Wounded Wolf Quotes

I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

It’s just like the one Scarlet had.” He flipped the gun in his palms, running his thumbs along the barrel. “She shot me in the arm once.” This confession was said with as much tenderness as if Scarlet had given him a bouquet of wildflowers rather than a bullet wound. Cress and the others traded sorrowful looks.

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

We who are dominant tend to think of that aspect of being a werewolf as rank: who is obeyed, who is to obey. Dominant and submissive. But it is also who is to protect and who is to be protected. A submissive wolf is not incapable of protecting himself: he can fight, he can kill as readily as any other. But a submissive doesn't feel the need to fight -- not the way a dominant does. They are a treasure in a pack. A source of purpose and of balance. Why does a dominant exist? To protect those beneath him, but protecting a submissive is far more rewarding because a submissive will never wait until you are wounded or your back is turned to see if you are truly dominant to him. Submissive wolves can be trusted. And they unite the pack with the goal of keeping them safe and cared for.

It's like the one Scarlet had.' He flipped the gun in his palms. 'She shot me in the arm once.' His confession was said with as much tenderness as if Scarlet had given him a bouquet of wildflowers rather than a bullet wound.

At night, forgotten words tried to reach me. I listened with my skin. Words tore my skin off, crept inside me, and nestled down. I was a mass of wounds. When I opened my mouth in front of the mirror, beasts lay asleep in my throat; they'd made it their home.

Finally, she said: “I’m lonely” — it’s weird but you tell the wolves things, sometimes. You can’t help it, all these old wounds come open and suddenly you’re confessing to a wolf who never says anything back. She said: “I’m lonely,” and they ate her in the street.

Wolf took Scarlet’s hands into his, as tenderly as he would pick up an injured butterfly, and slid the band onto her finger. His voice was rough and wavering as he recited—“I, Ze’ev Kesley, do hereby claim you, Scarlet Benoit, as my wife and my Alpha. Forevermore, you will be my mate, my star, my beginning of everything.” He smiled down at her, his eyes swimming with emotion. Scarlet returned the look, and though Wolf’s expression teetered between proud and bashful, Scarlet’s face contained nothing but joy. “You are the one. You have always been, and you will always be, the only one. Scarlet took the second ring—a significantly larger version of the same unadorned band—and pressed it onto Wolf’s finger. “I, Scarlet Benoit, do hereby claim you, Ze’ev Kesley, as my husband and my Alpha. Forevermore, you will be my mate, my star, my beginning of everything. You are the one. You have always been, and you will always be, the only one.” Wolf folded his hands around hers. From where she sat, Cinder could see that he was shaking. Kai grinned. “By the power given to me by the people of Earth, under the laws of the Earthen Union and as witnessed by those gathered here today, I do now pronounce you husband and wife.” He spread his hands in invitation. “You may kiss your—” Wolf wrapped his arms around Scarlet’s waist, lifting her off the floor, and kissed her before Kai could finish. Or maybe she kissed him. It seemed mutual, as her hands wound through his disheveled hair. The room exploded with cheers, everyone launching to their feet to congratulate the still-kissing couple. Scarlet had lost one of her red shoes. “I’ll get the champagne,” said Thorne, heading toward the kitchen. “Those two are going to be thirsty when they finally come up for air.

I'll see you there little Red.' Fane’s voice faded out of her mind and she could feel his humor. Oh, wasn't he just too cute, picking up on her two best friends' idea of a sick joke - to turn her into the little girl who almost wound up as the wolf's dinner. "My, what big eyes you have, wolf-man," Jacque said out loud, unable to stop her sarcasm from boiling up. “The better to see you with love,” Jen chimed in. “What big ears you have!” Sally continued their comic relief. “The better to hear you with my love,” Jen followed. “What big teeth you have!” Sally mocked, her hands on either side of her face. “The better to eat you with my love,” Jen cackled, but she wasn’t finished. True to Jen form she added her own twisted sense of humour. “My, what a big-“ Sally slapped a hand over her mouth, quickly realising where Jen was going with that statement.

Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of dark corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

I have never known the mind of a wolf hunting a deer, but I imagine it must feel a little like this. The twisted excitement of seeing the weak and wounded cowering before you. The knowledge that, in this instant, you have the power to end its life or grant it mercy. In this moment, I am a god.

But it is not only at these outward forms that we must look to find the evidence of a nation's hurt. We must look as well at the heart of guilt that beats in each of us, for there the cause lies. We must look, and with our own eyes see, the central core of defeat and shame and failure which we have wrought in the lives of even the least of these, our brothers. And why must we look? Because we must probe to the bottom of our collective wound. As men, as Americans, we can no longer cringe away and lie. Are we not all warmed by the same sun, frozen by the same cold, shone on by the same lights of time and terror here in America? Yes, and if we do not look and see it, we shall all be damned together.

Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possbly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

She'd been trained to survive many things: starvation and bullet wounds. Winter nights and scouring sun. Double-tied knots and interrogations at knifepoint. But this? A boy's lips on hers. Moving and melding. Soft and strength, velvet and iron. Opposite elements that tugged and tor Yael from the inside. Feelings bloomed, hot and warm. Deep and dark.

If you're looking at a single withered tree, it can seem like a grievous wound to the forest. But from the forest's perspective, that tree's remains will nourish other plants, acting for the good of the whole forest. If you change your perspective, a situation right in front of you can reverse itself.

A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage. A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons Shudders hell thro' all its regions. A dog starv'd at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state. A horse misused upon the road Calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain does tear. A skylark wounded in the wing, A cherubim does cease to sing. The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight Does the rising sun affright. Every wolf's and lion's howl Raises from hell a human soul.

Time doesn't heal the wounds; it masks them. It takes them and makes them something else. Some scars always remain. Some wounds always remain open and exposed.

A wounded lion is still fiercer than a strong wolf.

You may kiss your—” Wolf wrapped his arms around Scarlet’s waist, lifting her off the floor, and kissed her before Kai could finish. Or maybe she kissed him. It seemed mutual, as her hands wound through his disheveled hair. The room exploded with cheers, everyone launching to their feet to congratulate the still-kissing couple. Scarlet had lost one of her red shoes. “I’ll get the champagne,” said Thorne, heading toward the kitchen. “Those two are going to be thirsty when they finally come up for air.” *

Milla was always aware, on the dimmest edge of her consciousness that Diaz constantly watched her. She also knew that he was a man who never gave up, who never lost sight of his goal. Exactly what his goal was wasn’t always clear to her, but she had no doubt he was perfectly clear in his own mind what he wanted. He wanted her. She knew it, and yet she couldn’t imagine how they could ever be together again. The rift between them, to her, was final and absolute. He’d betrayed her in the most wounding way possible, and forgiveness evidently wasn’t her strong suit. She had found that grudges weren’t heavy at all; she could carry them for a very long time. Diaz wasn’t taking care of her out of the goodness of his heart. He was taking care of her the way a wolf cared for its wounded mate.

The soul maintains it's deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds

There are bitches with guns. Some of them may or may not look like me. Cover your balls and hide. And text me back. They. Are. Crazy. Also, new disclaimer includes bullet wounds and human-wolf rabies. Peace out.

