Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)(8)

That was it. No wallet, no ID, no cell phone, just cash and keys. Nothing to say who Tamsin Calloway was, or what she was.

A killer? Her actions screamed of guilt. Fleeing out the window, ready to risk the men who’d been beating on her to get herself away from Angus.

Angus gathered up her things, unfolded to his feet, and carried them to the car. He had a change of clothing for himself in the station wagon, but he didn’t bother to dress. The clothes he’d arrived in were back at the plantation house, where he’d shucked them to chase Tamsin. He knew Reg would take care of them for him.

One useful thing Tamsin had left behind was her scent. Angus held her shirt to his nose and took a good whiff, letting the tendrils of smells seep into his wolf brain. Nutmeg came to him again, along with her fear and the need to flee.

Angus laid the shirt on top of the pile of her clothes, closed the station wagon door, morphed into his wolf, and started off on her trail.

The Shifter woman led Angus on a merry chase. Through the woods, across streams, down into swampy ground. She kept heading south, deeper into the bayous, the land of alligators and too much water. Wolves liked drier land—at least this wolf did.

Angus’s rage kept him going. He would grab this woman, drag her back to his joke of a car, tranq her, dump her at Haider’s feet, take Ciaran, and go home. Any twinge of remorse about giving her to Shifter Bureau had died when she’d tried to kick him in the crotch and called him Shifter Bureau scum. Which he was.

But damn it, if they touched Ciaran . . .

All of him wanted to be with Ciaran, the small black wolf who gamboled around in his cub form and made fun of his dad. Angus needed to hold his son, feel his warm body next to his heart, make sure Ciaran was all right. He felt bad for Tamsin—she’d looked truly afraid—but his son would win this battle.

Her scent led him onward. Angus had smelled nothing like her before, and he’d had to put up with the stench of a lot of Shifters. In the club, the sweaty smell of a hundred Shifters dancing and prowling mingled with the pheromones they let loose as they chose partners for the night—enough to make Angus wish for a bad cold.

He’d smelled every sort of Feline, Lupine, and Bear, but never anything like Tamsin. What was she? Though Reg was a rare type of Shifter cat, he smelled like Feline no matter what form he took.

Angus would finish this, tell Haider to stuff himself, and go home. That is, if he didn’t split Haider and his minions in half for touching his son.

His agitation made his Collar start sparking. Angus forced his emotions down, making himself focus on the mission. He was a good tracker, one of the best, or used to be considered so. Gavan’s ill-fated rebellion had taken Angus from being trusted second to ordinary guy looking for a job in ten seconds flat.

The scent grew stronger, which meant Angus was catching up. He allowed himself a wolf grin. The swamp was slowing Tamsin down as much as it was Angus, which meant she wasn’t an egret Shifter. Or a duck Shifter.

The trail crossed and recrossed itself. Tamsin had doubled back several times, had run straight down the middle of a stream and come out farther down the bank, had even retaken her own trail. A wolf with a lesser nose would have lost her. She was good.

Was that why Shifter Bureau wanted her? To teach them her evasive maneuvers?

And why did Angus care? If she’d been part of his brother’s group and fled while Gavan got himself and the other Shifters killed, he’d happily hand her over and go out for pizza. With Ciaran.

Angus put on a burst of speed. He heard a splash, almost turned to track it, then kept on his original course. He wouldn’t put it past her to toss something into the water to distract him. Angus calculated the trajectory of the splash in relation to the path he’d already been following, and focused on the point where she must be.

Then he heard a scream. Not a woman’s scream, but the cry of an animal in terror.

Angus sprinted toward the noise. The animal had not been a bird or one of the many small creatures that lived out here. Something not from this swamp had gotten herself into trouble and was shrieking in pain and fear.

Angus plowed through standing water, his wolf’s vision assisted by moonlight glowing on the mist.

Gator. Angus halted several yards from an alligator that had to be seven feet long. The end of its mouth was clamped over a struggling ball of fur.

As a wolf Shifter on the large side, Angus wasn’t afraid of much in the animal world, but he’d developed a healthy respect for gators. They didn’t care if an animal was Shifter or wild or someone’s pet—they just ate it. Driven by hunger and a small reptilian brain, they acted on instinct alone, and it was best to stay the hell out of their way.

Angus took in the situation with lightning speed and leapt toward the gator. As he barreled past it, he grabbed the red ball of fur by the scruff and yanked it from the gator’s mouth.

Tamsin’s animal shrieked in pain and fear, blood spraying everywhere, but Angus didn’t stop. Alligators could move fast, and this one would home in on their trail of blood. Angus had to get her out of here and into a moving vehicle as fast as he could.

He kept running, his mouth full of fur, but that didn’t slow him down. He’d carried Ciaran to safety often enough—a male wolf cub could get himself into so much trouble.

Tamsin wasn’t much heavier than Ciaran. Angus hadn’t gotten a good look at her animal, but it was small with wiry fur. Cublike in size, but Tamsin was no cub. She was a fully grown female Shifter past her Transition, and dangerous. No doubt about that.