest offense. And you’ll be justified. “Because of all the marvelous and terrible things we can experience in this life, love is the only one that will last beyond it.

URSKADAMUS TINE SMYORFIN MASACH!” Edme wasn’t sure what to believe now — her ears or her eye? There was only one wolf who swore in both the language of bears and that of Old Wolf. “Faolan?” “Who else, for the love of Lupus? One would think you saw a ghost.” “But with all that frost — you look like a lochin.” Faolan gave a dismissive bark. “You should see yourself,” Edme persisted. “You’ve got icicles hanging from your chin fur. Your belly fur looks as if it’s …” “I know! I know! I can feel it!” he replied crankily. “You look absolutely ancient. I mean older than the Sark.” “Thanks a lot,” Faolan huffed. “Well, what did you find?” “No meat.” His voice dwindled.

My throat raw with emotion, I said, “I thought love was supposed to be weak knees and butterflies in your stomach and a terrible longing that could never be quenched.” Eeny shook her head, chuckled, came over and embraced me. “No, child,” she said gently, patting my back. “That’s romance. Romance is built on doubt. Love is solid. Constant. If you’re not careful, you might mistake it for bein’ boring because it’s so reliable. Love is warm and deep and comfortable, just right, so you float in it peacefully without ever being scalded or frozen, like a perfect, relaxing bubble bath. “But it’s also fierce and strong and demands all the best parts of you, the parts that are giving and honest and true. Love makes you a better person. It makes you want to be a better person. You know it’s love when you feel comfortable just as you are, when you feel seen and understood, when you know you could tell all your darkest truths and they’d be accepted without judgement.” Eeny pulled away and gently smoothed a hand over my hair. “Love isn’t butterflies, boo. It isn’t weak knees. It’s a pride of lions. It’s a pack of wolves. It’s ‘I’ve got your back even if it costs me my own life,’ because unlike romance that fizzles at the first sign of trouble, love will fight to the death. When it’s love, you’ll go to war to avenge even the slightest offense. And you’ll be justified. “Because of all the marvelous and terrible things we can experience in this life, love is the only one that will last beyond it.

Such is the lot of the knight that even though my patrimony were ample and adequate for my support, nevertheless here are the disturbances which give me no quiet. We live in fields, forests, and fortresses. Those by whose labors we exist are poverty-stricken peasants, to whom we lease our fields, vineyards, pastures, and woods. The return is exceedingly sparse in proportion to the labor expended. Nevertheless the utmost effort is put forth that it may be bountiful and plentiful, for we must be diligent stewards. I must attach myself to some prince in the hope of protection. Otherwise every one will look upon me as fair plunder. But even if I do make such an attachment hope is beclouded by danger and daily anxiety. If I go away from home I am in peril lest I fall in with those who are at war or feud with my overlord, no matter who he is, and for that reason fall upon me and carry me away. If fortune is adverse, the half of my estates will be forfeit as ransom. Where I looked for protection I was ensnared. We cannot go unarmed beyond to yokes of land. On that account, we must have a large equipage of horses, arms, and followers, and all at great expense. We cannot visit a neighboring village or go hunting or fishing save in iron. Then there are frequently quarrels between our retainers and others, and scarcely a day passes but some squabble is referred to us which we must compose as discreetly as possible, for if I push my claim to uncompromisingly war arises, but if I am too yielding I am immediately the subject of extortion. One concession unlooses a clamor of demands. And among whom does all this take place? Not among strangers, my friend, but among neighbors, relatives, and those of the same household, even brothers. These are our rural delights, our peace and tranquility. The castle, whether on plain or mountain, must be not fair but firm, surrounded by moat and wall, narrow within, crowded with stalls for the cattle, and arsenals for guns, pitch, and powder. Then there are dogs and their dung, a sweet savor I assure you. The horsemen come and go, among them robbers, thieves, and bandits. Our doors are open to practically all comers, either because we do not know who they are or do not make too diligent inquiry. One hears the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle, the barking of dogs, the shouts of men working in the fields, the squeaks or barrows and wagons, yes, and even the howling of wolves from nearby woods. The day is full of thought for the morrow, constant disturbance, continual storms. The fields must be ploughed and spaded, the vines tended, trees planted, meadows irrigated. There is harrowing, sowing, fertilizing, reaping, threshing: harvest and vintage. If the harvest fails in any year, then follow dire poverty, unrest, and turbulence.