A real wolf would finish a wounded animal.

The older wounds had long ago taken hold of her body, leaving behind a map of her biggest victories.

Given that, it turned out to be unnervingly easy to keep my friends and family at psychological bay: “To be sure,” wrote Hugo Wolf, “I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

Wolf…” “How long? How long ago…?” She scrunched her shoulders against her neck. “Five days.” He grimaced and turned away, his face contorting with pain that had nothing to do with his wounds. Cinder

I don’t think any of us can tell our most vulnerable stories in the moments they occur for fear that they may undo us. We have to wait until we are in a season of safety before we can open up our deepest wounds.

bandaged. The wound is mortal and yet you do not die. That is its own impossible agony. But grief is not simple sadness. Sadness is a feeling that wants nothing more than to be sat with, held, and heard. Grief is a journey. It must be moved through. With a rucksack full of rocks, you hike through a black, pathless forest, brambles about your legs and wolf packs at your heels. The grief that never moves is called complicated grief. It doesn’t subside, you do not accept it, and it never—it never—goes to sleep. This is possessive grief. This is delusional grief. This is hysterical grief. Run if you will, this grief is faster. This is the grief that will chase you and beat you. This is the grief that will eat you.

Paths of the mirror" I And above all else, to look with innocence. As if nothing was happening, which is true. II But you, I want to look at you until your face escapes from my fear like a bird from the sharp edge of the night. III Like a girl made of pink chalk on a very old wall that is suddenly washed away by the rain. IV Like when a flower blooms and reveals the heart that isn’t there. V Every gesture of my body and my voice to make myself into the offering, the bouquet that is abandoned by the wind on the porch. VI Cover the memory of your face with the mask of who you will be and scare the girl you once were. VII The night of us both scattered with the fog. It’s the season of cold foods. VIII And the thirst, my memory is of the thirst, me underneath, at the bottom, in the hole, I drank, I remember. IX To fall like a wounded animal in a place that was meant to be for revelations. X As if it meant nothing. No thing. Mouth zipped. Eyelids sewn. I forgot. Inside, the wind. Everything closed and the wind inside. XI Under the black sun of the silence the words burned slowly. XII But the silence is true. That’s why I write. I’m alone and I write. No, I’m not alone. There’s somebody here shivering. XIII Even if I say sun and moon and star I’m talking about things that happen to me. And what did I wish for? I wished for a perfect silence. That’s why I speak. XIV The night is shaped like a wolf’s scream. XV Delight of losing one-self in the presaged image. I rose from my corpse, I went looking for who I am. Migrant of myself, I’ve gone towards the one who sleeps in a country of wind. XVI My endless falling into my endless falling where nobody waited for me –because when I saw who was waiting for me I saw no one but myself. XVII Something was falling in the silence. My last word was “I” but I was talking about the luminiscent dawn. XVIII Yellow flowers constellate a circle of blue earth. The water trembles full of wind. XIX The blinding of day, yellow birds in the morning. A hand untangles the darkness, a hand drags the hair of a drowned woman that never stops going through the mirror. To return to the memory of the body, I have to return to my mourning bones, I have to understand what my voice is saying.

The color of defeat chokes her pupils, even though her nod and smile and uncomfortable sitting motion on the couch indicate that she is not finished yet. She will carry on, like all of us. Smile stubborn. Smile with instinct, then lick your wounds in the darkest of corners. Trace the scars back to your own fingers and remember them.

We are wolves of the guard, soldiers of the light. Hunted and haunted,bye the beasts of night. Friend to all and foe to none, Love and loyalty bind us as one. Time and tide shall heal all wounds Memories and madness shall not consume. To death and despair we shall never surrender, The pact never to be forsaken, or torn asunder.

...they marveled at the animal's elusiveness, loyalty, and affection, its willingness to defend its territory; its stamina and ability to travel long distances and resist hunger for many days; its acute use of odor, sight, and sound in locating prey and avoiding danger; its patience, following a sick or wounded prey for great distances; and its contentment to be away from its home for long periods of time. Working cooperatively with fellow pack mates, the wolf demonstrated time and again it power over prey by encircling it, ambushing it, or running it to exhaustion --the same methods that Native Americans themselves used. In all these manifestations, they found the wolf supremely worthy of emulation.

Eugene watched the sun wane and redden on a rocky river, and on the painted rocks of Tennessee gorges: the enchanted river wound into his child's mind forever.

A wounded lion is still fiercer than a healthy wolf.

But he was wounded, and tired, and winter was still upon him.

He is straight ahead, straight out, straight and hard, and ready to fight. "Hope you're better than your brother," someone calls. It hurts me. Wounds me. "I am." But not as much as that.

Wolf made a strangled sound, pulling everyone’s attention toward him as he lifted a handgun from the crate. “It’s just like the one Scarlet had.” He flipped the gun in his palms, running his thumbs along the barrel. “She shot me in the arm once.” This confession was said with as much tenderness as if Scarlet had given him a bouquet of wildflowers rather than a bullet wound.

The whites told only one side. Told it to please themselves. Told much that is not true. Only his own best deeds, only the worst deeds of the Indians, has the white man told. —YELLOW WOLF OF THE NEZ PERCÉ

1 You said ‘The world is going back to Paganism’. Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes, And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes, Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem. Hestia’s fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands Tended it. By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. At the hour Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush Arose (it is the mark of freemen’s children) as they trooped, Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance. Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods, Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men, Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing. Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions; Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears … You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop. 2 Or did you mean another kind of heathenry? Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth, Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm. Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound; But the bond wil1 break, the Beast run free. The weary gods, Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand, Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them; For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last, And every man of decent blood is on the losing side. Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits Who walked back into burning houses to die with men, Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim. Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs; You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the event Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).

It is unwise, my child, to look too long behind you, else you will miss the future that lies before you. Though the wounds of the past are deep, let your heart find solace in the knowledge it has loved well.

In two of your poems you called that central Passage of womanhood a wound, Instead of a curtain guarding a silken Trail of sighs. How many men, Upon regarding such beauty, helplessly Touching it, recklessly needing To enter its warmth again and again, Have assumed it embodies their own ache Of absence, the personal Gash that has punished their lives. So endowed of anatomy, any woman Who has been loved Knows that her tenderest blush Of tissue is a luxe burden of have. Although it bleeds, this is only to cleanse, To prepare yet another nesting for love. It is not a wound, friend. It is a home for you. It is a way into the world.

I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too,before others quite reasonably, and it looks as tho I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

The whole dam breaks after that. The FBI drops the Federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. All of a sudden they don’t seem very interested in the case, despite the salt in J. Edgar Hoover’s wounds and the rest of it. Then back in San Francisco, and Kesey is standing in front of the judge in a faded sport shirt, work pants and boots. The judge has a terrific speech ready, saying this case has been blown up out of proportions in the press and it is only a common dope case as far as he is concerned, and Kesey is no dragon, just an ordinary jackass … and Kesey is starting to say something and Hallinan and Rohan are crouched for the garrote, but again it’s over and Kesey is out on bail in San Francisco, too. It’s unbelievable. He’s out after only five days.

be sure,” wrote Hugo Wolf, “I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

To be sure,” wrote Hugo Wolf, “I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

I'll speak any goddamn way I like. This is my bloody place, and because of you, it's got fucking gunshot holes in the walls and dead bodies all over. Not to mention, a rabid rabbit bit my leg. A wolf, that's respectable. A caribou gore, a fine battle wound, but getting chewed on by a bloody bunny, I won't have it. I want you out!

