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?"
Axel Ash's heartbeat 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 Axel Ash 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 Axel Ash 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 tranquillizer dart dangled from his flank. Hell.
Pushing himself to reach the location where his clothes were stashed, Axel Ash 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.
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 was that, but a whole slew of male wolves prowling the forest.
Then? Cassie discovered Axel Ash 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 Axel Ash 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.
Axel Ash 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 Axel Ash, 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.