Redhawk Caldera Peel off her face and frantically chew her eyes [m]

This is set a few hours after "Kamikaze," which isn't finished yet. If any affected parties want me to tweak the assumptions made here, please just drop me a line. One last twist...

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: we'll be dealing with a headless corpse in here!

With the threat eliminated, the caldera's collective attention turned to Wildfire. For a split second, Peregrine feared the worst: that his little girl had quickly perished during the struggle. But it turned out that his Alpha and Beta females hadn't given Junior the chance to deal a fatal blow. The puppy was definitely injured, though as long as they kept Wildfire's wounds clean, they appeared more than survivable. Peregrine nearly sobbed when he realized he hadn't gotten her killed after all.

They quickly moved the injured child to the nearest shelter: her beloved badger den. The pack was loath to leave her side, her parents in particular. Peregrine became the definition of a helicopter parent, not only to Wildfire but her brother and sister as well. He had really fucked up by bringing Junior around them. He could have lost all of them. He hovered over each of the pups, fussing over and repeatedly apologizing to them in low murmurs. He ignored his own wounds; the pain was just punishment for his grave folly.

Only after several hours did Peregrine even think about Junior's cadaver. Making sure that someone stayed with Wildfire, the Alpha male excused himself to return to the scene of the crime. He would have to deal with the body, namely because it was fouling the heart of the pack's rendezvous site. Peregrine was the type to bury his dead, though Junior did not belong to him and he honestly didn't care what happened to her remains. She had ceased to mean anything to him the moment she had attempted to murder her baby sister in cold blood.

When he arrived at the clearing, the Alpha male froze as he stared at Junior's corpse. It wasn't the sight of the bloody, butchered body that gave him pause. It wasn't the fact that the decapitated carcass had once been his baby girl too and that he had played a part in her death (morbidly bringing matters full circle). No... it was the fact that Junior's head was nowhere to be found.