Now come days of begging, days of theft. Days of riding where there rode no soul save he. He’s left behind the pinewood country and the evening sun declines before him beyond an endless swale and dark falls here like a thunderclap and a cold wind sets the weeds to gnashing. The night sky lies so sprent with stars that there is scarcely space of black at all and they fall all night in bitter arcs and it is so that their numbers are no less. He keeps from off the king’s road for fear of citizenry. The little prairie wolves cry all night and dawn finds him in a grassy draw where he’d gone to hide from the wind. The hobbled mule stands over him and watches the east for light. The sun that rises is the color of steel. His mounted shadow falls for miles before him. He wears on his head a hat he’s made from leaves and they have dried and cracked in the sun and he looks like a raggedyman wandered from some garden where he’d used to frighten birds.

A bad guy? He smothered a smile at the naiveté of the question. “Do you wish I was your heroic rescuer? That’s cute.” “You didn’t do any rescuing. That part was all me.” “I’m no one’s hero anyway. Most label me an abomination. It’s my lot in life. I do scary things beyond what you could even imagine. It’s why you’re best off if you get out of the car. Go your own way.” “You do scary things? Like pick up a girl and murder her on the side of the road?” “Are you frightened?” “I’m terrified,” she said sarcastically without a hint of fear. “You lumped us together earlier when you said ‘our kind,’ so I assume I also do bad things.” “You killed that guy in the club.” “You mean the one who planned to shoot you in the heart?” “I’m not saying I feel bad for him. Just pointing out murder’s not exactly a heroine move.” “So I’m a bad girl? You like that, don’t you?” She stared out the window, her lips compressed against a smile. “I like it.” Holy shit, she was incredible. He dealt with the deadliest of preternatural creatures on a daily basis. His servitude to the Crown required he hunt down and destroy paranormal threats bent on power, greed, or world domination. But he’d never encountered someone like her.

Line of AuNor, dragon bold Flows to me from days of old, And through years lost in the mist My blood names a famous list. By Air, by Water, by Fire, by Earth In pride I claim a noble birth. From EmLar Gray, a deadly deed By his flame Urlant was freed, Of fearsome hosts of blighters dark And took his reward: a golden ark! My Mother’s sire knew battle well Before him nine-score villages fell. When AuRye Red coursed the sky Elven arrows in vain would fly, He broke the ranks of men at will In glittering mines dwarves he’d kill. Grandsire he is through Father’s blood A river of strength in fullest flood. My egg was one of Irelia’s Clutch Her wisdom passed in mental touch. Mother took up before ever I woke The parent dragon’s heavy yoke; For me, her son, she lost her life Murderous dwarves brought blackened knife. A father I had in the Bronze AuRel Hunter of renown upon wood and fell He gave his clutch through lessons hard A chance at life beyond his guard. Father taught me where, and when, and how To fight or flee, so I sing now. Wistala, sibling, brilliant green Escaped with me the axes keen We hunted as pair, made our kill From stormy raindrops drank our fill When elves and dwarves took after us I told her “Run,” and lost her thus. Bound by ropes; by Hazeleye freed And dolphin-rescued in time of need I hid among men with fishing boats On island thick with blown sea-oats I became a drake and breathed first fire When dolphin-slaughter aroused my ire. I ran with wolves of Blackhard’s pack Killed three hunters on my track The Dragonblade’s men sought my hide But I escaped through a fangèd tide Of canine friends, assembled Thing Then met young Djer, who cut collar-ring. I crossed the steppes with dwarves of trade On the banks of the Vhydic Ironriders slayed Then sought out NooMoahk, dragon black And took my Hieba daughter back To find her kind; then took first flight Saw NooMoahk buried in honor right. When war came to friends I long had known My path was set, my heart was stone I sought the source of dreadful hate And on this Isle I met my fate Found Natasatch in a cavern deep So I had one more promise to keep. To claim this day my life’s sole mate In future years to share my fate A dragon’s troth is this day pledged To she who’ll see me fully fledged. Through this dragon’s life, as dragon-dame shall add your blood to my family’s fame.

