The Chosen (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #15)

by J.R. Ward

She was a mahmen. She was a lover. She was a proud female, a strong female, a female who knew right from wrong, family from stranger, good from evil. She had lived through two birthings and stood up to a Brother just now, and she would take on the King if she had to. She was fallible and could get confused and might well flounder from time to time. But she would survive. That was what the strong did. Meeting her eyes in the mirror, she looked at her face for what felt like the first time. She had spent all those years waiting in the Sanctuary to be called into her role as ehros, her existence at once totally dictated and yet groundless, for there was no Primale to pleasure. And then she had bumped and bounced around on earth after she and her sisters had been freed, tiptoeing timidly in the unfamiliar ways of modern life. There had been the desperate needing with Qhuinn, and then the anxiety as the young had grown within her—during which her life had been split in half with Xcor. Following that? The birth that had nearly killed her and now the agony of the disintegration of her family unit…and the pending loss of Xcor. Yet she was still alive and she was here. Looking at herself in the mirror. And for the first time in her life, she respected what she saw. Bowing to her reflection, she said softly, “Pleased to meet you.”