GRAYSON

“You’re a Mortar?” I said.

Adalee smiled brightly and took a step back. “Congrats, Alpha,” she said. Then the smile suddenly fell from her face. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”

That was the final straw. No pack member of mine would speak to me like that— vampire or not. I was her alpha!

I lurched the top half of my body forward, planning on latching my jaw onto her neck and not releasing it until she begged for mercy. But ,right as I moved—before I could even touch her—she stopped me with a single word:

“Pain.”

My body immediately fell to the forest floor as an anguishing...