Free Forever (Shifter Island Book 3) by Carol Davis

circle around and cut the man off, but his goal was exactly the opposite: to make him run until he was exhausted and terrified. That wouldn’t be hard to accomplish; the man might think he was cunning, but he wasn’t.
    After a couple of minutes, Aaron had the pack halt where they were so he could listen. He picked up the sound of the man moving through the woods a few hundred yards ahead, in the general direction of the settlement. The last of the sunlight was gone, turning the woods into a deceptive, frightening place for someone who was ill-equipped to be there, full of protruding roots and holes and thick thorns that could inflict painful wounds.
    Aaron caught sight of a beam of light—a small flashlight. Something kept in a pocket.
    It would do the man little good out here in the woods.
    With a few low sounds, Aaron told the pack to hang back, to allow him to move closer alone.
    He approached carefully, delaying revealing himself until just the right moment, when the beam of that tiny flashlight would find him at just the right angle.
    When it would reveal his eyes.
    This would be a good chase.
     
    * * *
     
    “What will they—”
    Katrin lifted a finger to her lips to cut off Abby’s question. A few steps later she stopped walking and gestured for Abby to stop too. “You need to focus on the path,” she said quietly. “When we get back to the settlement, you can ask all the questions you like. Aaron would be unhappy with me if I let you fall and hurt yourself.”
    “But—”
    “You must trust him.”
    There was a weight in Abby’s chest that grew larger the farther they walked. It would suit her just fine never to see Lane again, and she couldn’t say she’d be upset if he tripped and fell and sprained an ankle or smacked his head on something, but she was deeply worried that, in spite of Aaron’s assurances to her, the pack had something else in mind.
    “Trust,” Katrin said again.
    “I’m trying.”
    Katrin took hold of Abby’s hand and squeezed it. “We need to get back to the settlement. We can’t be out here during the hunt.”
    Hunt.
    That didn’t sound encouraging at all.
     
    * * *
     
    There were drops of fresh blood on the ground.
    The wolf stopped to sniff them. Human; there was no doubt of that, and since Abby had gone in the other direction, they were certainly the man’s blood. That gave Aaron a surge of pleasure.
    One by one, the other wolves nosed in for a sniff, responding to it with yips and growls. With this scent added to the mix, they’d be able to track the human easily.
    Now, they’d have to maneuver him around so that he couldn’t reach the boats, either his own or theirs. They couldn’t allow him to escape the island until he knew not to come back—and not to send anyone in his place.
    They moved through the woods carefully and silently, sometimes drawing closer to the man, sometimes backing away, always guiding him exactly where they wanted him to go. They found more blood on the ground, smeared on a rock, spattered on the leaves. He’d cut his leg, Aaron decided: had fallen and gashed it on a rock, and the wound had slowed him down considerably.
    Something like that had happened when Aaron was a boy, when the pack had pursued a hunter who’d ignored all the No Trespassing signs and seemed likely to return with comrades if they let him go. That man had bled badly, and had wounded one of the wolves with his gun. Getting rid of him had been complicated. They’d let him bleed to death, then took him back to the mainland and recreated the scene of his death there, bit by careful bit, so no one would suspect he had died somewhere else.
    They couldn’t do that this time. This man plainly did not frequent the woods. It wasn’t likely he’d be out roaming around by himself, looking to shoot something whose head he could mount on the wall.
    Luca yipped a question and moved in close to his brother.
    They could smell the man’s anger and fear. He was talking to himself,