The weather was warm, the pack was fed... the pups were well. Ah yes, it was a good day. The young hunter had slipped away to the borders (something she found herself doing every now and again) to check for scent trails: prey and otherwise. She'd been dutiful since speaking with @Mapplethorpe a couple weeks ago and doubts about just how useful she was to the pack were dwindling after that last hunt. She was becoming a proper pack wolf again and she loved every second of it. To top it off, she'd caught the scent of another she-wolf at last in the pack! For the longest time, it was only she and @Naira - it'd been rather a strange affair, being the only females in the pack. But that was changing - would change. Naira's precious daughters would add to the feminine numbers. Asta couldn't wait to see the young wolves they would turn into... to think, she'd get to watch those darlings grow up!

As she wandered further from the territory's heart, Asta became more alert, her yellow eyes scanning her surroundings. It was scent rather than sight that first alerted her to the presence of another; another woman, past the borders... an intruder! Her instinct upon smelling a wolf who obviously didn't belong to the Pass this far within the borders was to tense: her step paused as her tail went straight behind her and her hackles rose. She angled toward the smell until a silvered woman came into view. She was on her side, nursing a pup... but if it disarmed Asta at all, it showed only for a brief moment before the young wolf bared her fangs in a vicious snarl.

"Stop what you're doing stranger! You're tresspassing; explain your presence, or face the consequences!" barked Asta, startlingly fierce for those who knew the good-natured girl. Face the consequences? Oh, there would already be consequences, surely. Asta had good enough reason to be so brittle: no stranger had any right to be here, especially this time of year. How had this woman found the pass? Chance wandering? Unlikely... but Asta wasn't taking chances: this was an intruder and should be dealt with accordingly. Had the other woman been any bigger, Asta would've immediately called for help and fled. As it was, the other was only a little larger than the hunter: Asta thought she could take her on if a fight broke out. On the other hand, Asta remained aware of the thing at the other's breast: a small child, no older - possibly even the same age - as Aponi and Nova. Asta advanced no further as she waited for her command to be followed and an explanation to be given. All the while her tail was held rigid behind her and her fur bristled: the threat was obvious. The other woman should never have ignored the markers...

It was somewhere between pity for the small child and uncertainty that she really could take on the other wolf that had kept Asta from outright attacking the stranger. As the young woman would soon find, however, her choice not to attack outright may have been a smart one.

The silver female shifted, clearly to defend the allochthonous pup. Fine, Asta supposed she had asked a little much, to separate the little one from... his mother? That seemed likely. At least until the other woman spoke, giving a name before Asta could even ask for it. She had asked for an explanation, not a name. Asta watched, her gaze steely, but faltering toward curiosity the more the other woman said, and finally, her last phrase: travel buddy. Okay, so... not her pup? If what the woman said was true, then... that would make sense. Naira had her own puppies to worry about. She didn't need some stray!

"Oookay. That would explain why you don't smell like us and how you found the Pass," growled the young woman slowly, puzzling it out. It didn't make sense. "No one's even mentioned you. I've certainly never heard of you," she continued, not quite certain what to make of this situation. If Sagacity had said anything else, Asta could've attempted to drive her away. But this... this was a little different. Complicated. Asta couldn't judge if the other woman was lying or not. And it was, she supposed, possible Sagacity had been part of the pack before Asta came along. ...which would make the other wolf her superior, she grudgingly admitted. But until she knew for certain, she wasn't going to give.

"Don't move," Asta said, hardly sounding authoritative as she eyeballed the other woman long enough to make sure she wasn't going to lunge while Asta lifted her muzzle and released a long, high note: she required the help of her own superiors: the Lady @Naira or @Mapplethorpe - someone in a position to handle this conundrum. When she was done, Asta fixed her gaze on the other woman again, her posture still a little rigid. "If what you say is true... then I'll acknowledge you are my superior. But you've got nothing to back that up but your own word. I've called for my leaders," she informed the other woman evenly, just in case she hadn't already figured it out. Asta left her own name unspoken for the moment, preferring to remain silent until she was certain of this other wolf and her... travel-buddy. Asta's brows furrowed as she pointed her muzzle toward the suckling pup, "Whose...?" she asked, softer than her prior words - gentle even. She left the whole question unsaid, but it was clear she meant to ask if the child belong to Sagacity.