We are wolves of the guard, soldiers of the light. Hunted and haunted,by the beasts of night. Friend to all and foe to none, Love and loyalty bind us as one. Time and tide shall heal all wounds Memories and madness shall not consume. To death and despair we shall never surrender, The pact never to be forsaken, or torn asunder.

But these cries proceeded not so much from a conviction of wounded justice and deceived innocence as from their opposites. It was the sublime, ironic, and irrevocable justice of what had happened to them, and their knowledge that they alone had been responsible for it, that maddened them. From this arose their sense of outrage and their cries of vengeance.

Kesey presents his theory of going “beyond acid.” You find what you came to find when you’re on acid and we’ve got to start doing it without acid; there’s no use opening the door and going through it and then always going back out again. We’ve got to move on to the next step … This notion has Owsley slightly freaked, naturally. He has his voice wound all the way up: “Bullshit, Kesey! It’s the drugs that do it. It’s all the drugs, man. None of it would have happened without the drugs”—and so forth. Kesey keeps cocking his head to one side and giggling in the upcountry manner and saying: “No, it’s not the drugs. In fact”—chuckle, giggle—“I’m going to tell everyone to start doing it without the drugs”—and so forth.

I have no idea how I managed to pass as normal in school, except that other people are generally caught up in their own lives and seldom notice despair in others if those despairing make an effort to disguise the pain. I made not just an effort, but an enormous effort not to be noticed. I knew something was dreadfully wrong, but I had no idea what, and I had been brought up to believe that you kept your problems to yourself. Given that, it turned out to be unnervingly easy to keep my friends and family at psychological bay: 'To be sure,' wrote Hugo Wolf, 'I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from at thousand wounds.

GOD I am ready for you to come back. Whether in a train full of dying criminals or on the gleaming saddle of a locust, you are needed again. The earth is a giant chessboard where the dark squares get all the rain. On this one the wet is driving people mad—the bankers all baying in the woods while their markets fail, a florist chewing up flowers to spit mouthfuls here and there as his daughter’s lungs seize shut from the pollen. There is a flat logic to neglect. Sweet nothings sour in the air while the ocean hoots itself to sleep. I live on the skull of a giant burning brain, the earth’s core. Sometimes I can feel it pulsing through the dirt, though even this you ignore. The mind wants what it wants: daily newspapers, snapping turtles, a pound of flesh. The work I’ve been doing is a kind of erasing. I dump my ashtray into a bucket of paint and coat myself in the gray slick, rolling around on the carpets of rich strangers while they applaud and sip their scotch. A body can cause almost anything to happen. Remember when you breathed through my mouth, your breath becoming mine? Remember when you sang for me and I fell to the floor, turning into a thousand mice? Whatever it was we were practicing cannot happen without you. I thought I saw you last year, bark wrapped around your thighs, lurching toward the shore at dawn. It was only mist and dumb want. They say even longing has its limits: in a bucket, an eel will simply stop swimming long before it starves. Wounded wolves will pad away from their pack to die lonely and cold. Do you not know how scary it can get here? The talons that dropped me left long scars around my neck that still burn in the wind. I was promised epiphany, earth- honey, and a flood of milk, but I will settle for anything that brings you now, you still-hungry mongrel, you glut of bone, you, scentless as gold.

Stories of regimental ladies long dead and forgotten (“I told her: ‘Dear child, I decide what tact is’ ”); stories of children long ago in possession of their own children (“And then the sweet little angel said to me”); stories of relatives long alienated; tales of promotion and dismissals; of orders and decorations; of wounds; of marriage tangles and divorces—the rag, tag, and bobtail of a life spent entirely in gossip and tittle-tattle about intimate, the most intimate, things.

Little brother, do not treat me as if I am already dead, or dying. If you see me that way, then I would rather truly be dead. You steal the now of my life away, when you constantly fear that tomorrow will bring my death. Your fears clutch cold at me and snatch all my pleasure in the day's warmth from me. As he had not in a long time, the wolf suddenly dropped all the barriers between us. I suddenly perceived what I had been hiding from myself. The recent reticence between us was not entirely Nighteyes' doing. Half of it was mine, my retreat from him for fear that his death would be unbearably painful for me. I was the one who had set him at a distance; I was the one who had been hoarding my thoughts from him. Yet enough of my feelings had reached past that wall that he was wounded by them. I had been on the verge of abandoning him. My slow pulling away from him had been my resignation to his mortality. Truly, since the day I had pulled him back from death, I had not seen him as fully alive." p. 246 Fitz and Nighteyes

2 · Three O’Clock For pity, more than any other feeling, is a “learned” emotion; a child will have it least of all. Pity comes from the infinite accumulations of man’s memory, from the anguish, pain, and suffering of life, from the full deposit of experience, from the forgotten faces, the lost men, and from the million strange and haunting visages of time. Pity comes upon the nick of time and stabs us like a knife. Its face is thin and dark and burning, and it has come before we know it, gone before we can grasp or capture it; it leaves a shrewd, deep wound, but a bitter, subtle one, and it always comes most keenly from a little thing. 2 . Три часа стр. 81 Защото състраданието повече от всяко друго чувство „се учи“ и затова у детето го има най-малко. Състраданието идва от безкрайното напластяване на спомените, от терзанието и болката, от мъченичеството в живота, от целия натрупан опит, от забравените лица, загубените хора, от милионите непознати и натрапчиви образи на времето. Състраданието идва в миг и пронизва като нож. Лицето му е слабо, мрачно и трескаво, то се появява, преди да сме разбрали, и си отива, преди да сме успели да го уловим и задържим, то оставя дълбоки, мъчителни и коварни рани и винаги се усеща най-остро в дребните неща.

The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna" Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O’er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, The sods with our bayonets turning; By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light And the lantern dimly burning. No useless coffin enclosed his breast, Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him, But he lay like a warrior taking his rest With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, And we bitterly thought of the morrow. We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er his head, And we far away on the billow! Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him, But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him. But half of our heavy task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, But left him alone with his glory.

