Page 13

THIRTEEN

Blaze did three laps of the room, growing more desperate with each one, until he finally had to admit his gut was right: Diana had disappeared, and he had no idea how to find her.

But he knew someone who did.

Blaze pulled out his phone and flipped through the messages from Diana. There it was – the picture of her and her fated mate, who was also a student at Mirror Academy. She'd know where Diana was – that was how the mate bond worked, or so the stories said.

Blaze blinked. The girl in the photo had short, dark hair, but if he imagined her in a bushy blonde wig...shit, no wonder she'd looked familiar.

He should have grabbed her then and asked her where Diana was. Now...she was nowhere to be seen.

Maybe she'd left the ballroom and gone deeper into the castle. He'd search the whole place for her, then.

"The bathrooms are that way, sir," said a liveried servant at the base of the staircase, pointing down the corridor.

"What's upstairs?" Blaze asked.

"The family's private chambers, sir. No access to the public."

"I heard there were guest rooms upstairs. I need to know if a girl is in one of them," Blaze insisted. Diana wouldn't have gone into the private areas of the castle, but her mate might not have the same scruples. He wouldn't know for sure until he'd checked everywhere.

"No one is allowed upstairs without Mr Tremotino's permission," the servant said, visibly sweating.

Strong hands grabbed his arms. Two men, one on either side, with another two to box him in.

"Blaze Argyros?" one of the men growled.

Blaze considered denying it, but he couldn't for the life of him remember the false name he'd given when he bought his ticket. "Can I help you gentlemen?" he asked easily, though gentle was not a word he'd use for these bully boys.

"The Alpha wants you escorted off the premises, and to make sure you don't come back," the spokesman said.

Blaze snorted. Seriously, Tremotino considered himself an alpha male of this mundane pack of men? Blaze could wipe out the entire pack in less than ten seconds without breaking a sweat.

But not without revealing that he was more than just a man, something he couldn't do in front of ordinary humans like those present. Plus, this was technically Leo's birthday party. It was bad form to give a man corpses as a birthday gift.

Blaze sighed. "Fine, I'll leave." It wasn't like Diana or her mate were inside the ballroom anyway. Maybe they'd gone outside to the garden, and he'd spot them better in his other form from the air. It wasn't like Tremotino had gargoyle guards, not if he employed these goons instead.

He sidestepped the bully squad and marched out to the gate, making the bully boys trot to keep up with him. He half expected them to follow him down the drive, to reinforce their master's message to not return, but instead, they lined up in the gap between the open gates, shoulder to shoulder, with their arms folded.

As though mere men could keep him out of anywhere he wanted to enter.

But if Diana and her mate weren't inside the castle, he had better places to be.

"Bye, boys. You can go back to babysitting your boss. Maybe you should be protecting him from his gold digger bride, instead of me." Blaze turned on his heel and marched into the darkness, where no one would see him transform into his true form.

He was going to find Diana and her mate if it killed him.