Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles, #2)

by Marissa Meyer

He was still dazed, and though she hated to admit it, he was actually rather attractive. If a girl happened to like that square-jaw, bright-blue-eyes, devilish-dimples kind of thing.

“So this ship of yours. It is the stolen one, right? From the American military?” “I don’t like to think of it as ‘stolen.’ They have no proof that I didn’t plan on giving it back.” “You’re kidding, right?”

“This way.” Five steps later he paused, pondered, turned around. “No, no, this way.” “We’re dead.” “No, I’ve got it now. It’s this way.” “Don’t you have an address?” “A captain always knows where his ship is. It’s like a psychic bond.” “If only we had a captain here.”

“I asked for information, not a lecture.

There was no sign of the so-called captain. Only the faint running lights along the floor were on, and the darkness and the silence and the knowledge of all the empty space around the ship, stretching out for eternity, gave Cinder the peculiar sensation that she was a phantom haunting a shipwreck.

“That poor girl’s going to be executed, and everyone’s just making jokes about her.” Wolf glanced back at the screen. “That’s the second time I’ve heard you defend her.” “Yeah, well, I try to think for myself once in a while, rather than buy in to the ridiculous propaganda the media would have us believe.” She frowned, realizing that she sounded exactly like her grandmother. She tempered her annoyance with a sigh. “People are just so quick to accuse and criticize, but they don’t know what she’s been through or what led her to do the things she did. Do we even know for sure that she did anything?”

“I just think we shouldn’t judge her, or anyone, without trying to understand them first. That maybe we should get the full story before jumping to conclusions. Crazy notion, I know.”

She was tired of everyone deciding her life for her. She was ready to figure out who she really was—not what anyone else told her to be.

He looked slightly ridiculous in his fancy leather jacket in this quaint rural town, and yet he had the swagger of a man who belonged there. Who belonged anywhere he wished to.

Aren’t wolves … monogamous, for starters?” Her cheeks started to burn and she had to look away, scratching her fork into a set of initials. “And isn’t the alpha male the one who’s responsible for protecting everyone? Not only the pack, but his mate too?” Dropping the fork, she threw her hands into the air. “I’m not saying I think you and I are—after just—I know we just met and that’s … but it’s not out of the question, is it? That your instincts to protect me could be as strong as your instincts to kill?”