Nik Ryder

Nik Ryder, a character in the Nightbound series, is your bodyguard and a Nighthunter. He is also one of your love interests. Although he is first seen in Chapter 1, his name is not revealed until Chapter 2.

Appearance
It is up to the player to decide what Nik looks like, but by default he wears a gray shirt and black pants underneath a long brown leather jacket with a brown necklace as a silver ring hangs on it. You note he has a web of scars along his side.

Personality
From what is seen of Nik, he is very professional when it comes to his job. He can even be quoted with saying that he takes his job very seriously. However, he also appears to love money.

Background
When Nik was a young child, his biological parents -especially his mother- would take him to the Bayou. His parents were nature buffs, and his mother would take him into the swamps and play hide-and-seek. She was Cajun and knew the bayou inside and out. When he was four or five years old, they were in the bayou, having a picnic for his mom's birthday. There, his parents were attacked by a monster. His mother shoved him towards the brush and told him to run, but when he saw them being killed, he screamed and caught the monster's attention. Something skewed the monster, causing it to fall, and Elijah Ryder appeared. He picked Nik up and ran, the monster howling behind them. Elijah covered Nik's eyes from the sight of his parents' bodies as he passed. He sang quietly to Nik, all the way out of the bayou, and let the young boy cry all over him. Nik didn't have any other family and would have ended up in the system, but Elijah took him in and adopted him, giving him his surname.

Elijah was a Nighthunter, who taught him everything he knows. The day he died (about seven years prior to the beginning of Nightbound when Nik was seventeen years old), Elijah and Nik had an ugly fight. They had been fighting a lot the past few years, on par for the course of teenagers and overbearing dads, but Elijah stormed out and went hunting alone and died. To Nik, the pain hurts like a knife to the ribs. He didn't have the chance to tell Elijah that he loved him, and to apologize for being a stubborn idiot who had to have the last word. Elijah and his parents are the reason that Nik hunts: to honor their memory and to prevent others from suffering what he has.

Nightbound

 * Chapter 1: Life of the Party
 * Chapter 2: The World of Night
 * Chapter 3: A Den of Wolves
 * Chapter 4: In the Lair of Luxury
 * Chapter 5: Into the Bayou
 * Chapter 6: Descent into Darkness
 * Chapter 7: Secrets of the Blood
 * Chapter 8: The Veil of Time
 * Chapter 9: The Price of Prophecy
 * Chapter 10: What Lies Beyond
 * Chapter 11: Inside the Spires
 * Chapter 12: Family Affairs
 * Chapter 13: The Jealous Boy
 * Chapter 14: Into Darkness

Your Character
Nik is one of your love interests and your bodyguard. He/she first sees Nik following him/her in Chapter 1, but then after a bloodwraith attacks Your Character, Nik springs into action saving Your Character after he/she falls into impending doom. He has been hired to protect you by an unknown client who offered him six figures.

In Chapter 5, if you choose to take a breather and go with Nik to a secluded spot, you learn about his parents and guardian. You also have the option to kiss him. In Chapter 11, when you and your friends are on the run from the bloodwraith, he tells the Fae guarding the entrance to Lamrian that you are Lord Elric's daughter. You are upset with him for hiding this from you, even though he explains it was a theory and he wasn't absolutely certain until the pieces fell into place.

In Chapter 14, if you decide to become intimate with him in a premium scene, you can ask him about his previous relationships. Nik tells you of one that happened soon after Elijah died, when he was lost and lonely. He thought the relationship could be something but she wanted something solid and a stable life which is what he could not offer.

Katherine
Katherine is Nik's rival. They see each other when you're at the Persephone and you can choose the option to hear Nik's mishap during a mission. In Chapter 8, when Katherine first refuses to accompany you and your friends to see The Fate, Nik admits to her that she is the best nighthunter he knows. Even though he talks a big game and the hunt is his life, there are things she can do that he cannot. He thinks she is an artist, a scholar; she breaks down the hunt and studies it; she owns it.

Cal Lowell
In Chapter 5, Nik tells you that he knew Cal's father.

Taylor
Nik considered Taylor to like a nephew, as he was the son of a good friend. He was clean-cut and bright, attending university to get his PhD in a type of mathematics that Nik could never understand. He had a sunny-disposition like you, which makes Nik draw parallels between the two of you. One time, Taylor's boyfriend dragged him to Flechette, a vampire-run club geared toward vampfans who allow vampires to bite them. Alicia, one of the Flechette vampires, took a liking to him even though he wasn't wearing a "bite me" choker, and bit him outside the club. He couldn't shake her when she became obsessed. Nik was hired to protect him, and he had for about six months. Since she was Carlo's "main squeeze", Nik didn't kill her in fear of retaliation. When she appeared to have "lost interest" and they didn't spot her for a couple weeks, Taylor felt free and snuck out to a gallery opening without Nik. Nik didn't know what happened until he read the newspaper. They made it sound like an animal attack. She had drained him and mutilated him. A week after Taylor died, Alicia got into "a really nasty car accident". She hit a tree going a hundred miles per hour, and it tore her head clean off.

Trivia

 * A version of Nik is shown on the cover of Nightbound.
 * He is the eighth love interest you can customize.
 * He tends to stay away from unicorns as the last one he saw tried to skewer him.
 * On April 26, 2019, in the IG livestream, one of the writers said that Nik was inspired by Dean Winchester from Supernatural.
 * The name Nik is of English, Persian and Greek origin, which means: Lord (English); good (Persian); victory of the people, champion (Greek, derives from a variation of the name Nicholas).
 * You get to play as Nik in a flashback premium scene in Chapter 4.
 * To see through "glamour", Nik carries a small medallion in his pocket which is charmed.
 * Nik shares the same name as Niklaus Mikaelson from fellow supernatural series, The Originals.
 * Furthermore, his mentor is named Elijah, and the Niklaus in The Originals' confidant and brother is also named Elijah.