Years later he had tried to find his parents, to tell them that their Lump had become the great Varamyr Sixskins, but both of them were dead and burned. Gone into the trees and streams, gone into the rocks and earth. Gone to dirt and ashes. That was what the woods witch told his mother, the day Bump died. Lump did not want to be a clod of earth. The boy had dreamed of a day when bards would sing of his deeds and pretty girls would kiss him. When I am grown I will be the King-Beyond-the-Wall, Lump had promised himself. He never had, but he had come close. Varamyr Sixskins was a name men feared. He rode to battle on the back of a snow bear thirteen feet tall, kept three wolves and a shadowcat in thrall, and sat at the right hand of Mance Rayder. It was Mance who brought me to this place. I should not have listened. I should have slipped inside my bear and torn him to pieces.

Fear was alive, with a heartbeat of its own.

Don’t forget that Sabine hates Micah’s guts. Beyond silencing the victims, the killings now could also be to undermine him. You saw how tied up he is about getting this solved before the Summit. Murders like these, caused by an unknown demon, when Sandriel is here? It’ll make a mockery of him. Maximus Tertian was high profile enough to create a political headache for Micah—Tertian’s death might have just been to fuck with Micah’s standing. For fuck’s sake, she and Sandriel might even be in on it together, hoping to weaken him in the Asteri’s eyes, so they appoint Sandriel to Valbara instead. She could easily make Sabine the Prime of all Valbaran shifters—not just wolves.

How,” the Autumn King asked no one in particular. “How?” It was the ancient Prime of the wolves who answered, his withered voice rising above the pinging of the graph. “With the strength of the most powerful force in the world. The most powerful force in any realm.” He pointed to the screen. “What brings loyalty beyond death, undimming despite the years. What remains unwavering in the face of hopelessness.” The Autumn King twisted toward the ancient Prime, shaking his head. Still not understanding. Bryce was at the level of ordinary witches now. But still too far from life. Motion caught Declan’s eye, and he whirled toward the feed of the Old Square. Wreathed in lightning, healed and whole, Hunt Athalar was kneeling over Bryce’s dead body. Pumping her torso with his hands—chest compressions. Hunt hissed to Bryce through his gritted teeth, thunder cracking above him, “I heard what you said.” Pump, pump, pump went his powerful arms. “What you waited to admit until I was almost dead, you fucking coward.” His lightning surged into her, sending her body arcing off the ground as he tried to jump-start her heart. He snarled in her ear, “Now come say it to my face.” Sabine whispered a sentence to the room, to the Autumn King, and Declan’s heart rose, hearing it. It was the answer to the ancient Prime’s words. To the Autumn King’s question of how, against every statistic blaring on Declan’s computer, they were even witnessing Hunt Athalar fight like Hel to keep Bryce Quinlan’s heart beating. Through love, all is possible.

The Prime of Wolves, the Autumn King, the two Governors, the River Queen’s fair daughter, Queen Hypaxia, and Jesiba all took seats at that central table. Their seconds—Sabine, Ruhn, Tharion, an older-looking witch—all claimed spots in the ring of tables around them. No one else from the House of Flame and Shadow had come with Jesiba, not even a vampyr. The ranks fell into place beyond that, each ring of tables growing larger and larger, seven in total. The Asterian Guard lined the uppermost level, standing against the wall, two at each of the room’s three exits. The seven levels of Hel indeed.

It was the ancient Prime of the wolves who answered, his withered voice rising above the pinging of the graph. “With the strength of the most powerful force in the world. The most powerful force in any realm.” He pointed to the screen. “What brings loyalty beyond death, undimming despite the years. What remains unwavering in the face of hopelessness.” The Autumn King twisted toward the ancient Prime, shaking his head. Still not understanding. Bryce was at the level of ordinary witches now. But still too far from life. Motion caught Declan’s eye, and he whirled toward the feed of the Old Square. Wreathed in lightning, healed and whole, Hunt Athalar was kneeling over Bryce’s dead body. Pumping her torso with his hands—chest compressions. Hunt hissed to Bryce through his gritted teeth, thunder cracking above him, “I heard what you said.” Pump, pump, pump went his powerful arms. “What you waited to admit until I was almost dead, you fucking coward.” His lightning surged into her, sending her body arcing off the ground as he tried to jump-start her heart. He snarled in her ear, “Now come say it to my face.” Sabine whispered a sentence to the room, to the Autumn King, and Declan’s heart rose, hearing it. It was the answer to the ancient Prime’s words. To the Autumn King’s question of how, against every statistic blaring on Declan’s computer, they were even witnessing Hunt Athalar fight like Hel to keep Bryce Quinlan’s heart beating. Through love, all is possible.

