Finding His Eden: Silverdale City, #1

Chapter One

THERE WEREN’T MANY in their world who could say they knew the moment there fated one was born into the world.

Alric Drayton could.

Two thousand years of waiting, wondering if he’d ever find that one person meant for him, and his patience had finally paid off. The Fates above had looked kindly upon him and gifted him with his fated one’s presence.

An electrical charge shot through the air dragging a faint but delicious, sweet-spicy scent with it, but the alluring aroma was faint. Dangerously so. Alric walked out of the building and followed the scent teasing his senses as it drifted across the city, not caring what his strange behaviour might look to those who worked for him. Fear danced along his spine, strangling the joyous anticipation that had filled his soul with the first of his fated’s scent...fear that only multiplied when it brought him to the doors of St Augustine Hospital in the centre of Silverdale City.

Anger and panic dueled in his veins at the thought of discovering the one he’d been fated to spend the rest of eternity with lying in a hospital bed dying. Death wouldn’t stop them from being together, there were ways that Alric could circumvent the natural order of things in the human world, but it would only work if his fated’s heart still beat, no matter how sluggish it might’ve been. His blood lust roared, burned through his veins, and fought hard against Alric’s attempt to keep it restrained as instinct demanded he turn them before it was too late.

But such actions would draw attention to him.

The wrong kind of attention in a place that was already crowded with people whose emotion were already on edge.

It’d ruin Alric’s carefully cultivated image that he presented the world...an image that enabled him to protect others like him from those who knew nothing of their existence outside of fairy tales.

One deep breath, then two...and Alric managed to pull himself away from the bright lights of the hospital entrance and retreat to the shadows surrounding it. Another deep breath and he focused his senses on the delicious scent that had drawn him here as he stared at the eight-storey building. Taking advantage of the safety the dark shadows offered, Alric allowed his eyes to shift which allowed the scent trail to become visible, and he watched as it curled its way up the side of the hospital before disappearing at a window on the fifth floor. Alric reached for his phone and quickly pulled up a directory for the hospital. He was fully prepared to storm the building and through his significant influential weight around—money, and lots of it—if there was even the slightest hint that his fated was in trouble.

But what he found cofounded Alric.

Maternity Ward

He quickly dismissed the idea that his fated one had given birth. Alric would’ve sensed their presence the moment they’d set foot inside city’s boundaries which only left him with one possibility... Alric tipped his head back and laughed.

Slipping his phone back into his jacket pocket, he stalked away from the hospital. Were the Fates being kind...or were they being cruel? Taunting Alric with the knowledge that his fated one now existed while knowing he wouldn’t be able to do anything until they’d become...a man. Yes, the scent was definitely male. But like it or not, Alric would have to wait until the man’s twenty-fifth birthday before approaching them... to do it any sooner would only create problems of the headache inducing variety.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF knowing...of waiting ended tonight.

Alric would no longer hide in the shadows of his fated one’s life, tinkering at the edges and nudging him in a direction that would make him accept the truth far easier.

He pushed back his chair and wandered over to the large corner window in his office. From twenty-floors up Alric could see right across the city that he’d watched grow from a small fishing village to the sprawling metropolis that Silverdale was today. A city filled with architecture that paid homage to its gothic past and churned out the never-ending rumours about inhabitants of the city who weren’t quite...human. Many he’d heard repeated time and time again, but now they came tinged without the same sense of fear.

Vampires...werewolves...and others of their ilk were no longer seen as the scary beasts their ancestors had spoken of. No longer a thing of nightmares. And that suite Alric and the other supernatural inhabitants of the city just fine. Better for them if the city’s residents believed they were nothing more than creatures of myths and fairy tales, leaving them to hide in plain sight.

And somewhere out there amongst the city’s busy streets his fated one—Eden—was heading out to the bars to celebrate his birthday with his friends while not realising his world was about to change...drastically.