That settled something else, too, the troublesome … souped-up thing the Pranksters were always into, this 400-horsepower takeoff game, this American flag-flying game, this Day-Glo game, this yea-saying game, this dread neon game, this … superhero game, all wired-up and wound up and amplified in the electropastel chrome game gleam. It wasn’t the Buddha, not for a moment. Life is shit, said the Buddha, a duress of bad karmas, and satori is passive, just lying back and grooving and grokking on the Overmind and leave Teddy Roosevelt out of it. Grace is in a far country, India by name … Oh, the art of living in India, brothers … And so what if there is no plumbing and the streets are dirty, they have mastered the art of living …

But Eugene was untroubled by thought of a goal. He was mad with such ecstasy as he had never known. He was a centaur, moon-eyed and wild of name, torn apart with hunger for the golden world. He became at times almost incapable of coherent speech. While talking with people, he would whinny suddenly into their startled faces, and leap away, his face contorted with an idiot joy. He would hurl himself squealing through the streets and along the paths, touched with the ecstasy of a thousand unspoken desires. The world lay before him for his picking—full of opulent cities, golden vintages, glorious triumphs, lovely women, full of a thousand unmet and magnificent possibilities. Nothing was dull or tarnished. The strange enchanted coasts were unvisited. He was young and he could never die. He went back to Pulpit Hill for two or three days of delightful loneliness in the deserted college. He prowled through the empty campus at midnight under the great moons of the late rich Spring; he breathed the thousand rich odours of tree and grass and flower, of the opulent and seductive South; and he felt a delicious sadness when he thought of his departure, and saw there in the moon the thousand phantom shapes of the boys he had known who would come no more. He still loitered, although his baggage had been packed for days. With a desperate pain, he faced departure from that Arcadian wilderness where he had known so much joy. At night he roamed the deserted campus, talking quietly until morning with a handful of students who lingered strangely, as he did, among the ghostly buildings, among the phantoms of lost boys. He could not face a final departure. He said he would return early in autumn for a few days, and at least once a year thereafter. Then one hot morning, on sudden impulse, he left. As the car that was taking him to Exeter roared down the winding street, under the hot green leafiness of June, he heard, as from the sea-depth of a dream, far-faint, the mellow booming of the campus bell. And suddenly it seemed to him that all the beaten walks were thudding with the footfalls of lost boys, himself among them, running for their class. Then, as he listened, the far bell died away, and the phantom runners thudded into oblivion. The car roared up across the lip of the hill, and drove steeply down into the hot parched countryside below. As the lost world faded from his sight, Eugene gave a great cry of pain and sadness, for he knew that the elfin door had closed behind him, and that he would never come back again. He saw the vast rich body of the hills, lush with billowing greenery, ripe-bosomed, dappled by far-floating cloudshadows. But it was, he knew, the end. Far-forested, the horn-note wound. He was wild with the hunger for release: the vast champaign of earth stretched out for him its limitless seduction. It was the end, the end. It was the beginning of the voyage, the quest of new lands. Gant was dead. Gant was living, death-in-life. In

They both loved her, of course. They’d probably still love her even if they knew she’d seduced him. Yes, because he was so much the wounded party in this case. Taken advantage of by a skilled and dangerous seductress whom he was obviously no match for. Pull yourself together, Ryeton. You sound like a frigging little girl! Maxwell arrived right on time, and cheerfully announced by Westford. Grey’s entire face-from his scar to the forced smile he wore-began to ache at the sight of the younger man. Maxwell had to be nine and twenty at best. He was tall and dapper, and just charming enough so as not to seem threatening. It was a part Grey played very well at the same age, only he’d been a wolf masquerading as a harmless spaniel. He wasn’t so sure the same couldn’t be said for Maxwell. He had no choice but to shake the man’s hand and make small talk before watching him take Rose’s arm and lead her away, both of them smiling like idiots.

It is Spring, darling, and the five feathers a-tickle in my wits, those five furry antennae the spun self spins out of the rayed weathers, twitch and receive new airs. A slight uncanny ripple stirs the skin. I learn how far into the threaded wood the young wolf reaches, his senses trembling, turning hair by hair the prescience wound in creatures. It is Spring, and never again perfectly, but always again as if the language born of things spoke itself whole, I take days as if spoken, light as it brings great green scripts into view. And since my most green-spoken and green-written tongue is you, I speak and read my senses, season-tossed, to their first rushing Logos ringing through the morning of the world begun, the first arriving airs through which the young wolves run along the quick, cocked to their dowsing ears and radar noses. Darling, I am slow and human and the wood outruns my blood. I fill with tongues I do not wholly know with instant sense never understood, tracking my five wits to their deepest den, where you wait in the first of time again.

Oh, I was but a wounded Beast Oh, I was but a wounded Beast Teeth gnashing from a brutal feast Wolfing down with others; consuming every bite Eating every poison laid before my sight I dined upon Iniquity’s endless shelf Blindly feeding, greedily…on myself Oh, I was but a wounded Beast Expiring with every taste of yeast Belly puffed and sour with death A haunting shutter with every breath Full of nothing but vanity Dipped in pleasure and tragedy Oh, I was but a wounded Beast As the West is far from the East I charted the lust of mine own eyes Thus, in my folly…I was sure to die My soul knew nothing of sacrifice Instead I danced with every vice Oh, I was but a wounded Beast You found me broken and utterly fleeced Naked, abandoned and truly alone You nurtured the wounds to which you sewn You gave me bread, You sang me a song And touched my wounds with a loving balm Oh, I was but a wounded Beast Yet, You taught me wisdom’s leash So I walk with you…dawn through night Quenched by your fount of love and light No darkness, no hate not a selfish bone Can feed this fiend that You’ve atoned Oh, I was, but a wounded Beast! ~Jason Neville Versey

As with other childlike traits, human adults remain playful and trusting in a way that looks a lot more like Labradors than adult wolves or chimpanzees. When a grown wolf or a chimp bares its teeth, you’d better run. Humans, even adult humans, are by and large more into chasing balls than establishing dominance. The readiness with which we play with our friends and acquaintances and even strangers is remarkable, even though verbal banter or wordplay tends to gradually displace physical wrestling. When I joke with the hot dog vendor about his pathetic loyalty to the Mets, as evinced by the baseball cap he is wearing, we become very much like two dogs wrestling in a park: My verbal jabs are play-serious, not meant to genuinely wound, and the successful banter establishes an ephemeral but important trust connection in the midst of a busy metropolis. Insult a chimpanzee’s favorite baseball team, on the other hand, and you’re likely to lose an arm. The fact that humans retain into adulthood the complex and sophisticated cognitive machinery required to play, and in fact continue to enjoy playing with others, is a reflection of the profound importance of trust in human affairs.

Riley?" Of course she'd known he was there - she was a sentinel. And in some part of his soul, he's counted on that. "Don't ask me any questions tonight, Mercy." He didn't look at her, feeling vulnerable in a way that panicked his wolf. "All right." Soft footsteps. "But would you like to come inside?" Wary of her agreement, but needing... something, he walked in. She took his hand, her golden eyes luminous in the dark. "Come on, wolf." He let her lead him to the bedroom. "Boots off," she said, and crawled beneath the blanket. Sitting on a chair near the vanity, he took off his footwear and just watched her, not sure he could do this. She'd given him her word so she'd ask no questions, but she'd know, she'd see too deep, to things he kept hidden because they shamed him so utterly. "No questions," she said again after an endless moment, and lifted up the edge of the blanket. Man and wolf both hungered for the simple beauty of her touch. He had no power, no will, to resist. Standing, he crossed the carpet to slide into bed beside her, fully dressed. And when her arms came around him, when her fingers stroked into his hair, he buried his face in the curve of her neck and let the unexpected tenderness heal the wounds of the night.