The six lower Heads were all appointed by Micah, not elected by any democratic process. There were councils within councils, designed to give people the illusion of control, but the main order of things was simple: The Governor ruled, and the City Heads led their own districts under him. Beyond that, the 33rd Legion answered only to the Governor, while the Aux obeyed the City Heads, divided into units based upon districts and species. It grew murkier from there. The wolves claimed the shifter packs were the commanders of the Aux—but the Fae insisted that this distinction belonged to them, instead. It made dividing—claiming—responsibilities difficult.

But would it do anything—the training, the work, the stairs—beyond keeping her busy? The thoughts still waited like wolves to swarm her. To rip her apart. I loved you from the first moment I held you in my arms. The wolves prowled closer, claws clicking. “Where’d you go?” Cassian asked, hazel eyes dim with worry. Nesta took up her stance again. It sent the wolves retreating a step. “Nowhere.

Love is solid. Constant. If you’re not careful, you might mistake it for bein’ boring because it’s so reliable. Love is warm and deep and comfortable, just right, so you float in it peacefully without ever being scalded or frozen, like a perfect, relaxing bubble bath. “But it’s also fierce and strong and demands all the best parts of you, the parts that are giving and honest and true. Love makes you a better person. It makes you want to be a better person. You know it’s love when you feel comfortable just as you are, when you feel seen and understood, when you know you could tell all your darkest truths and they’d be accepted without judgement.” Eeny pulled away and gently smoothed a hand over my hair. “Love isn’t butterflies, boo. It isn’t weak knees. It’s a pride of lions. It’s a pack of wolves. It’s ‘I’ve got your back even if it costs me my own life,’ because unlike romance that fizzles at the first sign of trouble, love will fight to the death. When it’s love, you’ll go to war to avenge even the slightest offense. And you’ll be justified. “Because of all the marvelous and terrible things we can experience in this life, love is the only one that will last beyond it.

it is better for us to fight for something than to live for nothing.

Our original liberal principle of value agnosticism neutralizes our critical energies. If we have no robust and demanding picture of what a good life would look like, then we are unable to articulate any detailed criticism of the particular sort of falling away from a good life that something like machine gambling represents. We are therefore unable to offer any rationale for regulation that would go beyond narrow economic considerations. We take the preferences of the individual to be sacred, the mysterious welling up of his authentic self, and therefore unavailable for rational scrutiny. The fact that these preferences are the object of billion-dollar, scientifically informed efforts of manipulation doesn't square with the picture of the choosing self assumed in the idea of a 'free market.' It is a fact without a noisy partisan, so our attention is easily diverted from it. Further, by keeping his gaze away from such facts, the liberal/libertarian keeps his own soul pure, lest he commit the sin of recommending to others some substantive ideal, one that will necessarily be controversial. But outside his garden wall there are wolves preying on the townspeople. In our current historical circumstances, his liberal purity amounts to a lack of public-spiritedness.

Until I die, my darling. And even then I will love you beyond the grave.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. —William Blake, from “Proverbs of Hell,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Hold on, and I’ll drive the darkness back!— Whispers the lunar prince to the stranded sheep, tenderly, While he puts on the adorned crown of night, And while the winds are wrestling it out devoid of senses. Hold on even as the stars have disappeared from sight, And the herd has abandoned you to the wolves. Hold on to that last bit of life you have! Hold out throughout the seeming strife, And I promise the clock will not strike twelve. Hold out until my hand reaches to your rescue, Hold on to the very last moment!—I will do it.

But would it do anything - the training, the work, the stairs - beyond keeping her busy? The thoughts still waited like wolves to swarm her. To rip her apart.

