Generally, no, you can't avoid the timeout. Never measured it myself, but feel free to do it. You can't enter the guild until the timeout passes. You can't circumvent it either. No quitting the game cleanly until it's over. Fighting NPCs is a much smaller timeout than fighting PCs.

If you have to drop link unexpectedly often, don't play char without chameleon/camo. That way you can always camo in the wilds and drop link. It's not 100%, but typically rangers and wood-elves don't attack other "wild" chars. Hide is less safe due to unpredictability of who will stumble into you, but next best thing if you can't play ranger or outlander.