I knew both from personal experience and by the example of many of my comrades that fighting in a war has an irreparably destructive effect on almost any man. I knew also that the constant proximity of death, the sight of the killed, wounded, dying, hanged and shot, the great red flame in the icy air above blazing villages on a winter’s night, the carcass of a man’s horse and those auditory impressions - the alarm bell, shell explosions, the whistle of bullets, the desperate, unknown cries – none of this ever passes with impunity. I knew that the silent, almost unconscious memory of war haunts the majority of people who have gone through it, leaving something broken in them once and for all. I knew myself that the normal, human ideas regarding the value of life and the necessity for a basic moral code – not to kill, not to steal, not to rape, to show compassion – had been slowly reasserted within me after the war, but they had lost their former persuasiveness and had become merely a system of theoretical morality, with whose correctness and necessity I couldn’t, in principle, disagree. Those feelings that ought to have been inside me and that were a condition of the re-establishment of this code had been razed by war; they no longer existed, and there was nothing to take their place.

He squatted over the wolf and touched her fur. He touched the cold and perfect teeth. The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains, running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun’s coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her. Deer and hare and dove and groundvole all richly empaneled on the air for her delight, all nations of the possible world ordained by God of which she was one among and not separate from. Where she ran the cries of the coyotes clapped shut as if a door had closed upon them and all was fear and marvel. He took up her stiff head out of the leaves and held it or he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of a great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh. What blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. What we may well believe has power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it. II

The Robot With Human Hair Pt2" Said it's the coming of man And I forget when you went away Like a kick to the face Not winning the race (Lion, I've seen you from afar) I've seen her in the car Knowing that you deserve such more Deserved to know you're free Leave, I'm the director Agree to the role of the pilot inspector Breathe, pilot inspector Feed off the role of the radar detector Leave, I'm the director Agree to the role of the pilot inspector Breathe, pilot inspector Feed off the role of the radar detector Well, then, you said you could do this on your own I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you (And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go) You... Well, now it's up to god to save you Save you from all of those bruised, bruised and battered wounds (Wave right with a gun in his hand wave right) Can you taste this blood Dripping sweeter than...? And over your eyes And I, and I fall to both knees Not to beg for your forgiveness But to hate the word And you speak Take a right off these cliffs The ground is staring at your wounded weapons Wounded weapons (And I can't believe that you're right) You can bank the night on this its round And glaring at your well I get hyphy Tell 'em I get hyphy And this is where it ends Well, then, you said you could do this on your own I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you (And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go) You... Well, now it's up to god to save you Save you, save you Save you, save you I can't believe these long words Come from many national absurd This is a line cut across Hope, defeat, the line, the loss I can never be this lone wolf You can never see me across this earth This will be a light that I run from You thought you were so strong You pleaded to never be wrong (Brace yourself, fasten belts) Well, now that you go (Close the hatch, flip the latch) I sit here and wonder (They're not dead, speed ahead) Times have changed It's like we've been trashing silos (Well, now that you go) In the time bomb aisle (I sit here and wonder) Maybe they'll dodge the spill Oil kills, sure it will And I can't breathe the air (Hide your daughter 'cause I'm coming over) To reach for this light (You know I'm not lying about) (Trashing silos in the time bomb aisle) And you can't breathe the air (About trashing silos in the time bomb aisle) Not leaving her to reach The line, the work, the rope, the love And I have seen such worse for you It's a no, I'm not coming back It's a no, I'm not coming back It's a no, I'm not coming back And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone

Can't sleep so you put on his grey boots -- nothing else -- & step inside the rain. Even though he's gone, you think, I still want to be clean. If only the rain were gasoline, your tongue a lit match, & you can change without disappearing. If only he dies the second his name becomes a tooth in your mouth. But he doesn't. He dies when they wheel him away & the priest ushers you out the room, your palms two puddles of rain. He dies as your heart beats faster, as another war coppers the sky. He dies each night you close your eyes & hear his slow exhale. Your fist choking the dark. Your fist through the bathroom mirror. He dies at the party where everyone laughs & all you want is to go into the kitchen & make seven omelets before burning down the house. All you want is to run into the woods & beg the wolf to fuck you up. He dies when you wake & it's November forever. A Hendrix record melted on a rusted needle. He dies the morning he kisses you for two minutes too long, when he says Wait followed by I have something to say & you quickly grab your favorite pink pillow & smother him as he cries into the soft & darkening fabric. You hold still until he's very quiet, until the walls dissolve & you're both standing in the crowded train again. Look how it rocks you back & forth like a slow dance seen from the distance of years. You're still a freshman. You're still but he smiles anyway. His teeth reflected in the window reflecting your lips as you mouth Hello -- your tongue a lit match.

- Yeah, this is it. This is war... it takes you away from your loved ones, takes you to places you had no idea about, takes you through suffering and deprivation, hunger, thirst, sickness and wounds. It forces you to see, do and live through terrible experiences that you wish you had never known, and once you have, to forget them as soon as possible. It takes your friends and comrades and, if it doesn't kill them, then it turns them into something they don't even know what they are. And in the end, if you get to live those moments, when peace is announced and you begin to believe that you will return home, to your life, to the family and community you left behind, to the state of normality you dreamed of when it was harder on the front, you will find that it is not like that at all. - Why, Sarge? College Boy asked... - Because, you see, College Boy, after the end of the war not only you changed, but also those back home. They too had their struggles, their deprivations, sufferings, illnesses, injuries. Whether you got hot food today depends only on the conditions at the front and how much the quartermaster and subsistence services cared. But, back home, they have to search, they have to struggle without being guaranteed that they will succeed in finding something to put on the table for their children, or their elders. And so, they can go for days on end, starving. You, if you are sick or wounded, the military hospital will treat you as best they can. But they, at home, a visit to the family doctor is an expense that most can't afford and so they end up in the hospital, which is overcrowded, when it's too late, often. So they are changed too, not just you. You, however, have something more than them. You, you've known the chaos of frontline combat, the cruelty of taking the lives of others like yourself. And, like the sheepdog who fights the wolf, when it returns to the fold it carries both it's own blood and the wolf's. And the sheep, they don't see the wolf anymore, but they don't see the dog that was guarding them either. They only see the fangs showing through the open, blood-stained snout. They smell the scent of the wolf that has been impregnated into the dog's fur in battle and then, at that very moment, they no longer recognize the one who stood by them, no matter what the weather. It's the same with you. They fear you, and no matter how much they smile at you or say words that make you think you are welcome, you actually see fear and distrust in their eyes.

Some wounds are so great that the only way to survive is to lock them up in a little box and put them somewhere deep inside,

Love makes a man more loyal than fear. If you were mortally wounded and lying on the ground with enemies surrounding you and all was lost, how many of your men would risk their lives to die by your side? If they only gain respect out of fear, then why should they care if you die? But if they respect you out of love, then that wolf will lay down his life for you. If you don’t love something, then it can be easily replaced, like your car.