Burial of the dead was usually on platforms lashed to the limbs of trees beyond the reach of wolves. Securely wrapped in buffalo robes, firmly bound with rawhide thongs, the bodies were safe from ravens, crows, and magpies. Weapons and pipes were buried with warriors, root-diggers and cooking utensils with the women. Often a number of horses were killed at the burial of a warrior, so that his spirit might ride in The Sand Hills, the Heaven of the Blackfeet. In mourning for a son, or other male relative, both men and women scarified themselves, and cut off their hair, the women wailing piteously, sometimes for long periods. The mourning for women was of shorter duration, and not so wild.

One of the vilest secrets of the MacHeaths was that they would purposely maim young pups, hoping to gain a place in the Watch of the Sacred Volcanoes.

Lady, I know death will come but I avoid it because I can rationally foresee the devastation it will wreak upon my life. Yet after death, I will be beyond this mortal coil, and either in eternal pleasure or damnation. This thing that you do is worse than death, as it will leave me alive and in a perpetual state of agony. You may as well cast me into Hell.” She

The door slammed shut and her gaze made a leisurely journey up the denim. Long, lean legs with nicely muscled thighs led into lean hips and a narrow waist. Her breath caught as she moved upward to a chest barely contained in the black skinny fit t-shirt up to a face she’d have expected to find on set rather than in the ass-end of beyond. “Fuck me…” she breathed. She’d walked right into a jeans commercial.

For there is a new place for those who are willing, who are able, who are strong. We are going west. There is, I believe, a new world somewhere waiting. The moon that shines here will shine there, but here the land is broken and there it is whole.

Wickedness?” He laughed. “Pleasure is the greatest gift the gods ever gave us. There are many means beyond copulation to achieve release. If I am willing to share this gift, why would you reject it?

Cag maglosc,” Faolan muttered, and then launched into what sounded to Edme like a string of Old Wolf curse words.

Gwynneth had gone to his forge and set

Here we come to a semantic difficulty. Other peoples who were of considerable civilization had been referred to as barbarians for more than a thousand years. Others had been called by the names of the wolves. When the wolves themselves came, there was no other name to give them. The Goths, who were kingdom-founding Christians, had been called barbarians. The Gauls of ancient lineage had been so called, and the talented Vandals. Even the Huns had been called barbarians. This is a thing beyond all comprehension, and yet it is not safe to contradict the idea even today. The Huns were a race of over-civilized kings traveling with their Courts. In the ordering of military affairs and in overall organization they had no superiors in the world. They were skilled diplomats, filled with urbanity and understanding. All who came into contact with them, Persians, Armenians, Greeks, Romans, were impressed by the Huns' fairness in dealing—considering that they were armed invaders; by their restraint and adaptability; by their judgment of affairs; by their easy luxury. They brought a new elegance to the Empire peoples; and they had assimilated a half dozen cultures, including that of China. But the Huns were not barbarians; no more were any of the other violent visitors to the Empire heretofore.

Did God not make the Devil?" "But not in his own image." Dickey quickly countered. "Then in what image did He make him? Is God not all things? So how could something exist beyond God that God could pattern something from? By the very definition of God's omnipresence, are not all things in God's image?" There were frowns and grimaces all around. "Perhaps discussing this is unwise," Harry said. "In what way, good sir? Do you feel God will hear us from on high and judge us heretics? Did God not give us the ability to question and reason, presumably in his image?" "Respectfully," Dickey said. "If God feels we are being disrespectful, may he command the sharks to leap forth from the sea and bite our hairy arses," I said. Dickey blanched. "Sir, with all due respect, yours is the hairy arse that should be bit, as you began this." Without doffing my breeches, I hung my arse over the gunwale so that it could easily be seen by the one shark doggedly keeping pace with us on that side of the ship. It did not leap forth from the water. "God will deal with you later, I am sure," Dickey said with a great deal of dignity.

and die, die without anyone ever knowing.

was regaining his strength now on a fairly steady diet

And this spirit was the Diabolus sylvarum, the spirit of the forest and the wolves, whose home is in the marshes and the wilds, a spirit doughty and fearless, a spirit strong and free, yet also a furious one and a violent, beyond all understanding, winged like the storm-wind and burning as the heart of the world, but enslaved in the chains of Darkness.