Alric snorted. Drastic changes didn’t come close to the massive upheaval Eden would soon experience once Alric revealed himself. He shook his head before bracing his arms on the windowsill and stared back out across the city, tracking Eden’s movements through the city with ease. If all went to plan, by the time Alric had finished with his last meeting, he’d know whether Eden had accepted his invitation to meet at a particular bar in the city or whether he’d ignore it. Not that it mattered, Alric would soon chase Eden down to whatever bar or club he’d gone to...because after having waited twenty-five years for this night, Alric wasn’t prepared to let Eden go.

Couldn’t let him go.

Excuse me, Mr. Drayton. Alric turned away from the window and stared at the open doorway where his secretary, Mrs. Walterson waited. Your last appointment, Mr. Fredricks, has arrived.

Send him in, thank you. Walking back to his desk, Alric grabbed two glasses and a hundred-year-old bottle of whiskey from the small liquor cabinet he kept stocked the corner of his office. And if there is nothing else you need to do, then you may leave for the night.

Thank you, Mr. Drayton. Have a good night. She stepped away from the door and waited for Albie Fredericks to enter the room before closing it.

Albie strode into the room with a grin plastered on his face. I think that’s the first time I’ve met your secretary...this one at least. He picked up the glass of whiskey Alric had poured and slumped onto the seat opposite him. How long has she worked for you?

Ten years.

Alric leaned back in his chair and waited for Albie’s sharp-tongued rebuke. Ten years was a long time for a human to be employed by them in any capacity, if they wanted to avoid the curious, often suspicious questions that came with the realistation they’d not aged. It wasn’t that they didn’t age, but that time simply moved slower. Alric himself barely looked a day over thirty-five when in fact he was over two-thousand years old. He honestly couldn’t remember what his exact birthdate was anymore, not when the centuries quickly became millenniums. No, these days the most important date to him was not the one marking his own birth, but the one that brought him a little closer to his fated person.

Today.

Eden’s birthday.

Risky isn’t it? You’ve not changed at all in the last two-hundred years. Either she’s blind, ignorant or... Albie waved his hand in the air leaving Alric to fill in the blanks.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. She’s good at her job. Doesn’t complain about the weird hours, like many of her predecessors did. Finding good help these days was hard, especially for a company like his who often required its human employees to start work early in the morning, take a break during the hottest, brightest part of the day before returning to work well into the evening. And if she has any suspicion as to my true nature...then she is smart enough to keep her mouth shut.

Albie chuckled. "Heaven forbid you provide us with the delicious company of your far-too-nosey-for-their-own-good staff at our dinner parties."

I don’t think the heavens like us very much regardless of what we do.

But that’s not why you called me in early tonight. Albie swirled the whiskey in his glass as his teasing manner dropped away. Twenty-five years is a long time to wait.

Compared to the two-thousand years of waiting for him to appear...twenty-five years passes in a blink of an eye. And yet Alric couldn’t deny that he’d felt every one of those twenty-five years as Eden’s scent grew stronger...more tempting. It had been hard to keep his distance; to remain on the peripherals of Eden’s life until the time to reveal himself was right.

Tonight’s the night. His big twenty-fifth birthday...and you don’t have to wait any longer. So, why did you need to see me, Alric? Albie knocked back the last of the whiskey in his glass and then placed it on the desk as he leaned forward. You planning to drop everything about us into his lap tonight...about his importance to you?

Alric shrugged. Explaining their world to Eden wasn’t a conversation Alric could avoid or put off for too long, and yet, he’d not made any real plans on how to go about it. No idea what I’ll do... was planning on playing it by ear. He took in a deep breath and released it slowly while drumming his fingers on the desk. But once I make contact with him, everyone within our world will know who Eden is and he’ll become a target for all those wishing to wrestle control of Silverdale from our hands.

Playing things by ear...that complicates matters a little, Albie said while rubbing his chin. If you were to bring him back here—jerking his head at the apartments