Page 1 of Those That Defy the Realm

PART ONE

ENCHANTED TO MEET YOU

CHAPTER 1

HENRY

“Antares!” Hollering, I spin in my desk chair to face the closed bathroom door, mobile phone clutched in hand. “What the hell have you done to my phone?”

Silence comes from the adjoining room, apart from the sound of the running shower. Marching the few strides across the lounge, I bang a fist on the wooden door currently protecting my uninvited house guest on the other side, from my rage.

I’m going to throttle him.

“Antares! Answer me,” I shout again. I know he can damn well hear me if I speak at a normal volume, let alone the decibels I’m reaching right now. These doors aren’t that soundproof, so he’s choosing to ignore me. It takes my anger up a notch to livid.

My phone vibrates again as I hear the water shut off. Glancing at the screen, I see another notification.

You’ve been matched.

Again. It was the same notification a few minutes ago that caused my current tirade.

The lock turns and the door swings open to reveal Antares standing completely nonplussed, in a towel. It’s slung round his trim waist. Steam billows around him, his rich chocolate skin glowing from the hot water. His dreadlocks are still wrapped in the purple shower cap he wears to protect them from the water. “Now, don’t be angry.”

“Angry? I’m so far past angry. I lent you my phone because you refuse to get one. I thought you were checking on your bank accounts or ordering something, not using it to find a hook up!”

“What?” He reels back, placing one of his manicured hands to his chest, the gold rings adorning his fingers glinting in the overhead artificial lighting. “I didn’t use it to find a hook up. I can manage in that department just fine on my own, thank you very much.”

“Then why am I getting notifications from…” I click on the screen to open the app. My brows crease as I read the name of the app. “Finding Forever?”

“Wow, that was fast. Two matches already.” Antares opens the door further to peek at the screen.

“Dating, fucking, or anything else related to finding someone to have sex with, you cannot use my phone. Delete it.” I hold the phone out to him.

“Aw, but look, she’s cute,” he coos over the profile which pops as he presses the notification to open it.

“Delete. It.” I force through gritted teeth. My fangs are ready to drop and I’m about three seconds from tossing him out of my apartment when a word in his sentence snags my train of thought. “Wait, did you just say she?”

“Yeah, I know you’re not into men, females only,” he says with a sigh, like how me not liking dick is a crying shame. “The profile is for you.”

“What?!” I close my eyes and mentally count to ten. Antares is staying with me because the vampire pack here in the capital is hunting him down. Again. If you kick him out, he’ll likely get his ass beat to fuck.

The fae, turned vampire, currently staying with me is a little hotheaded. Instead of living a quiet life and avoiding the pack like I do, because they are arrogant pricks, he antagonises them by constantly going into the clubs and bars they’ve claimed as their hunting grounds. Whenever Antares angers them too much, he hides out here in my apartment in the suburbs.

It’s been this way for several years now, since the night I found him beaten to a pulp and had to bring him back here. The fucker had passed out with his fangs descended, risking us all if someone else found him and alerted the authorities. Since we lost the war four decades ago, the world believes us vampires to be extinct. And seeing as they’d left the law making vampirism illegal in place, meaning if we ever got discovered, there would be an automatic death sentence handed our way.

“The profile is for you,” he repeats, blinking innocently up at me through his lashes. He’s about five-foot-eight, maybe five-ten at a push, but I’m nearly six-foot-six, so I tower over him.

Brushing back the chocolate coloured hair that’s fallen forwards onto my forehead, I take another deep breath. “And what made you think setting up a profile for me would be okay?”

“I wanted to thank you. I know I’ve been here a lot recently, and I see how tight you’re wound up. Getting laid would severely lower your blood pressure.”

“No, you not fucking with my things, or my life, would save my blood pressure.” Realising I’m just going to have to delete the app myself, and never let Antares use my phone again, I snatch the device back from his grasp and storm off, back to my desk. I’d been trying to write before this whole thing kicked off, needing to get the next book in my series started soon or my agent and publisher were going to have my balls. Or worse, drop me entirely.

Throwing the phone down onto the far corner of the desk to deal with later, I lean back in the chair and lace my hands behind my head, taking several deep breaths as I stare out over the city. The giant windows along this wall are the reason I bought the apartment. This building is only seven stories but my home is on the top floor, and it sits on the side of a hill that rises away from the city centre, which is down on the harbour. From here, I can see across to the ocean. It was a no-brainer for me to place the desk against the glass panes so I could watch the world as I worked.

Giving up on my novel, I switch to my emails. I’m on a teaching sabbatical from the university, where I work as a lecturer in politics and sociology this academic year, but I still have research commitments which require my attention.

Several minutes pass before Antares exits the bathroom, dry and dressed in sweats. His hair is now loose and falling around his shoulders, hiding his shaved undercut. He heads to the kitchenette on the far side of the open plan space and opens the fridge to pull out some blood packets. Since our ‘extinction,’ stealing blood and drinking from packets has become a far safer way for us to eat. Especially with the pack residing in the city claiming most of the places that provide dark and packed enough settings for us to drink it hot from the source of a warm body.