Only when the howls of his pack echoed back to him in the clearing did he shift back from his half form to full human.  He came back more fully from the blood lust just in time to see Sonora disappear into the woods, heading back up the river.  He thought about following for a moment, but he trusted that she could take care of herself, and in truth he was going to have issues with Luc being near the rest of his pack, let alone both of them at once.<br/><br/>He circled around to the other side of the buck, checking to make sure that Luc had pressure on the wound as he crouched down next to the Buck’s head, looking into its eyes for a moment.  “You’re safe, just keep yourself awake until my healer gets here,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle as he laid one bloody hand against the side of the shifters neck to check his pulse.<br/><br/>“Blink for me if you’re from the herd in the north woods,” he commanded, nodding slightly when the buck managed to blink.  “I’ll send someone to them as soon as I can.”<br/><br/>He glanced up then, the bond to his pack announcing the arrival of his wolves before they broke into the clearing.  Two dozen of them had come, their pelts varying shades of black, grey and brown.  They flooded the clearing, circling around both the body of the human and the buck, looking to him for guidance.<br/><br/>“Hannah!” he called loudly enough to be heard over the growling and yipping, relieved when she broke out of the mass and shifted, kneeling beside him.<br/><br/>“I’ve got him…” she murmured, sweat already dotting her brow as she caught the buck’s gaze and held it.  Slowly his easing breathed, the pumping of blood beneath Luc’s fingers slowing to a sluggish trickle.  “I can stabilize him enough to travel, and hold it if we can get him back to den quickly.”<br/><br/>“Do what you need to do.  John, go get the truck, we can’t carry him safely through the woods,” he ordered, a dusty brown wolf breaking from the milling throng to dive back into the woods.  “Emily and Jace, go to the north woods and get the leader of the herd there, bring him and whoever he wants to join him back to the den, no more than four…”<br/><br/><div align="center">~~*~~*~~*~~</div><br/>Ryan stayed hidden for all of five minutes before he crawled out into the river, ears perked toward the direction the gunshot had come from.  He considered going that way, curiosity eating at him, but in the end he knew that Grayson would head towards the sound at the very least, and he had no desire to get a lecture from his Alpha.  Again.  For the hundredth time.<br/><br/>Instead he caught the trail of the one who had told him to stay and followed it away, finally coming to the cabin he assumed she was staying in. Her scent was all over the place, and when he shifted back to human form he found the door unlocked.  Technically the cabin belonged to Grayson, which meant it was pack territory… which he figured meant he could go in and check it out.<br/><br/>Once he was dressed in baggy clothes from the chest near the fireplace he started to really snoop, looking through her things with no regard for privacy.  It wasn’t malicious, but simple curiosity, and Ryan had never been able to ignore a mystery.<br/>