Dust stayed eerily calm through her rage but as soon as she told them to go his nose went to the ground and he was running, clashing through the undergrowth. Tail waving behind him to get the lower ranked Redfern and Iron to follow. Who were running at his heels.Stream's eyes slanted as his last words caught up with her brain. "We never recovered Dotpup?" Her rising tone was laced with savage disbelief. "You mean to say....the whole reason we involved ourselves in the war is still in the paws of the enemy?!" She slowly backed away from the free, her head climbing to a far rise above her hunched shoulders. Her voice was coldly calm as she continued her rhetorical questioning of their incomplete retreat. "If that's true then, that we left the pup behind, then our Alpha died for nothing." Her pulled lips began to reveal a fiercely clenched jaw. "All of the others and my missing sister most likely died for a pup who's now an orphan and still outside our borders?!" Her flanks shook, filtering the enraged breaths as they quickened. "WHAT KIND OF IDIOTS ARE YOU?!" Her eyes flamed their way not only across their shocked faces, but scorched every muzzle in camp. "ALL OF YOU." None dared meet her eyes as the passed over like an airborne wildfire, igniting their fury on whatever face unlucky enough not to duck. But it wasn't the strength of her anger that shocked them so- it was the fact that Stream, their perpetually collected Beta, was in a rage, and a justifiable one at that.
Suddenly, she fell back into her own legs, something new and unexpected contorting her distressed mien. "What kind of idiot am I?" The sudden redirection of blame sang her that she was immediately contrite from her ill choice of chastisement. They all had lost so much. It was utterly wrong to suggest that she'd lost the most, and so prematurely, too. They'd only just left the battlefield- half of the wounded were still making their way back. No one would be able to fully plumb the amount of casualties for many restless days. To force more fault onto them....
Bouncing back from her dissociative stances, Stream recovered the best she could her assertive stability. "Where is the dog that insisted we retrieve this pup in the first place?" Her eyes narrowed as they searched the pack's diminished and even more so tattered ranks. "Where is Coal?"
She spun back to face Redfern and his wary comrades. "And you. Go get that pup. Now."
~
Lickpup unexpectedly crept closer to Stream "They didn`t get Dotpup? But- But- then why?" She whimpered in a bare whisper