So to walk even as he walked." 1 John 2:6 Why should Christians imitate Christ? They should do it for their own sakes. If they desire to be in a healthy state of soul--if they would escape the sickness of sin, and enjoy the vigour of growing grace, let Jesus be their model. For their own happiness' sake, if they would drink wine on the lees, well refined; if they would enjoy holy and happy communion with Jesus; if they would be lifted up above the cares and troubles of this world, let them walk even as he walked. There is nothing which can so assist you to walk towards heaven with good speed, as wearing the image of Jesus on your heart to rule all its motions. It is when, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you are enabled to walk with Jesus in his very footsteps, that you are most happy, and most known to be the sons of God. Peter afar off is both unsafe and uneasy. Next, for religion's sake, strive to be like Jesus. Ah! poor religion, thou hast been sorely shot at by cruel foes, but thou hast not been wounded one-half so dangerously by thy foes as by thy friends. Who made those wounds in the fair hand of Godliness? The professor who used the dagger of hypocrisy. The man who with pretences, enters the fold, being nought but a wolf in sheep's clothing, worries the flock more than the lion outside. There is no weapon half so deadly as a Judas-kiss. Inconsistent professors injure the gospel more than the sneering critic or the infidel. But, especially for Christ's own sake, imitate his example. Christian, lovest thou thy Saviour? Is his name precious to thee? Is his cause dear to thee? Wouldst thou see the kingdoms of the world become his? Is it thy desire that he should be glorified? Art thou longing that souls should be won to him? If so,

Rava approached Steldor and removed a dagger from a sheath at her hip. With her left hand, she smoothed the collar of his white shirt, then yanked the fabric away from his chest, slicing through it in a single motion. Spying the silver wolf’s head talisman that he always wore, she seized it, ripping it free of his neck. “Whether for good luck or good fortune, you’ll have no need of this,” she sneered, dropping the pendant into a pouch that hung from her belt. “I’m sorry it’s not strong enough to cover your stench,” he icily replied, for the mixture inside the talisman was the source of his rich, masculine scent. Rava stared at Steldor, then stalked around him to tear the remnants of his shirt from his back, trying without success to strip him of his pride. She perused his muscular torso, and when she faced him once more, her eyes came to rest on the scar beneath his rib cage--the one that marked the life-threatening wound given to him by a Cokyrian blade--and placed the tip of the dagger she still held against it. “Only slightly marred.” She traced the knife’s point along the jagged white line, leaving a trail of red. “I’ll see what I can do to change that.” She tucked the weapon back into its sheath and gave a nod to the soldiers who had brought Steldor out of the Bastion. As they tied his wrists with rope, she went to the woman who had brought the box and lifted its lid. With a satisfied chuckle, she removed a whip more fearsome than any I had ever seen, cradling it like a mother would an infant, and the gathered throng fell silent. It was indeed rawhide, but uncoiled it reached four feet in length before meeting a silver ring, on the other end of which another two feet of metal-studded leather waited to strike. I looked to Narian and Cannan, and knew by both of their expressions that this was not what they had expected. Indeed, Rava purposefully made eye contact with Narian, her demeanor haughty, before returning her attention to her prey. “On your knees,” Rava growled, dangling the whip in front of Steldor. He obeyed, his eyes never leaving her face, continuing to radiate strength and insolence. “How can a flag be of consequence in a dead kingdom?” she taunted. “It is cloth. It is meaningless. And it can be burned.” She ticked a finger for one of the many soldiers around us to come forward, and I recognized Saadi. He extended our rolled Hytanican flag, and Rava took it, letting it unfurl until the end touched the ground. She held out her other hand and Saadi passed her a lit torch, which she touched to the banner of my homeland, letting flames consume it. The courtyard’s white stone walkway would now and forever be scorched. Steldor’s upper lip lifted away from his teeth, but aside from this snarl, he showed no reaction. “Tell me, does it seem worth it to you to suffer this punishment for a rag?” “Without question,” Steldor forcefully answered, and cheers rolled like thunder through the Hytanicans who had gathered to watch, sending chills down my spine.

But here’s what you’ve got to understand. When you look at black people, you see ghosts of all the slavery and the rapes and the hangings and the chains. When you look at Jews, you see ghosts of all those bodies piled up in the death camps. And those ghosts keep you trying to do the right thing. “But when you look at us you don’t see the ghosts of the little babies with their heads smashed in by rifle butts at the Big Hole, or the old folks dying by the side of the trail on the way to Oklahoma while their families cried and tried to make them comfortable, or the dead mothers at Wounded Knee or the little kids at Sand Creek who were shot for target practice. You don’t see any ghosts at all. “Instead you see casinos and drunks and junk cars and shacks. “Well, we see those ghosts. And they make our hearts sad and they hurt our little children. And when we try to say something, you tell us, ‘Get over it. This is America. Look at the American dream.’ But as long as you’re calling us Redskins and doing tomahawk chops, we can’t look at the American dream, because those things remind us that we’re not real human beings to you. And when people aren’t humans, you can turn them into slaves or kill six million of them or shoot them down with Hotchkiss guns and throw them into mass graves at Wounded Knee. “No, we’re not looking at the American dream, Nerburn. And why should we? We still haven’t woken up from the American nightmare.

Grover seemed to read my mind. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t know if your grandparents came on boats or if they were a bunch of farmers. But you’ve got to understand something about the old man. His folks weren’t more than a few years from Wounded Knee. The government still shot people. It stole the kids, performed experiments on them, sterilized the little girls. If you made too much noise you just disappeared. That’s just the way it was. You didn’t make trouble.” “Sounds like the Nazis,” I said. Grover just shrugged. “I’m just trying to make you understand. This is a big thing he’s doing. I’m telling you again, he’s counting on you because you’re the only white man he trusts.

It is Spring, darling, and the five feathers a-tickle in my wits, those five furry antennae the spun self spins out of the rayed weathers, twitch and receive new airs. A slight uncanny ripple stirs the skin. I learn how far into the threaded wood the young wolf reaches, his senses trembling, turning hair by hair the prescience wound in creatures. It is Spring, and never again perfectly, but always again as if the language born of things spoke itseld whole, I take days as if spoken, light as it brings great green scripts into view. And since my most green-spoken and green-written tongue is you, I speak and read my senses, season-tossed, to their first rushing Logos ringing through the morning of the world begun, the first arriving airs through which the young wolves run along the quick, cocked to their dowsing ears and radar noses. Darling, I am slow and human and the wood outruns my blood. I fill with tongues I do not wholly know with instant sense never understood, tracking my five wits to their deepest den, where you wait in the first of time again.

Sometimes you ran so fast, you wound up tripping over your own feet and landing on your face. That was me in a nutshell.

It isn't fair, you know that, but then the world isn't fair. Life isn't fair. You know that, too. Fair doesn't come into it. Does the wolf slaying the lamb worry about fairness? About wounded innocence? No, it cares only about it's hunger. There is no fair or unfair for the wolf. The wolf takes what it needs, and it's need is the only justification necessary. Right, wrong; fair, unfair; they play no part in its world. And they play no part in yours either. There is only strong or weak, winner or loser, the cry of its not fair is just a tool the weak use to constrain the strong.

But then she looked into the single brown eye of the gaunt, half-naked woman facing her, and a wolf looked back at her—a wounded pack leader, starved and weakened, who had been goaded and harried by the hounds on its back trail but would be harried no more. A wolf who would die where it stood rather than be driven further.

the wounds we made are too deep to heal and the words spoken too loud to be forgotten in this lifetime

Vulnerability is beautiful and honest, they said. It's being strong, some said. I am, a walking open wound, my ego said. I am..., my soul said. I’ll keep you safe, the divine said.


