The Ring of Bondage - Chapter 1.12

III.

Luke immediately sent people out to find Yuria. It was easy to determine her initial movements. The road Yuria had taken led straight to the train station, and they were quickly able to find the ticket office clerk who had sold her the train tickets.

The problem began from there. Yuria had bought five train tickets. One ticket was headed for her hometown, two were headed for famous tourist destinations, and the remaining three tickets had large cities in different directions as their destinations.

Luke bit his lip and fell into thought. Aside from Yuria’s hometown, the other regions all had large transient populations, which made them the worst possible places to track someone.

There was also no guarantee that the destination on a train ticket was her final destination. After getting off the train, she could simply buy another ticket and transfer. It felt like Yuria’s warning for him to give up on finding her.

“……”

A hollow laugh burst out. Luke felt miserable at the fact that she had gone this far just to leave him.

While Luke himself had been lost in the thought of binding Yuria to him under the pretext of the imprint, she had taken her travel bag and bought five train tickets. The absurdity of it made him laugh. He felt so pathetic over the fact that he was this much of a fool that he thought he might go mad.

He had wanted Yuria to see him as a man, so he had tried to respond maturely in any situation. But perhaps that in itself had already been a childish idea. If Luke himself had been someone more reliable, she wouldn’t have run away like a thief in the night. Or perhaps it would have been better to act more like a child instead.

All kinds of regrets surged up to his throat. The very first problem had been leaving her alone with only a letter.

What if he had woken the sleeping Yuria and taken her to the banquet hall? If he had ignored her wishes, forcibly dressed her up, and declared in the middle of the banquet hall that she was his person, this never would have happened. Even if she condemned and despised Luke, she wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to leave his side.

Or it might have been good to propose to her immediately. If he had clung to her like a child throwing a tantrum, saying that everything had already been prepared and all he needed was Yuria’s permission. Yuria would have rejected him coldly at first, but if she couldn’t leave the mansion, she would eventually have accepted Luke’s proposal.

Luke let out a heavy sigh and rubbed his face dry several times. The heat that had risen all the way to the top of his head interfered with his thoughts. The problem had started with his naïve wish for her to see him as a man, and the leisurely complacency that came with it.

When Yuria understood his request for her to stay longer in the mansion as consideration and refused, he should have changed his plan. Instead of thinking he would persuade her a little more, he should have bound her by force.

Whether by locking her up or kneeling and begging, he should have kept Yuria with him in any way he could.

But because he hesitated out of fear that she would hate him, out of fear that she wouldn’t love him, he had lost her.

“Young master? What should we do now?”

“We have to find her.”

Luke answered the attendant briefly. Of course he had to get her back. What other answer could there be?

No matter what it took, he had to find her, meet her, and then. And after that? No, that could come later.

First, finding Yuria came before anything else.

“Send people to all five regions. Keep the search discreet.”

If rumors spread that his bride had run away, it was obvious there would be trouble in many ways. The family’s reputation was an issue as well, but if word reached Yuria’s ears that the Cunningham ducal family was searching for her, Luke would never be able to hold on to her.

Luke forced himself to soothe the ache inside him and added.

“I’ll… I’ll go too. Prepare everything.”

“You will, Young Master?”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

“No, no. But which of the five regions do you intend to go to?”

Without answering, Luke turned each place name over in his mind. Perhaps because he had delved into geography while following Yuria’s lead, the atmosphere and scent of those places came vividly to mind from the names alone. After smelling the illusory scents hovering at the tip of his nose, Luke opened his mouth.

“I’ll head to Bellix.”

Bellix was a resort famous for its hot springs. The city would probably have a scent similar to Yuria’s pheromones. So if he had to choose the one place among the candidate regions where it would be hardest to find her, it would undoubtedly be Bellix.

There were many tourists, making it easy for one person to hide among them, and unless she was in the middle of a heat cycle, even alphas wouldn’t easily notice her scent.