The ice goes crack

Rebel didn’t offer any sort of resistance or protest when Maverick yeeted her up onto the ice and told her to go to the shore, which was the best call the waterlogged pup could have made. Bobbing in the inky black water of the lake, Mav grit his teeth to keep them from chattering, fighting to keep his muscles from locking up while he kicked his legs to keep himself afloat and above the water’s surface. Once his daughter had gotten far enough away from the hole in the ice, the father once again tried to hoist himself up out of the water, paws scrabbling at the ice to try to find anything to get a hold of, but there was nothing on the slick surface. Again the white wolf went plunging back into the frigid waters with a yelp, fully submerging into the darkness and swallowing a mouthful of the icy liquid on his way down. His lungs burned, his muscles ached and screamed against the effort, but the adrenaline in his bloodstream kept him alert and moving.

Kicking his way back toward the hole in the ice, Maverick burst through the surface with a gasp for air, coughing and sputtering as he grabbed for the edge of the ice. This time, he curled his body around until his hind paws caught the underside of the ice, claws digging into the ice and giving him the leverage he needed to propel himself up over the ice. Forepaws latched onto the ice with sharp claws, the half-frozen brute grunting with the strain of hoisting himself up out of the arctic water. Water and ice crystals sluiced from his fur, freezing to his coat in the bitter cold as he crawled up onto the ice away from the hole, gasping for breath. His heart pounded in his chest a million miles an hour. The real fear that had gripped his heart was slowly beginning to melt away as he came down from his adrenaline-fueled high, only now realizing in the aftermath of the chaos how close he and Rebel had come to being lost in the abyss of the black lake.

Maverick laid out on the frozen lake for a while longer, shivering and breathing deep while his body tried to recover from its cold shock. He knew he needed to move before he got hypothermic, but even just shivering hurt all over. Eventually he managed to rally his willpower and push himself to his paws, shuffling and trudging across the ice, aching all over like he'd just fought a dozen grizzly bears. The father made his way over to his children, jaws clenched against the cold that buffeted his body. "C'mon. We g-gotta get you b-both out of th-the cold," he told them, doing his best to keep the shiver out of his voice and failing. Nudging his pups with his snout, Mav ushered them back towards the palace where they could warm up. He and Rebel needed to get dry and warm fast, before they suffered any permanent damage from the cold.

"Maverick"