That night he dreamed of the feast Ned Stark had thrown when King Robert came to Winterfell. The hall rang with music and laughter, though the cold winds were rising outside. At first it was all wine and roast meat, and Theon was making japes and eyeing the serving girls and having himself a fine time … until he noticed that the room was growing darker. The music did not seem so jolly then; he heard discords and strange silences, and notes that hung in the air bleeding. Suddenly the wine turned bitter in his mouth, and when he looked up from his cup he saw that he was dining with the dead. King Robert sat with his guts spilling out on the table from the great gash in his belly, and Lord Eddard was headless beside him. Corpses lined the benches below, grey-brown flesh sloughing off their bones as they raised their cups to toast, worms crawling in and out of the holes that were their eyes. He knew them, every one; Jory Cassel and Fat Tom, Porther and Cayn and Hullen the master of horse, and all the others who had ridden south to King’s Landing never to return. Mikken and Chayle sat together, one dripping blood and the other water. Benfred Tallhart and his Wild Hares filled most of a table. The miller’s wife was there as well, and Farlen, even the wildling Theon had killed in the wolfswood the day he had saved Bran’s life. But there were others with faces he had never known in life, faces he had seen only in stone. The slim, sad girl who wore a crown of pale blue roses and a white gown spattered with gore could only be Lyanna. Her brother Brandon stood beside her, and their father Lord Rickard just behind. Along the walls figures half-seen moved through the shadows, pale shades with long grim faces. The sight of them sent fear shivering through Theon sharp as a knife. And then the tall doors opened with a crash, and a freezing gale blew down the hall, and Robb came walking out of the night. Grey Wind stalked beside, eyes burning, and man and wolf alike bled from half a hundred savage wounds.

I went home wounded, hating my uncle for ejecting my brother from his house. I kept thinking about the looks Uncle Tim and TJ had on their faces. Initially, I wondered, Do they know something that we don’t? but then resolved that they too had labeled us project kids.

And that’s all it takes to break open. Just an embrace. Just thoughts turned to actions that might seem small, but they are keys to locked doors. He gives me the things he knows I need. Brass when I break glass. Stitches in a wound. The last remains of an enemy, a prized trophy. An apology, even though he might be incapable of feeling remorse. But he’s trying. And what is love if not that.

Which super power from the following attracts you the most? A Flying 20 B Reading minds 30 C Physical strength 10 D Healing wounds 50 E Invisibility 40

You have to leave, " Severus repeats, trying to push the wolf away and only meeting firm shoulder muscles littered with scars. Lupin has lost a cardigan. And a shirt. Severus does not remember removing them but he is currently holding the sleeve of a ripped shirt which he drops, dazedly, lowering his lips to brush against a large, puckered wound across his bicep. Terrible idea. Best fucking idea I have ever had. "Then tell me to," Lupin has a fist full of Severus' hair and yanks his face up. Lupin's pupils are blown wide, dark moons with a ring of amber. There is no regret there. And tomorrow he shall be gone. "I will." Severus pushes the half naked wolf away and brushes past him, grabbing his wrist at the last minute to pull him along to the bedroom. Lupin's thin torso is robed in wounds and marks like an ancient tree with names carved into the bark. Cartography of scars. I shall map every single fucking one. "Later.

The whites told only one side. Told it to please themselves. Told much that is not true. Only his own best deeds, only the worst deeds of the Indians, has the white man told. —YELLOW WOLF OF THE NEZ PERCÉ

Trey buried his face in the crook of her neck and swam in her exotic scent…and that was when he smelled the scent of the other male. Taryn gasped as Trey pulled back and she saw his eyes flash wolf. “Trey—” “I can smell him on you.” Trey trailed his finger over her neck. “He had his hand here.” His gaze landed on the tiny wound on her forehead and a long, chilling growl spilled from his throat. “He hurt you.” She framed his face with her hands, capturing his gaze. “No, I got that teensy little cut when I head-butted him and broke his nose. I’m fine.” “What the hell happened?” asked Dante as he hurried to their side with the enforcers on his heels. Ignoring them in favor of keeping her mate calm, she lightly dabbed a kiss on Trey’s lips, then one on each cheek and another on his lips. “I’m okay.” With each soft kiss, the tension ruling his body began to lessen, but only ever so slightly.

The bruises behind her eyes had been put there. Her skin was peach and perfect in every regard, but she’d been wounded by someone. She carried the kind of scars no one could see.

„No, maybe not. And yet I wished I could take all those sharp glasses out of your soul. And try to mend those wounds.“, he leans so gently against my hand, not bearing to break my gaze for a second, „If you were a painting, a pencil sketch, anything. I would know how to cope with the marks the artists before left on you. But you’re human. And all I can do is sit here with you and wish for softer waves in your journey.“ „Isn’t that enough?“ – „I hope it is. Because I won’t leave your side. Only if it is your wish for me to go, I will. But I won’t be able to forget you.

Because we harbor even a kernel of the infinite within us, we are painfully aware of our limitation, of the absence of divinity. We are temporary. This is our great existential wound. By slicing my flesh, I have merely scraped mine open to expose where she has always belonged.

Sometimes, Lucien’s presence doesn’t work. Going to him bandages the wound but doesn’t heal it. I think that’s the nature of love, really—no one can heal you but yourself. Your love for yourself is what is most important, above all others.

bachelor wolves are not hard to find. They howl on and on, a pride howl. They have taken meat. All the better for me. I will eat first and show them my hunting skill next time, when I am stronger. I am grateful. Under the rough bark that has grown over my wound, my muscles ache, and the hours of walking have made me weary. I will have to beg to eat with them. I will hate lowering my tail to these fools, but I

I should also inform you I am incapable of being swatted,” she drawled. The space between them crackled with challenge. Those brilliant eyes skipped over her face as if he searched for depths he was certain remained unsounded. The grimness left his mouth, and he smiled. She felt that small smile way down in her belly, an unanticipated curl of heat that blossomed outward and set her heart to racing. Five times since entering the woods, he smiled, Jules absurdly thought. “I’ll ensure I am gentle with you, Wildflower, so you do not break.” Her heart stuttered hard. “What do you mean?” “You’ll discover.” “You do not like explaining yourself to others, do you?” “I know it to be an existence unsuited to a man of my temperament.” She made a gesture with her hand. “What temperament is that?” The eyes looking down into hers were suddenly bored and a little cold. Jules couldn’t help feeling as if she prodded a wounded beast who had no notion it was indeed injured. She held his regard, knowing it was very important that she did not shy away from him or act scared in the face of his grim visage. How strange this dance between us is. “The stillness that I’ve lived with seems to have gone,” he murmured. “I liked that stillness.

