Bramblepoint Sweet child o' mine

Shrike didn't waste a moment; once Elwood gave him the go, he nodded briskly and set off at a swift walk, moving into a trot whenever the borders were bare of scent and slowing when he crossed a scent trail. He marked the borders again here and there to make certain that all wolves knew that this was a well guarded pack, but apparently it hadn't been guarded quite well enough to keep their young ones safe. He felt fairly certain that should he ever have pups, they would never, ever be left alone.

Once or twice he caught an jnfamiliar scent, but it was one of the wolves who had visited the pack before and it had been explained to him that thrse scents belonged to family members. It was only when he caught a new scent that he stopped. It was of a male, and definitely not one he had scented before, and it crossed the borders with no escort. 

He tilted his head back and howled, signalling for Elwood that he had found a suspicious scent. Then he picked up a lope and followed the hauntingly fresh scent into the pack lands, breath catching in his throat as he caught Lucy's scent as well, on branches as he passed. She would have been carried, so the stories were matching up. 

And then he found it. The place where the two scents intertwined in their fateful meeting place, and from that place the lone male's scent veered off in another direction- the way he had entered the packlands. Not wasting a moment, he confirmed;

This was him. This was the abductor. And after he howled to Elwood, to get rhe anxious father hot on tge trail, he too bolted for the borders, hoping to join the Beta on his mission to find little Lucy.