The Chosen (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #15)

by J.R. Ward

Sometimes kindness and love could be just as difficult as violence to witness. Sometimes, when you were on the outside looking in, watching two in-sync people was a scene from a horror film, the kind of thing that you wanted to look away from, forget about, banish the memory of—especially when you were about to go to bed for the day and facing hours upon hours of being alone in the dark.

millennials, that generation born between 1980 and 2000. Defined by the Internet, the iPhone, and a lack of economic opportunity, at least according to the human media, they were a demographic of lost moralists, committed to saving each other, preserving the rights of everyone, and championing a false utopia of mandated liberal thinking that made McCarthyism looked nuanced.

But they were also, in the manner of youth, baselessly hopeful. And how he envied them that.

he witnessed the rapture on their faces, the rampant optimism that they would find true love and happiness this very evening—in spite of all the other nights that they had come to his club and dawn had ushered in nothing but exhaustion, a new STD, and a crap load of shame-b...

When you were that young, when you had yet to face challenges that you couldn’t even begin to comprehend, your resilience knew no bounds.

Better to tolerate them than risk a species exposure by murdering them just to free up parking spaces, supermarket lines, and your Facebook feed.

He’d heard that adage that “time heals all wounds,” and shit, maybe that was true for other people. For him? His mourning had transitioned from the incandescent pain at the beginning, an agony so hot it rivaled the flames of her funeral pyre, to this chronic racetrack of reminiscing that seemed to spin ever faster around the open-field fulcrum of his loss.

The only comfort was that her suffering was over. The only reality was that his was just beginning.

A mental fallacy to bandage an emotional wound.

The King was highly reasonable—except when he wasn’t.

But of course, everywhere you went, there you were, and all that bullshit.

V sat back on his heels, crossed his arms, and continued to look down at the little bag of vampire. And what do you know. That infant sonofabitch glared right back at him.

When you had no compass of your own, anyone’s would do.

For the love of God, he needed to pull himself together before he crazied himself right off the planet.

Even after he had departed, it was like he’d left flaming footprints in his wake, his fury lingering like a bad smell.

addiction was nothing to fuck around with. Sure, you started down a chemical highway just so you could keep yourself in your life. But the next thing you knew, you were in a rubber room—literally—in restraints because you had tried to tear your own face off with your fingernails. By the way, pass the vodka.

Yeah, too bad you couldn’t just go to a RelationshipMax lot and buy a new version of whatever you’d crashed, one that maybe had some technology upgrades and better suspension on your partner. But life didn’t work like that.

I have my faith, and my faith has me.”

This male was seriously, like, a unicorn.

“Perspective is everything.”

don’t see your clothes, I never do, and a fancy dress wouldn’t change that. I don’t see wet hair, I feel the strands between my fingers. I don’t see pale cheeks, I am tasting your lips in my mind. You offer me all my senses at once, my female. You are so much more than any one thing about you.”

“Wherever I go, you shall ne’er be far from me. Wherever I sleep, you shall be beside me. What I eat, I shall share with you, and when I dream, we shall be together once again. My love, you are not gone from me ever, and I shall not take another. Till the very night I die.”

“All that came before this one moment where I am loved by you. Even though we must part, I can say that what I feel for you made it all worth it.”