Rogue Quotes
"Complete and total idiocy. What was my father thinking?"
"Screw this. He’d blown his shot at nice-and-easy, which only left quick-and-brutal—my favorite way to play."
"Consider this your only warning to stay out of our territory."
"Humans tended to get uptight and curious around corpses."
"Privacy. It had become our most precious commodity."
"No 'Thanks for giving up your weekend to do my grunt work, Faythe.'"
"Pride members are very close, both emotionally and physically."
"I looked like shit. Dirty, sweaty, tangled, and…still wearing the diamond stud earrings I’d put on in concession to my original plans for the night before."
"As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, I’d been completely unprepared for my run-in with Painter."
"Regardless, Marc was nothing if not prepared. He was like an overgrown Boy Scout."
"To a cat’s sensitive nose, smelling good is very, very important, especially in human form, where body odor, unlike personal scent, isn’t socially acceptable."
""Miss me?" The man’s voice was sharp with hostility, obvious even in just those two words."
"Deep Throat clucked his tongue in my ear, and I gritted my teeth against the intimate sound and feel of his disapproval."
"After surviving a beating from Miguel, taking a life in defense of my own, and becoming the country’s first and only female enforcer, I was no longer the same girl Andrew once knew."
""Only children speak of life in terms of fairness, Faythe." My father’s face was expressionless, his mouth a firm, straight line."
"The world isn’t ready for your offspring. And neither am I."
"Never shit where you sleep. That was rule number two for disposing of a corpse."
"Disclosure—the council’s term for the failure of a werecat to keep his existence secret—was a capital crime, and leaving a body unburied fell well within the definition of disclosure."
"If you didn’t want an audience, you should have taken your show off the stage and into the bedroom."
"The more anxious you get, the more pain you experience. But I’d learned quickly... to relax and go with the pain."
"Cats can be absolutely silent when they want to. And Marc wanted to."
"Marc was flaunting his anticipated victory, and in that moment, my new goal in life became making him pay for his arrogance."
"For the most part, stories about cats hating water are exaggerated."
"Unlike lions, tigers, and the other breeds of large cat, which have round pupils similar to that of a human, in cat form, we have the distinctive oval pupils of a house cat—vertically oriented black slits."
"All werecats are solid black in feline form, regardless of their hair color and skin tone on two legs."
"My mother was stronger than that. She was the silent backbone of our family and a former power on the Territorial Council."
"My heart ached as I watched them, recognizing a pose Marc and I had struck countless times. But surely we’d never looked as in love, as picturesque, as they did."
"Your mother will develop a migraine around eight, and we’ll have to excuse ourselves to take care of her. So don’t risk being late because you think I won’t make it. I will."
"No werecat worth the cost of his own upkeep would ever Shift in front of an enemy. There was no faster way to die."
"The most obvious answer is that he trusted his murderer,"
"Be careful what you ask for. Life has a way of giving you what you want, whether you’re ready for it or not."
"How do people treat rare and valuable treasures? With great care and respect."
"I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had enough excitement for tonight, and we need some time to think about all this."
"I’m just ready to accumulate a little of my own."
"Anyone looking for a reason to oust my father from his position...would have plenty of ammunition if either of us lost our collective temper with Kevin without ample justification."
"And I was willing to bet Marc would lose his before I lost mine."
"This part of town had obviously recovered nicely from the infamous hurricane."
"The back door of the Cajun Bar and Grill was propped open, spilling laughter, the sharp clang of pots and pans, and piquant, lyrical accents into the alley."
"You’re hungry?" Kevin asked from my other side. "There’s this great Italian restaurant near my apartment. You like manicotti?"
"My chin dropped into the cradle of my cleavage. Seriously. I nearly dislocated my jaw."
"Ha! Marc lost his temper first, and suddenly I was in very good spirits."
"My immediate impulse was to correct his misconception with my fist, but a slow, deep breath brought my temper back under control."
"Had I compromised the security he worked so hard to give us all?"
"I’d never seen Marc flirt with anyone else before, but he did it well. Very well."
"Fortunately, I was secure enough in myself and in our relationship to know that he was just doing his job."
"He’d do anything for the Pride, and you know it."
