Ryland threw his phone down on the table and dropped his head in his hands. He was at his wit’s end. None of his leads had panned out. He was good at his job, good at a lot of things. But standing in the middle of Blayze’s apartment he was fucking lost. As a private investigator, he was known as the best. He stood in the middle of Blayze's home looking around for any clues. It was the third time in two weeks that he searched for clues as to where his mate had gone. Ryland knew from the moment he met Blayze that the man was his. He felt it deep in his bones. Blayze might have disagreed that they were mates, but never told him to back off.
Maybe it was Blayze’s silent encouragement that had kept him from experiencing the feral need to mate. But with Blayze gone, Ryland felt uneasy in his own skin. He was going out of his mind with worry when he needed to keep a cool head. He was the pack Beta, the second in command to his best friend. People counted on him. Ryland remembered how fucked up the pack was before Duncan took it over. He was born into the pack; his parents were one of the first to side with Thorin Pryde. Ryland’s parents helped mold the pack into what it was before Bradley killed Thorin and banished Ryland’s father from the pack because of his skin color. His father was also outspoken and challenged Bradley’s authority constantly, he was also picking up a following that enraged Bradley. Banishing Jeremiah was a way to keep out the ones from calling the Alpha out on his bullshit.
He and his mother were allowed to stay because they fit the criteria. After his father’s banishment, Ryland and his mother lived with his aunt Theresa, her husband, and his three cousins, Sebastian, Charlie, and Parker. He and Duncan remained best friends, even though older members of the pack indirectly shunned him and his mother. Years later, after Bradley was killed by Duncan, Ryland tried to find his father to bring him back to the pack, but later found out that Bradley had had him killed the very night he banished him. He and Duncan had a hard task once they took over the pack, they had to rebuild it from the bottom up, and help change the old thinking of the members who saw age, sex, and color as a weakness and not as a strength to the pack.
Ryland had never denied who he was. He knew from a young age he desired men to women. His mother had a hard time accepting his choice in the beginning, but later realized that she would rather have a gay son than lose him because of backwards thinking. Before becoming a private investigator, he had worked as a cop, but found the job to be frustrating when he felt as if he wasn’t getting the cooperation he needed to close his cases. Not to mention when his fellow brothers in blue found out that he was gay, they pretty much turned their backs on him.
Human beings are fickle, if only they knew what kind of world they were living in.
After quitting his job, Duncan had offered him a job working as the head of security for Pryde Industries, but he turned it down. They ran the pack together but Ryland wanted to do something on his own, that had his name on it. It was the same frustration he was feeling not being able to find Blayze. Ryland understood why Blayze kept the secret that he was a dragon. They were hunted by not only hunters but other sects. From what little he knew, the heart of a dragon, if eaten freshly taken, would give anyone immortality.
All things must die sooner or later, but a dragon’s heart stopped the process of death. Fresh blood would give eternal beauty. Ryland realized that becoming the mate of a dragon meant he would need to protect Blayze with every strength he possessed. Everyone who knew what had happened promised to keep Blayze’s secret. He'd done a search in the database for Blayze McKnight and found there were a lot of McKnight ’s with the same last name spread all over the globe. He also ran fingerprints, which came up with nothing. It was a long shot.
Ryland sat on the couch, dropping his head in his hands, hoping for some sort of clue that would lead him closer to finding his mate. Raising his head, he looked across the room to the fireplace. There was a picture of Blayze sitting on the mantel from when he was a kid, standing beside a horse. He remembered putting the picture back when he had cleaned the place up after getting out of the hospital. He stared at the picture as his brow furrowed, there was something off with it. He got up and walked over to the fireplace, picking up the picture. He turned the frame over in his hand and noticed that the back was pushing against the casing. Undoing the fastening, the folded piece sprang up. Taking the picture from the frame, Ryland opened it, looking at the man and woman standing beside Blayze and the horse, they were all smiling.
Could this be Blayze’s parents? Blayze and his parents look nothing alike. Was he adopted?
Ryland had more questions than answers. He turned the picture over, there was writing on the back that was starting to fade, but Ryland could make it out. Cedar County fair, first prize. A clue, but not enough to tell him exactly where Blayze was.
Putting the empty frame back on the mantel, Ryland folded the picture and stuck it in his pocket just as his cell rang. He looked at the name on the screen and smiled. It was Jordan.
“Shouldn’t you be napping or something?” he asked, since mating with Duncan, Ryland had gotten to know the nyxian. Jordan was just as worried about Blayze as he was.
“How can I when one of my closest friends is missing?”
Ryland sighed, “Don’t worry, I’m going to find him.”
“I know,” Jordan whispered. “I just wish he was here, you know?”
“I know,” Ryland answered back. “I just don’t know why he left.”
“I wish I knew the answer to that,” Jordan said to him. “How are you doing? I know I’m new to all this stuff, but I can’t help but worry about you, too.”
“I’m doing fine,” he lied.
“I don’t believe you,” Jordan said to him. “But I’m not going to force you to talk to me when you’re not ready.”
“You have this thing down, don’t you?”
“What thing?” Jordan asked.
“The whole mother hen thing.”
“I’m not a mother hen!” Jordan said sounding affronted.
Ryland chuckled, “Keep telling yourself that.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just know that I’m here when you’re ready to talk.”
“I know,” he said then hung up the phone putting it back in his pocket. Ryland looked around the room, nothing had changed since the last time he’d looked around the room. He took in a deep breath taking in Blayze’s scent that still lingered in the room. He was going to find his sodalis amans. He knew Blayze was his from the moment they met. Blayze knew it too, but kept denying their attraction to each other. Like everyone else he had no idea that Blayze was a draconem, Ryland didn’t care. All he cared about was that he wanted his mate beside him. Digging his keys out of his pocket, he left the apartment with a promise that the next time he returned, it would be with Blayze as his mate and nothing else.
No matter how far you run, my dragon, I will find you.