My eyes were already closing but to my surprise, the wolf came around the bed and hopped up, taking the other side. “Hey now,” I protested, trying to sit up and failing. “You can’t… can’t do that. Fur on… the sheets. Victor will be… pissed.” But the wolf wasn’t budging. And at this point, neither was I. I barely had strength to roll over, let alone try to push him off the bed. With a sigh, I gave up. Let him stay—there was nothing I could do about it now. My eyes closed but I was cold. Marshalling my flagging strength, I tried for a minute to get under the covers but I couldn’t… they were tucked in too tightly. Whoever had taught Victor to make a bed must have been into hospital corners. With a little moan, I curled in on myself, trying to tuck my arms and legs into the white t-shirt I still wore and gather a little warmth. Cold… so cold. It was the story of my undead life. Ever since I had been turned, I could never seem to get warm enough, no matter what I did. To my sleepy surprise, the wolf seemed to understand my problem. He scooted closer to me, pushing his long furry back against my front until I found my face buried in his ruff. And oh, he was so warm. With a little sigh of contentment, I wound my arms around his furry neck and pressed closer, letting the delicious animal heat penetrate to my bones. His fur tickled my nose but I didn’t care. He smelled wild and yet, somehow familiar. Like fur and leather and sunlight in the woods. Speaking of sunlight, I could feel the sun rising to full glory overhead and I couldn’t stay awake any longer. Between my terrible weariness and the delicious feeling of finally being warm, I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore. I nestled closer to the wolf and let sleep claim me.

Thank you. But what you did last night… that helped me more than any vengeance could. How… how did you know that was what I needed?” “It’s a wolf thing.” His voice was low and rough. “It’s what you do when one of your pack suffers a loss or a wound that can’t be healed—you grieve with them.” He put a hand on my shoulder—light and non-threatening but comforting all the same. “I grieve with you, Taylor,” he rumbled softly, looking into my eyes. “Your pain is mine.” “Oh…” I whispered and suddenly I was in his arms. He held me carefully at first, as though he was afraid I might break into a million pieces. Then, slowly, he drew me closer. I pressed my face to his neck, breathing him in, warming myself against him as though he was my own personal sun—one that would never hurt or burn me. Victor stroked my back, his hands warm and gentle along my spine. I heard him inhale and knew he was breathing me in too, taking in my scent like it was something rare and precious. His chest was hard and comforting against my breasts and his arms were strong around me. I felt completely safe. Completely right.

He threw his head back and let his disbelief and fury break free. The sound was pain-filled and fearsome, the cry of a wounded beast. It reverberated through the trees, bouncing off the walls of the valley, the echoes doubling back into one agonized, unbroken roar.

The Connecticut River March 2, 1704 Temperature 10 degrees The Indians, it seemed, had paused here on their journey south from Canada to go hunting before the battle. Under the snow were stored the carcasses of twenty moose. Twenty! Eben had to count them himself before he could believe it, and even then, he could not believe it. Eben was no hunter. If he’d gotten one moose, it would have been pure luck. But for this war party to have killed twenty, dragged every huge carcass here so there would be feasting on the journey home--Eben was filled with respect as much as hunger. The Indians made several bonfires and built spits to cook entire haunches. They chopped the frozen moose meat, and Thorakwaneken and Tannhahorens sharpened dozens of thin sticks and shoved small cubes of moose meat onto these skewers. The women and children were each handed a stick to cook. The men were kept under watch, but at last their hands were freed and they too were allowed to eat. The prisoners were too hungry to wait for the meat to cook through and wolfed it down half raw. They ripped off strips for the littlest ones, who ate like baby birds: open mouths turned up, bolting one morsel, calling loudly for the next. When the captives had eaten until their stomachs ached, they dried stockings and moccasins and turned themselves in front of the flames, warming each side, while the Indians not on watch gathered around the largest bonfire, squatting to smoke their pipes and talk. The smell of their tobacco was rich and comforting. The wounded were put closest to the warmth, and hurt English found themselves sharing flames with hurt Mohawk and Abenaki and Huron. One of the Sheldon boys had frozen his toes. His Indian came over to look but shook his head. There was nothing to be done. Ebenezer Sheldon could limp to Canada or give up. “Guess I’ll limp,” said Ebenezer, grinning.

Elske screamed, too. But when Elske screamed, it was the war cry of the Volkaric that came out of her mouth, a howling like the voice of a wolf. The cry wound around the narrow streets as if they were in the wild and merciless northlands.

The rest of the world looks at me and sees a crazy harpy. You look at me and I get goosebumps on my heart .” She wound her arms around his neck and he picked her up until her feet dangled. “Don’t ever change Bryce McCabe. I want this wolf just as he is. Forever and ever.

Rain comes,” said Eveneye. “Yes,” said Whiteclaw. They fastened the sacs around their necks and began to make their way back home, through the forest. Again, a wolf howled in the distance, closer though. Twigs and branches snapped under the bears’ paws and the wind whipped through their fur. It became harder and harder to see where they were going as the moonlight became obscured by rainclouds. Fortunately, Eveneye and Whiteclaw could have walked the path home with their eyes closed. The two bears had encountered far worse than rain and darkness in these woods. When they were younger, they had been caught in the woods during a blizzard and were forced to take shelter as it passed. They had made a shelter from a couple of fallen trees and huddled underneath them for fifteen hours before the storm had finally gone. When they had emerged again, they recognized nothing of the forest and it had taken them almost two days to find their way home. There had also been a time when human hunters had ambushed the two bears on their trail home. Eveneye and Whiteclaw were fully grown bears and they had dispatched the humans rather quickly, but not before suffering wounds from the humans’ spears. They could spend a night telling tales of their forays into the forest and often did. The woods were dense and had a layer of underbrush, not found in all forests. The canopy was high and wide; it was a very old forest. It was said, in the lore of the bear, that the elder bears did not choose this forest to build their kingdom, but that the forest chose them to be its protectors. This was passed down as birthright to all bears. Respect the forest; protect the forest. It was mother to them all. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled and it began to rain. Whiteclaw grumbled and Eveneye chuckled. “What’s the matter? We were already wet from the stream.” “That was by choice,” replied Whiteclaw. Both bears laughed heartily as lightning flashed across the night sky. Eveneye stopped laughing and perked his ears. “Do you hear that?” “Hear what? The rain?

Is exactly what it is. What we does in bed, it’s wonderful and I loves it, but it’s a small part of what being Clan is. We are so much more than fuckin’. Ava, I’se spent damn near every day with Blaise for the past twenty years. Maybe more. Ye knows how many times we’ve had sex?” Ava was not sure if she wanted to know the answer, but her scarred mate kept speaking. “Not a one. Not even when we was boys, and everyone tries everything. We never touches each other, because I knows what’s with us is more important than our cocks and where we stick ‘em. I’se never fucked any of me Clanmates, yet they is everything in me life. I lives for them, I dies for them. And ye. One time I was whipped was when I told Daven I wished we hadn’t Clanned him. We don’t normally get the whip for words, but that was fuckin’ cruel of me, and I deserves what I got there. And he still came and stood there and watched, and when it was over he helped carry me home and bind up me wounds.” Vaguely, Ava remembered him telling her something about that before, but the gritty reality had not sunk in. “But this is different,” she begged. “I’m not Daven. This is about my shame, and I don’t want you to see it.” “But see it we will. And we will still love ye and we will still carry ye home and we will bind your wounds and carry ye to the privy and do whatever the fuck we need to for ye until you’re well again. And we’ll do our best to make sure ye don’t head down such a path again, but if ye does, we’ll turn ye round and bring ye back. And if ye heads down that path ten more times we goes after ye ten more times and we never leaves ye alone because that is Clan and that is who we are.