It wasn't as if Asta really desired to keep a rank that was never hers. But with no direct word from Naira - the only other female apparently (at the time anyway) - it had been easy for Asta to assume a "normal" placement in the pack. That is, she would outrank newer females. But Sagacity presented an interesting wrinkle in Asta's presumed blanket of knowledge, and now the young woman was paying for it embarrassingly. The other woman rose and Asta's pelt prickled nervously. Her tongue darted out to wet her nose uncertainly as the other woman drew herself up fully. Asta could feel her courage waning, shrinking away from the fierce glare of the other woman.

Sagacity did carry herself like... like a superior. Confident. Like she should be here. And she did know where the Pass was... things Asta could cast aside if she really wanted to be blind to the truth. These were things that kept Asta standing firm in her place for what seemed a long time. But as Sagacity spoke, the younger woman began to visibly shrink to match her fleeing courage. Asta had suspected she'd be in trouble if Sagacity wasn't lying (and it was becoming clearer and clearer that she wasn't) and came into the Pass; she'd be in worse trouble if she'd allowed a stranger to traverse any further into the Pass. But now it was clear Sagacity knew Naira. Oh Lupus. Asta had made a mistake. As the realization dawned on the young wolf, her eyes widened - a tad fearfully perhaps - and her body began to curl and become like a stone dropping to the earth as she crouched. Her tail tucked and her ears flattened, though she couldn't quite get her fur to lie flat again.

When Asta spoke next, she nearly whimpered, like a child who knew she'd done wrong and would have to pay for the consequences, but wanted desperately not to sound like a fool, "I-I'm sorry," she managed initially, fighting to keep too much shame from slipping into her voice. "My name is Asta Fleetfoot; I came here a few months ago. I- there were no other females in the pack and I-" why was she explaining herself? No, she didn't need to do that. Promptly shutting her mouth, Asta changed gears, "It was a mistake." The young woman looked ready to flee if Sagacity should strike out at her, ready to flinch if she was to be harshly punished for this - an honest mistake. All the same, her yellow eyes betrayed a touch of bitterness at the other woman's harsh words: how was Asta supposed to know she was the beta!? That was hardly fair! But then, Asta should've known better than to think in terms of "fairness" out here of all places. Life had hardly been fair to her thus far.

It was a pure stroke of luck that @Datura and @Taima had been nearby when the call went up. A momentary stroke of frustration lanced through her gut but she pulled herself up, squalling daughters tumbling to the floor in her wake. She gave both a nudge of reassurance before exiting the den, a simple glance enough to let her son and his wife know that they would be required to linger a little longer. Perhaps a bit of a shock to the system at worst, best a bit of practice for things to come? she thought to herself with a small smirk. While she knew that her advisor would most likely beat her to the scene there had been a note of confusion in Asta’s call and Naira couldn’t help but wonder if one of their absentees had attempted to return unannounced. She kept her steps light and fluid as she moved down the Pass, bottling the frustration within. Would she care to listen to excuses offered? She guessed it depended on who it was that demanded her attention.

Approaching from the gatherings flank, concealed by errant boulders, it didn’t take long for the voices to come to her ears. Sagacity. There was not so much anger directed towards the girl as frustration. Her memory of their encounter after her attack, while a pleasant one, now left an odd taste in her mouth after such a lengthy absence (although admittedly, she did have need of her services again - almost urgently for she did not want to leave Borden in the dark with regards to the location of his missing daughter who now resided amongst their ranks).

Observing from her obscured position she spied the dark bundle at the scouts feet and for a moment, her lip drew back in anger. A million different scenarios sped through her head, each shot down as quickly as the last. When she had seen the woman last, there was no trace of scent on her body that would betray such an atrocity, and with the child being of a similar age to her own there would have been no hiding the tell-tale scent of children to come, had it been her own. But if it was not hers, then why was it here?

For a moment, the small blue eyes fell on hers and slowly her lip drew down. Even the commanding voice of Mapplethorpe was drowned out as she stared the young child down. In those tiny blue eyes she saw Adonis, thrown to the back of a hollow tree and left to what little chance he would have on his own, she saw Datura and Belladonna, left to fend for themselves in an empty den, and she saw Lily, her poor tiny daughter - lost somewhere on the far side of the mountain, never to be seen again. She even saw Taqqiq, her smaller red cousin, by all but blood, taken in by her aunt Blood and uncle Dash, after her aunts pack tried to kill her for desertion - and she knew that although the child was a stranger, that she would not allow any harm to come to him in her presence.

But she would hear Sagacity’s answer before making her own intentions known. Moving forward from her cover, her face as stony as the land that surrounded them, she brought herself to Mapplethorpe’s side, staying just a step back to indicate that he would be answered first. It needed to be established quickly that he was now her equal and she had every faith that he had the situation well under control. She did not look at the child again, merely waited to hear her scout’s answer.