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He couldn’t believe he was doing this. On the one hand, he was glad that the D.P.R. respected that, like humans, not everyone could run on the same schedule. Back when he was a fresh-faced officer, new to the Grayson PD, his CO put him on more than a few overnight patrols. In a way, it was similar to what life was like as a vamp: stay up all night, sleep during the day, and never see the sun. Doing everyday errands became a major pain in the ass with a schedule like that. One time, he had to stop by Motor Vehicles to update his driver’s license and he could never make their hours.
At the Department for Paranormal Regulation, the pencil pushers who ran the place recognized that there was a whole race of paranormals who could never make it during the day. Luckily, they kept the government building open around the clock, even if there were fewer windows open—and, to Adam’s overwhelming frustration, more of a wait time.
It had been the same song and dance the first time he came down here to get his provisional P.I.D. They gave him the runaround, sending him from one window to the next, even nitpicking when it came to the application they forced him to fill out. If it wasn’t for the fact that he knew a Para caught without a P.I.D. was looking at Cage time, Adam would’ve huffed out of the D.P.R. Since being locked up with other paranormals wouldn’t help him track down Rafe Silverson, he got the damn I.D.
Of course it had been provisional. Another ridiculous clause in Ordinance 7304: newly turned vampires were like teens getting on the road for the first time. Driving was a privilege, not a right, and so was freedom to a fledgling Nightwalker, it seemed.
God, he fucking hated it. It made it even worse that, after only a handful of months, he was due a permanent P.I.D. as if he just checked off another item on the list that brought him closer to being a full-fledged Para instead of the human he wished he could be.
So, no surprise he was in a shitty mood when the human dick at Window A scanned his request form and immediately sent him off to Window G.
There had been a line of four other Paras—two Nightwalkers, a sneering shifter, and an eerily quiet dark-haired guy that Adam couldn’t even begin to figure out what he was—ahead of him at the window. Each kept their distance, an unspoken rule to keep the more predatory Paras from hissing at one another. Adam huffed and waited, anxiously tapping his claws against his sweatpants while wishing the brunette behind the window would hurry the hell up.
He purposely dressed down. A plain white t-shirt, a pair of grey sweatpants, his running shoes. It was petty as fuck, but he didn’t want to walk in there as if he belonged or that he was trying too hard. As far as he was concerned, it couldn’t be avoided. Just another errand he had to get through before he went out for the rest of the night.
It seemed like forever before it was his turn. He stalked toward the window, scowling at the woman’s appraising look.
Not too long ago, he was the one on the other side of a glass partition, demanding to see P.I.D.’s before he would let a Para visitor into the Cage. The irony wasn’t lost on him that now he was the one being dicked around. Especially since her appraising look wasn’t the female clerk trying to figure out what kind of Para he was but, instead, checking him out.
Fucking wonderful.
Before he turned, it would’ve almost been expected. Adam wasn’t vain, but he knew damn well that he was a good-looking guy. He worked hard at it, between exercising and styling his blond hair just so, and he’d heard from more than one of his past lovers that his dimples were a panty-dropper.
Of course, all that changed after his turning.
His tan was gone, leaving him more like a washed-out shell of the man he once was.
His warm brown eyes were iced over to a mirror-like silver.
As for the dimples? Impossible to show those suckers off when he hadn’t had a thing to smile about in way too long.
The whole last year had been shit. It wasn’t just his attack and his turning, either, though that was the cherry on the top of the shit sundae as far as he was concerned. Go back to last summer and, for a few short weeks, Adam thought his life might’ve started to turn around. His year’s time working in the VIFPD—formally the Voluntary Incarceration Facility, Paranormal Division, though everyone thought of it as the Cage—was almost up. After waiting for three years to make his move on his childhood sweetheart, Adam was finally in a committed relationship with Evangeline Lewis. He was on the fast track for a promotion, so close to becoming a corporal he could almost taste it.
And then, wouldn’t you fucking know it, but a Para ruined everything.
Typical.
No wonder Adam held a grudge.
Maddox Wolfe?
?? a big brute of a beast, an alpha wolf shifter who spent those same three years locked inside the Cage because he was under the impression that his bonded mate was dead. Adam hated him almost immediately, mainly because Wolfe’s bonded mate—Adam’s Eva—was the one woman that he saw himself settling down with one day. She wasn’t dead, though that car crash had nearly killed her, and Adam was a-okay with making sure she never discovered the truth about being a shifter’s mate once it became clear that she didn’t remember Wolfe.
For three years, he waited for Evangeline to recover from the accident, hoping against hope that she never regained her memories. Did it make him an asshole? Probably. But he was an asshole who was in love.
Ah, well. He got his just desserts anyway. It eventually got to the Para that Eva was still alive and nothing—Adam, the warden, the prison board, not even the Claws Clause—could keep him inside. Sure, the elder Wolfe brother kidnapped his mate to remind her that she was, well, his mate, but once they were bonded, Adam was shit out of luck.
He lost Eva to her bonded mate.
Three months later, when Fiona Wright passed away suddenly, he lost his beloved mother.
Three months after that, Julian Koenig and Rafe Silverson stole his humanity.
And, wouldn’t you know, after another three months slipped by—most of it spent adjusting to the change—Adam gave up the last thing that made him happy. Handing over his gun and his badge to his sergeant, he left the Grayson PD in order to devote all of his time and energy to eliminating Rafe.
It was the only thing that kept him going. And when it became clear that the bastard Nightwalker had seemed to up and disappear, he turned vigilante. Instead of protecting Grayson behind the shield of his title and his uniform, he stalked the nights, guided by his enchanted sword, and tried his best to do some good.
Since losing Eva to Wolfe, though, he gave up on women. From the moment he heard about her accident all those years ago, Adam convinced himself life had given him a second chance to woo her again and try to keep her for his own. Turned out, there was no beating fate, especially when he was still a human. He’d been celibate for three years for no reason—it didn’t feel right having casual sex when he was devoted to the gorgeous, leggy brunette—and by the time he was ready for a rebound lay, the Nightwalkers had started to hunt in Grayson and he channeled his jealousy and lust into rage at the thirsty, killer Paras.
