Heron Lake Plateau Rock and a hard place.

As luck would have it (or maybe not), Raven wasn't far from where the howl went up. In a desperate bid to escape the afternoon's heat, Quixote had lurched into the den and offered to take up Dad Duty for a while. Raven had agreed readily and, after making sure the pups were all fed and happy, she took off for the outer perimeter of their packlands. It had been some while since she'd last gathered medicinal plants, and she coupled that with patrolling to knock out two birds with one stone.

She hadn't had much luck so far — the heat was too intense for some of the specific flowers she had hoped to find — so she was passing the time sniffing around the boundaries of her territory and refreshing markers where it was needed when an unknown voice rent the air. It didn't take her long to find the stranger, a large, stocky she-wolf painted in earthen tones with a saddle of vibrant scarlet on her back. The smell of blood hung in the air around her, cloying and metallic, and the alpha became aware that the female was wounded. Her body language was neutral as she approached, though there was a wary hardness to her gaze as she asked simply, "Yes?"