A Werewolf’s Guide to Seducing a Vampire (Glimmer Falls, #3)

by Sarah Hawley

“I’m thirty-eight and single and haven’t dated in nearly a decade. My business takes up all my time, and I like to knit, and I’m not even a properly rowdy werewolf, and who could ever love someone who feels this anxious most of the time? I should like all the howling and biting things, but I just feel out of control, and no one else likes sweater vests even though they’re wrong about that, and what if nothing about me is attractive and I die alone in a ditch?”

Would she ever be able to look at a person and think: I am safe with you?

“It’s more that…Most people end up in the ground anyway. Pretending otherwise doesn’t change that, and there’s freedom in knowing that and fighting anyway. Choosing to face the truth beneath life, no matter how bloody or strange, is always better than fooling yourself into thinking the sparkles on the surface are what’s real.”

“When pride is that fragile, it’s just aggression papered over insecurity or cruelty. It becomes a liability.”

Ben had always been a crier. At sad movies, when his family and friends were upset, when he was overwhelmed…He’d been bullied for it at school, but he didn’t mind so much now. This was who he was, and he’d rather love deeply and cry than feel anything less for his family.

And really, every good couple should have a soft one and a stabby one.”

I think true strength is in breaking from the stereotype to be a complex, thoughtful man.”

“You,” he said, words rumbling against her, “are delicious.” She tipped her head back, staring blindly at the ceiling. This was the passion she’d always known was inside him, the one she’d tasted in his blood

that first day. Ben Rosewood was a gentleman, but he fucked.

He’d never been the type to attend concerts, and that was before he’d hit his thirties and discovered many of the things that had been theoretically fun in his twenties were actually noisy and exhausting, including live music and social gatherings that began after eight p.m.

It didn’t matter how much an abuser said they loved someone—or even if they truly believed they loved that person. An abuser would always consider themselves the hero or heroine of their own story. But their love was a broken facsimile of the real thing, not worth having, and it wasn’t

worth wasting time feeling sympathy for someone like that.