Thankfully that won’t happen since the Z-Wave specs have a hard limit on a maximum of 4 hops; plus it also implements an algorithm to prevent “looping”. There’s a big advantage to having beaming repeater between your battery operated z-wave device and the hub. Having other beaming repeaters in the mesh is also helpful to create alternate paths. Unfortunately due to signal reflections and other quirks the mesh may not always choose the most optimal path (which is what you’re seeing, the last used path), but that may change since it’s a “mesh” and not bound to a single path (thankfully again).
Here’s another topic which may give some pointers on how to improve the performance of the z-wave mesh. FAQ: How to improve the performance (responsiveness, speed) and reliability of a Z-Wave mesh