The wolf continued to observe her, and then he gave a wolf's version of a smile as if he'd made a decision and headed straight for her.
Her heart took a dive. She was an intruder in their territory, and he was part of a pack. She damn well bet it was Leidolf's red lupus garou pack. And if she didn't find the female and her pups and soon, she was sure a whole gang of lupus garous--mate-hungry bachelor male types--would be in the area, searching for her.
Adrenaline flooding her veins, she ran down the other side of the ridge, her jaws growing tired of carrying the salmon. She had to lose the red male, find the she-wolf, give her the fish for the pups, and figure out a way to take care of the pups and the she-wolf somewhere beyond the vicinity of a lupus garou pack's territory.
But where was the blasted new den? And how was she going to lose the red male in the meantime?
She was too far away to reach quickly, but Leidolf hoped the red wolf on top of the ridge, carrying a salmon in her mouth, was Cassie. As soon as he reached the peak of the ridge, he sniffed the ground and caught her scent. And then raced off again. He was torn between locating his men and finding the little red female, but she could be in as much danger as his men. He reminded himself he had others looking for them, but no one else to look after her.
It was the oddest thing, though. Just when he thought he was within inches of locating her, Cassie's scent would disappear. Back and forth, he continued to track her, and then he'd get another whiff and take off again. Almost as if she knew he was tracking her, and she was trying to avoid capture.
His spirits soared when he believed he would soon catch her. When he came to the river, he lost her scent. Not liking that he was exposed to prying hunter eyes on the naked bank, Leidolf ran downstream anyway in a rush but, not locating her scent, tried upstream. Same thing. He couldn't sense her at all. He stopped and stared at the river. She had to have crossed it.
Hell. He dove in and wolf paddled through the choppy currents. When he finally reached the other side, he shook the excess water off his fur and then sniffed at the ground. No sign of her scent here, either. He ran upstream. Nothing. Then downstream. He found no smell of her there. He stared at the river. Had she been caught by an undercurrent, being not as strong as he was and unable to swim straight across?
"Hey, Joe," someone whispered, hidden in the woods on his side of the riverbank. "Do you see what I see?"
Leidolf's heart beat even harder.
"Hot damn, a red wolf, but it's too big to be Rosa, Thompson. You want to get the male or should..."
That's all Leidolf had to overhear. He darted into the river, swimming as fast as a wolf could, which he swore was a hell of a lot slower than he could swim as a human. Despite the sound of the flowing water muffling the noise, he heard the men scrambling across the riverbank, their boots scattering rocks. He just hoped their guns didn't have the range to shoot him across the river. And thankfully, they didn't fire at him while he was swimming.
As soon as he reached the other side, his natural instinct was to shake the water from his fur coat, but his human half compelled him to forget the ritual and head for the forest. A gunshot rang out, and Leidolf dodged into the woods, but not before he felt a prick in the meat of his left flank. Damn it. Which reminded him why he and his pack members were never to risk changing in broad daylight and run around as wolves unless they had no choice.
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?"