He continued to race through the woods, intending to reach his clothes and shift, and then hide his wound. But whatever the men had shot him with wasn't causing him to bleed. He glanced back at his hip. A tranquilizer dart dangled from his flank. Hell.
Pushing himself to reach the location where his clothes were stashed, Leidolf stumbled but caught himself and kept running. He felt as though he'd had a ton of beers to drink and the alcohol was slipping through his bloodstream at a phenomenal rate. Thoughts of the redheaded wood nymph flashed through his mind until he envisioned in his fading consciousness that he could actually see her shape-shift.
He didn't remember collapsing, or that he lay still, panting, buried under cool lacy ferns. He barely remembered Joe or a guy named Thompson who had fired the dart that was buried in his flank. Instead, his thoughts drifted to the river, to Cassie's scent, her mournful howl, if it was hers, and the river that had swallowed her up.
What the hell had happened to her? It was as if she just simply vanished.
All he knew was he had to find her before the hunters caught her, too.
Chapter 6
Cassie didn't think the situation could get any worse. First, the she-wolf took off with her pups and hid them somewhere else. Then the she-wolf howled, but she was way too far away for Cassie to reach her quickly. Not only that, but a whole slew of male wolves were prowling the forest.
Then? Cassie discovered Leidolf tracking her, doggedly trying to locate her. But the worst-case scenario? A gunshot rang out from the direction where the wolf had been. What if Leidolf got shot because of her? She'd let the river carry her downstream for a couple of miles so he wouldn't find her scent anytime soon, and that had worked well for her. But now it seemed to have caused more problems than she ever thought possible.
Leidolf was a powerful runner and a much-too-thorough hunter. She'd had a head start when she caught him following her scent, and she'd quickly buried the fish. If she hadn't backtracked in a few places, quickly shifting and climbing a tree once to watch him--totally confusing him--he would have caught her. As soon as he had run off, she'd climbed down the tree, shifted, and raced off in a different direction. He was really, really good at tracking her, and she hadn't lost him for long. The river trick worked though, only she sure hadn't meant for the poor guy to get shot. If he got shot.
Her breathing quickened from all the running and swimming, she panted in the thick of the forest, looking upstream in the direction he had to be. She'd recrossed the river again and was on the same side she was originally on. Was he on this side with her? Or was he on the other side now?
She knew she should look for Leidolf, one of her own kind, and make sure he wasn't injured. It wouldn't do for hunters to get hold of him. While normally she wasn't afraid of much of anything, hunters terrified her. Her heart pounding in her dry throat, she thought of her adopted wolf pack members all dead, solely because of hunters, and the old guilt came into play--she had survived. And worse, what if she'd been the reason for their deaths?
But this time, she knew she had caused the wolf to come under fire.
She glanced back in the direction that the female wolf had howled. Hell. No matter that she was a wolf biologist, dedicated to studying wolves and educating people about them, or that she needed to help the mother in need, she had to ensure her own kind weren't found out.
Then again, maybe he wasn't shot. She paced some more. Damn, she couldn't risk not going to his aid. And if she had to protect him against hunters, she was ready. At least she thought she was. If she didn't locate him, that meant he was fine and she could go back to her she-wolf business.
Taking a deep breath, she bounded through the woods.
She barely heard the sound of the river not far away. Mostly she heard the blood rushing through her ears as she raced to locate the wolf, in the event he was injured, before the hunters could reach him.
As she drew closer to the location where she'd entered the river the first time, she heard two men's voices across the water, and she froze in place in the woods.
"I hit him. He was a big male and was running so fast, I'm sure he'll get some distance before we can locate him. Want to swim across?"
"Hell, Joe, I don't swim well, and in this frigid water, we'd both suffer from hypothermia before we knew it. We'll have to return to the truck, and the first bridge we come to, drive across to the other side, and hike in to find him."
Silence.
Her heart pounding, the blood still rushing through every artery, Cassie waited.
"Okay, Joe, let's go before it gets dark. We'll never find him then."
Kicking stones, they tromped across the bank and disappeared into the woods.
I hit him, echoed through her brain. She didn't want the trouble she could get into with dealing with a local lupus garou pack. She sure as hell didn't want to be the cause of a lupus garou's death. Not that he would die if he were shot with something other than silver, but once they found him, they could kill him by other means. Past experience haunted her with the knowledge, and that's what sent chills racing through her.
