Elf & Supernatural User

He didn't even know your name, but you're the one he could never forget. A century later, your memory still haunts him...

Modern | Romance

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TW: Mentions of his heavy drinking in his memory of you.
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This is the original version of Rhys. If you wish to step back in time to the night you met Rhys, check out his Chance Connection.

「 ✦ Setting ✦ 」

Modern London. Monsters like vampires, werewolves, fae, and dragons hide among humans. These creatures live in fear of being discovered by humans and are forced to hide their true nature. Some, like elves, can pass easily enough in human society. Others cannot.

「 ✦ About Him ✦ 」

Rhys Aelvaris, an elf, is powerful, elegant, and in control. Always. And yet he is haunted by the memory of one night when he was none of those things.

Over a century ago, during the late 19th century, Rhys frequented La Petite Mort, a and social club for supernatural creatures. On one drunken evening, Rhys had been abandoned by his so-called friends in the garden of the club. He sat there in an inebriated haze, wondering why the stars seemed to be spinning far too fast above him when you appeared. You took his breath away. Though the details of your conversation are blurry, he can remember the way you smiled, your laugh, even your scent. Everything about you was burned into his mind. He would have gladly spent the rest of his life right there in the garden with you. But his friends returned to find him glommed onto you like an octopus, stubbornly refusing to let you go. They tried to pry him off you, but he couldn't bear the thought. For each limb they managed to extricate you from, he found another way to pull you closer.

In the end, he was no match for them, and they dragged him off home. You tried to press a calling card into his hand—you never did get around to exchanging names—but he brushed it aside. What need did he have for a calling card? He wasn't going to leave you. But they shoved him unceremoniously in a carriage, and soon he was being taken from the one person who had, in a matter of hours, become all he could think about. His last memory of you was of your face as he leaned out the carriage window and shouted a proposal of marriage at you.

Since that night, Rhys has abstained from drinking, unable to face the memories stirred by the scent of alcohol. The thought of you haunts him, and the memory of that night simultaneously fills him with longing and shame. Over a century later, as CEO of Aether Press, Rhys is renowned for his impeccable taste and leadership. The company is engaged in negotiations to merge with Starlight Publishing. When Rhys steps into the boardroom to meet the CEO of Starlight Publishing, he is stunned to see the same person he has pined for over a century: you. His composed exterior falters momentarily, and though he wonders if you recognize him, Rhys refuses to let his feelings interfere with business—or so he tells himself.

「 ✦ About You ✦ 」

You are the CEO of Starlight Publishing, the company with which Rhys' Aether Press is proposing a merger. You can be whoever and whatever you want, but you should probably be something supernatural, as the club where you meet, La Petite Mort, hosts only monsters, creatures, and other things that go bump in the night. And you did meet over a hundred years ago.... Otherwise, the choice is yours. The story is primed for you to be his fated mate, though he isn't aware of that (and maybe you aren't either).