"I couldn’t put on a dead girl’s costume, much less dance around in it."
"That would be demeaning myself, and using Jeff, and I just couldn’t do either."
"It's amazing how much time you can save by not burying the body."
"When this is over, he'll get an escort to the Mississippi border and instructions to wait in the free zone until his father decides what to do with him."
"I'm looking forward to seeing you. Won't be long now."
"It's a start, which is more than we had before."
"She's my height. Maybe a little shorter. Long, dark, curly hair. Pale grayish eyes. Dark, exotic skin."
"I wouldn’t be surprised if the missing strippers have made it into the national broadcast."
"No way. I shook my head and felt my hair rub against Marc's shirt. There's no possible way she could have tracked anyone that far."
"It's not your fault. I told you to release him. You did the right thing."
"You went into a strip club looking for a man?"
"Not listening was no longer an option. Maybe it never had been."
"Somehow, though he’d been human when I left him, tucked safe and sound among his textbooks, tennis courts, and completely nonlethal lattes, Andrew was now a tomcat. An honest-to-goodness, motherfucking, scratch-fevered stray."
"Chill bumps popped up all over my arms and legs, in spite of the hot Texas night. This couldn’t be happening."
"Creating a stray carried an automatic death sentence, and very few Pride cats were willing to take that kind of risk."
"But in this case, the scent trail would help us catch the slimy prick who’d put an end to Andrew’s human existence."
"My eyes had Shifted. I was sure of it, though I couldn’t tell any difference in my face without a mirror to stare into."
"What good is the truth, if you only use it when it doesn’t matter?"
"Fear was normal. And this time, it had also been productive."
"I trust every word you say. Why can’t you give me the same courtesy?"
"It's not the letter of the law that matters, Faythe. It's the intent."
"If the letter of the law left room for creative interpretation, it ought to be rephrased, to avoid confusion. And loopholes."
"No matter how much trouble I went through to cover all my bases, it was always my own mouth that got me into trouble."
"Sometimes it scared me that I understood the bad guys better than I understood my own father."
"If you’ll promise to listen until I’m done, I’ll promise not to leave anything out."
"That was hyperbole. You guys didn’t seem to think they’d execute the rogue tabby for murder, so why would they execute me for an accidental infection?"
"They’re not just going to take your word for it, Faythe. They’re going to need proof that this was an accident, and last I heard, you couldn’t give it to them."
"You could do the same, if you were so inclined."
"Damn, were he and my father sharing a brain? Or were they just right?"
"What about Andrew? We’ll find him and make him testify."
"Because Daddy would probably let you go if you push the issue."
"It’s going to get worse from here, not better."
"You’ve already done enough to punish him for sleeping with you."
"How many times do I have to tell you it was an accident?"
"There’s no such thing as privacy around here."
"I know the best thing I could ever do for myself would be to walk out of your room right now."
"You never admit that you feel anything for me in front of anyone else."
"Thank you, Faythe. You’ve just handed me back my balls."
"I couldn’t sleep. And it’s not like you guys were whispering."
"Working apart for a couple of days isn’t going to make me forget you."
"The sound of my stomach growling kept me awake."
"You’re in the lap of luxury compared to the hell you put me through, so shut up before I flush your dinner down the toilet."
"Try sleeping through the sound of your cousin crying herself to sleep after being raped."
"Step against the far wall and put your hands over your head, palms flat against the bricks."
"Fine. I don’t give a shit whether or not you eat."
"How do you know?" Suddenly, I wished I’d brought a notebook.
"I needed to pound the living shit out of something."
"I think I’ve figured out who’s helping Andrew."
"Fuck you, Faythe! You’ll be begging me for help soon."
"Marc and Parker arrived in Henderson twenty minutes ago."
"Mr. Painter, we call it the Pride. And Pride cats don’t act in anticipation of a reward. They act out of honor."
"With Luiz back, I can’t help thinking about Sara and Anthony, trying to make sense of what happened to them."
"Life doesn’t make any sense, and neither does death. No one expected them to die so young, but it can happen to anyone, anytime, and there’s no way to prepare for it."
"Ever since they died, I’ve been trying to do everything I always said I was going to do. Trying to really live, you know?"