those women QUOTES

16 " Sitting in a bar for hours on end wouldn’t help matters, but Tristan Archer figured he might as well try it out. It may take him far longer to get drunk than it would if he were human, yet he figured he’d give it a go. After the hellish few months he’d had, he would try anything at this point.
He ran a hand through his short, auburn hair that tended to look brown in the bar’s lighting and sighed. He shouldn’t have accepted his friend Levi’s invitation to dinner and drinks at Dante’s Circle in the human realm. He should have rejected the offer and gone back to the thousand other things he had to do within the fae realm and inside the Conclave.
Tristan wasn’t just any fae. He was a nine-hundred-year-old fae prince with responsibilities that lay heavily on his shoulders. He was also a Conclave member, where he helped govern every paranormal realm in existence with another fae member and two others from each race. That was how he’d become friends with Levi, a wizard and prince in his own right.
So here he was, in Dante’s Circle, a bar owned and named after a royal blue dragon; the meeting place of seven women and their mates with a history he couldn’t immediately comprehend.
Of course, it was because one of those women that he’d rather be in the fae realm instead of the dark bar with oak paneling and photos on the walls that spoke of generations of memories and connections. He’d been here a few times in the past, always on the outside of the circle of lightning-struck woman and their mates, but never fully excluded.
They’d welcomed Tristan into their fold, even if they didn’t understand why it hurt him so to be that close to what he couldn’t have.
Or maybe they understood all too well. After all, one of their own was the reason for his confusion, his torture. The object of his desire.
“If you keep glowering at her over in the corner, you’ll end up scaring her more than she already is,” Seth said from his side.
Tristan closed his eyes and took a deep breath, immediately regretting the action as soon as he did. The man next to him smelled of the sea. And hope. His heart ached and his dick filled.
Seth Oceanus was a merman, a friend, and his mate.
His true half.
Or at least one of them.
Not that he or Seth could do anything about it when the other part of their triad didn’t feel the same way. "

― Carrie Ann Ryan , An Immortal's Song (Dante's Circle, #6)

18 " Todd’s wife was one of those women with a forced smile perpetually cemented on her face. Even after being chased by a mob of homicidal maniacs and attempting to barricade doors with barstools she kept up appearances, practicing for the days when her husband would be running for public office. When she saw her son poking at their former mail carrier’s dead body a look of utter horror came across her face for the slightest instant. She caught herself and put that smile back on so quickly Will wondered if she might have pulled a few cheek muscles.
“Trevor!” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Trevor, you get away from that this instant! You don’t know what kind of diseases that man had. Children shouldn’t play with dead things.”
Will looked at Todd and smirked. “Cute kid. How many of those things do you think are out there? "

― Ian McClellan , One Undead Step

20 " Did you know one in three woman wind up in a mentally or physically abusive relationship?But the funny part is, it doesn't start off that way. It starts of wonderful, as close to everything you imagined something solid should be. Then little by little, the relationship changes, and you wonder if you're going crazy. You literally start to question your own sanity. One minute, the person you're in love with is kind and caring, and the next they're flipping out. The first few times you write it off, assuming they're having a bad day, but then it becomes a regular pattern of behavior. The person on the receiving end isn't oblivious to it but starts blaming themselves.Did you know mental abuse can make a victim feel depression, anxiety, helplessness, nonexistent self-worth, and despair? But that doesn't matter because your feelings don't count, and you don't realize they never will. Sometimes the abuser makes you think they count. Then you're back to thinking that you're the one who belongs in an institution, not them. But on the norm, your needs or feelings, if you actually have the fucking courage to express them-and most women don't-are ignored, ridiculed, minimized, and dismissed. You're told you're too demanding, or there's something wrong with you. Basically, you're denied the right to feel... anything.Sometimes you distance yourself from friends or loved ones. Sometimes you're not even allowed to have friends. Thought you've given this person your heart and soul, their behavior becomes so erratic, it's as if you feel like you're walking on landmines. But you continue to love them because they weren't like this when you're met, so it only seems obvious it's your fault. Then-there's the hysterical part and just how twisted this whole thing becomes-you start making excuses for their inexcusable behaviors in an effort to convince yourself it's normal. In an actual, damn convince yourself you're the one who;s made them become the monster they've turned into. A couple of ladies from an organization fighting against domestic abuse told me I allowed this to happen because 'I'm a product of my environment'. I mean really, how cliched is that? Did I ever tell you about my parents? Did I ever tell you how after my father left us, my mother continued pursuing assholes?Well, she did. She went through them like the world was going to end the next day. I get that being a single parent was hard for her. I do. But she definitely had a thing for picking up the local drunk at the nearest bar in order to help pay the next month's rent. They'd help for a while before they bounced out like my father did, but that never came without a price. She let them smack her around a bit if dinner wasn't cooked by the time they walked in the door, or if the house wasn't cleaned by the time they kicked off their filthy boots. They all looked different, but they came from a mold. Each and every single one of them was cut from the same piece of abusive wax,So, those women told me witnessing my mother's weakness drove my own, and her watching my grandfather beat my grandmother was what drove hers. They told me I was raised thinking it was okay for a man to do that to a woman. I was raised thinking self-worth was gained by catering to a man's needs at whatever cost. Ever if it meant degrading myself time and time again. But the apple can fall far from the tree. Fifty percent of children who grow up seeing that will never walk in their parents' footsteps, whether it's a boy watching his father beat his mother a young girl watching her mother get hit. But this apple landed on the tree's stump. This apple took the same path as her mother. "