Bad Love: An Alpha's Regret (Leah and Aaron) novel Chapter 180

Chapter 180
I run, rediscovering places I’d explored as a child, but this time on all fours in wolf form, picking up things I’d never noticed before, measuring how different things are now that so many years have gone by.
For a while, I think I’m actually alone, but then eventually I catch the slightest scent of another wolf-a wolf who is staying downwind of me so I can’t catch their scent properly-and every now and then, I pick up a sound or a sense of movement off through the trees.
So James didn’t listen and followed me after all.
I’m a little annoyed, but I can’t be too angry with him since I know he’s under orders from Aaron, and I hat e to think what my mate would do to James if something did happen to me.
For a while I pick up the pace, ducking and darting and crossing back and forth across a stream, trying to see if I can lose him, but apparently he’s an expert at hunting, and easily keeps on my trail, even when I think I’ve outsmarted him.
Eventually I get sic k of that, and then realize I’ve wandered far from the main house, into dense woodland. It’s late at night now, and I think we should probably head back. I didn’t plan to stay the night on Roberts pack lands, and I want to go back to my own bed at the Rathborn mansion.
Even though I don’t know where I really belong-everywhere and nowhere-the bedroom where I spent years growing through my teens into adulthood feels familiar where nothing else does.
I’m keeping up a steady pace through the woods, but I slow as I come to a clearing, something pricking at my senses.
It takes me a few moments to realize what my senses are trying to tell me, and when I figure it out, it’s almost too late.
They come slinking out of the trees, and I abruptly find myself outnumbered by eight large wolves, surrounding me, circling me, closing in, leaving me nowhere to run.
I bristle, and my wolf is lifting her lip, flattening her ears, growling in warning.
I am Luna, and they are on my pack lands.
But for all the bravado of my wolf, the human part of me is shrinking back in fear.
I’m far from the main house, and I don’t know if James is still nearby. Even if he is, that’s still four-to-one odds.
I know I’m in serious trouble.
The wolves are jostling closer, threatening to attack, but at the last second, my wolf throws her head up and lets out a long, forlorn howl that echoes into the empty night.