She knew she shouldn't advertise her location if others of his pack were out here searching for her, too. If she could, she'd alert them he needed help and then vanish, like she'd done with him. And if he was alone, maybe he still had the strength to communicate with her so she could locate him. After that, she didn't know what she could do. She had to get him to safety, somehow.
She sniffed the breeze, and if it had been blowing in the right direction, she could have smelled him up to a mile and a half away. She didn't smell any sign of him.
In the lowest, deepest, most woeful lonely wolf howl she could manage, she called to him, begging him to respond, praying no other hunters were in the area or that Leidolf's men would locate her.
* * *
In his foggy brain, Leidolf heard the red female wolf calling to him, her howl the most winsome he'd ever heard, just the right resonance, the right tempo, sexy and powerfully stirring, if he wasn't so damned drugged he would stir. It wasn't the same as the howl he'd heard earlier. That first had not been as deeply seductive or half as close by. Was it Cassie?
He tried to respond but only managed a feeble woof. Hell. How could he howl with his head plastered to the moss-covered forest floor?
Instead, he listened for her to repeat her call, hoping in his not-so-clear mind that she'd grow closer to him and smell him when he couldn't vocalize his location.
She didn't make another sound, and he tried to lift his head again. Without success. Cursing himself for the predicament he was in, he thought briefly about his pack and what they would say if they could see him now. Not only that but what his sister would say if she knew what had become of her brother, who never made a mistake.
And then the darkness overcame his thoughts, like a heavy mist forming in his brain, disguising his mental notes and thickening until everything blanked out.
* * *
When Leidolf didn't respond, Cassie figured he was passed out and unable to call to her. Frantically, she kept crisscrossing the area, searching for his location. Finally smelling the scent from his footpads on the path through the forest headed away from the river, she ran after him with her nose to the soil. Not far from the river, she located the large red male lying on his side, half-buried in ferns and dead to the world. A beautiful big red, his fur dark and shiny, his body powerful and sturdy. She needed to get him some place safe where the hunters couldn't locate him.
She moved in closer and nudged his nose with hers. He didn't respond. Not good. She tried again, this time licking his face, rubbed her muzzle against his, and then she pawed at his legs. She woofed low next to his ear, trying to stir him. How far away had the hunters parked their vehicle? How far to the nearest bridge where they would cross over and be on this side of the river? And how long would it take them to locate the male wolf from the trailhead near where they would have to park?
Maybe hours. Darkness would come soon. She couldn't wait. She shifted from a wolf to a human. Then, in her chilled and naked form, she crouched in front of the wolf's head and lifted it, talking to Leidolf, trying to get him to wake. He didn't move. She laid his head back down and then ran her hand over his body, sifting through his fur, searching for any kind of wound, unable to see where he'd been hit. Which meant he'd probably been shot on the other side.
Only one way to do this.
"Sorry," she apologized beforehand, not wanting to hurt him but needing to see the damage. She took hold of his legs and used them as a lever to turn him over. He didn't groan or growl or anything, which concerned her even more.
She gingerly swept her fingers through his fur looking for an injury. No blood on his fur and no wound anywhere, but a dart was lying on the ground where he had been resting. She picked up the dart. Tranquilizer? She didn't know what the drug smelled like, so that didn't help. Crouching at his back, she rested her head on his side and listened. His heart beat slowly, tired, drugged.
She let out her breath in relief. He wasn't wounded. If hunters found him, he could still be in real trouble.
"You need to get up," she whispered in his ear, one hand stroking his neck, the other the crown of his head. "Leidolf, you've got to get up before the hunters come for you."
Still, he didn't respond. Figuring more roughness was required to wake him, she growled and shoved at his back. "Get up! Now!" Which didn't work, either.
Hell.
Okay, fine. She stepped around him and knelt down in front of his snout, intending to offer him what she assumed he really wanted and hope that he would stir enough to get on his way, while she took off in another direction as a decoy for the hunters. Kneeling before him, she stroked the top of his head between his ears and whispered in one of them, "You chased me, and now that I'm all yours, you're too tired to come out and play?"
His eyes opened, but he didn't seem focused on anything. She rubbed her cheek against his and scratched some more between his ears. "Hmm, the big, bad wolf isn't so big and bad anymore."