Page 21 of Saving Her Dragon

"What about the Wards?" Sydney asked, her White Dragon Magic thrumming anxiously beneath her skin. "If something... if something took him, or if he left, wouldn't the perimeter wards have flared?"

Carrick shook his head, offering her a calm, steady look. "No. The Wards were set with my Dragon Enchantment and Ginnie's Necromancer. We included everyone's Mystical signature. They are designed to keep external threats out, not to lock residents in. Garrett could walk right across the boundary line, and the Magic wouldn't make a sound."

It was a perfectly logical, mundane explanation. The mystery remained grounded, but the knot in Sydney's stomach only grew tighter.

"The mud," a soft voice murmured.

Ginnie had stepped into the room, her eyes fixed entirely on the caked gray clay Garrett had scraped onto the tile. Kneeling down, she touched the edge of the dried earth with a practiced hand. Garrett knew she had intimate knowledge of every inch of her home's topography.

"This didn't come from anywhere near the main house or the guest cottages," Ginnie said, her tone matter-of-fact but serious. "The soil up here is dry, sandy loam. This is heavy, dense gray clay."

Looking up at Garrett, her eyes were dark with concern. "The only place on the property with clay like this is down by the eastern creek bed. Near the old well on the far boundary."

Garrett went entirely rigid.

The old well was on the literal edge of the Heatherton’s vast property. It was a dense, heavily wooded area completely isolated from the rest of the land.

It was a freakin’ quarter of a mile away.

Garrett hadn't just taken a peaceful stroll into the backyard the previous night. Somehow, he'd traveled a quarter mile into the dark woods and returned without waking Sydney, alerting Han, or leaving any obvious sign of how he'd gotten out.

"We follow the trail," Garrett said, his voice clipped and decisive. He was already reaching for his boots, the soldier in him taking complete control of his movements.

"No," Sydney countered immediately, stepping directly into his path, her eyes flashing with a mix of fierce protectiveness and rising panic. "Garrett, you are not marching out into the woods after whatever just happened."

"Yes, I absolutely am," Garrett replied, not backing down. He looked past her to Grey and Carrick. "The clay is fresh. The tracks will be clear. I am not sitting in this kitchen waiting for night to fall again without knowing where my feet took me."

From the edge of the room, Carrick nodded slowly, his expression grim but practical. "He's right, Sydney. If there’s a trail, we read it now before the sun bakes it out. But we go together."

“I’ll stay here and see what I can read from the Wards,” Ginnie explained.

“But Carrick said…” Sydney started.

“And he was right,” the Necromancer nodded with a wink towards her Mate. “It won’t stop anyone from leaving, but sometimes they can tell us if anyone left and came back.” She shrugged. “It’s hit or miss since we used all our Magical signatures, but it’s worth a try.”

“Sure is,” Sydney agreed. “Thank you.”

And they were off…

There was no army. No heavy weapons or tactical gear. They weren't hunting a Demon Lord or a hoard of Giants; they were investigating a sleepwalking episode. Within ten minutes, the four of them– Garrett, Sydney, Grey, and Carrick– were cutting through the high grass of the eastern pasture, moving toward the shadowy tree line.

The heat of the morning sun began to bake the earth, but as they dipped below the canopy of the woods, the air grew instantly cooler, damp with the scent of pine and decay. It was a whole other world with shards of the sun breaking through the canopy and long shadows stretching into the darkness.

"Here," Grey called out, stopping near the edge of the creek bed.

Garrett stepped forward, his eyes locking onto the soft, gray banks of the water. Deeply embedded in the dense clay was a sharp, unmistakable print.

Garrett slowly approached. Lifting his right foot, he placed the boots from the mudroom directly beside the mark in the mud.

An exact match.

Something heavy and cold dropped straight into the pit of his stomach. It wasn't a theory anymore. It wasn't an uncomfortable story told in the morning light. It was an empirical, physical truth.

“I did this,” he thought, his chest tightening as he stared at the shape of his own heel in the dirt. “My body stood right here.”

He looked down the line of the creek. The tracks didn't wander randomly. They didn't show the clumsy, staggering gait of a confused sleepwalker. They were clean, purposeful, and spaced with the uniform stride of a man marching directly towards a specific destination.

Garrett led the way as they all followed the line for another fifty yards until the tracks stopped at an old, twisted oak tree jutting out from a steep rock outcropping along the creek bank.