“I don’t know, after midnight maybe. I didn’t check the time.” He’d been too busy enjoying Jason’s hands and mouth as they attempted to clean up in the shower.
“Okay, fine. So it’s possible they could’ve had him leave us some decoy trails.” She glanced at what Daryl had on, then walked over and sniffed his jacket.
Ahh. “You think they made him swap clothes with some of them?” The thought of someone else wearing Jason’s clothes, being covered in his scent, made Daryl’s hackles rise.
“It’d make more sense for them to do that than have Jason run four different trails,” Jenn agreed.
Daryl checked his phone and cursed. “Well, whatever method they used, we need to come up with a plan, fast.” He lifted his phone so they could see the screen and the counter running down. Four hours and forty-two minutes remaining.
“We’ll have to split up. There’s no way we can all track each scent trail in four hours. I don’t want to risk the real one being the last one we try. Who knows how far the others go.”
“Or what we might face at the end of it. I doubt it’ll be as easy as tracking him to a hiding place.
There’s going to be some task at the end of it.” Daryl started to pace again, needing to get going already. “There’s fifteen of us. How’d you want to do this?”
Rachel looked at Jenn. “Us three and Nathan could head up the teams. If we put Luke and Tasha on Nathan’s team, then there shouldn’t be any friction. It’s common knowledge he’s a beta in training to take over from me.”
“Sounds good,” Jenn agreed.
Between them they divvied up the rest of the units. Daryl ended up with Rob, Kara, and Kevin.
He didn’t give a shit who he had with him, he just wanted to get moving. “Come on.” He gestured for his team to follow and took the nearest trail, heart pounding as Jason’s scent filled his lungs, his wolf impatient to get going.
Footfalls sounded behind him as he set off at a jog.
They’d howl out a signal if their trail came to an end and double back and try and find the others.
Theirs had to be the right one.
He needed to find Jason before the clock hit zero. Their time together had an expiration date, Daryl was well aware of that, but that didn’t mean he was ready for it to end now.
“You think this could be the one?” Kara jogged up alongside him, taking a big lungful of air.
“Scent’s pretty strong.”
“Maybe,” Daryl grunted, unwilling to tempt fate. Instinct told him they were headed in the right direction, but Jenn’s team were running parallel to them at the minute, so who knew?
They ran on in silence, alert for any sounds in the forest that might give them a clue if they were on the right path or not.
When it veered away from Jenn’s, a spark of hope ignited behind his ribs, and he picked up the pace, crashing through the undergrowth with little thought to stealth. They were expected, it wasn’t as though they were going to take the council by surprise.
“This is like the first task we did,” Rob shouted from the back. “Except this time Jason is the flag.”
And Daryl had lost that task. He didn’t intend on losing this one.
He checked his watch.
Three hours and fifty-eight minutes.
Shit.
They’d been running for over forty minutes.
The surroundings were becoming familiar, and Daryl noted that Rob was more right than he realised. Coming to a stop, he raised his hand for them to be quiet as he listened hard. “You hear that?” he asked, looking from Kara to Kevin and ending up on Rob.
“Is that the stream?” Rob cocked his head to one side, as though trying to hear better.
“Unless there’s another one in this forest, then that’s the one we crossed to get to the treehouse.”
