for 100,000 (dollars), you [can] flatten a house with a wrecking ball. Imagine how much less it [takes] to destroy something than it [does] to build it in the first place.

Men don't traipse. We... Swagger

As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.

There's an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There's no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn't work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn't want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship.

There are legions of us, I realized. The mothers who have broken babies, and spend the rest of our lives wondering if we should have spared them. And the mothers who have let their broken babies go, who look at our children and see instead the faces of the ones they never met.

It was nice not having to be the one in control, for a little while. It was nice to be the one who was protected, instead of the one who'd been protecting eveyone else.

Missed opportunities were never superficial wounds; they cut straight to the bone.