The pack wheeled around as one, a tide shifting suddenly. Weakness. A body rejecting the organs that had been so brutally hijacked into it. Failing. Collapse.
Rage and hunger, red and black. Sharks circling around their fallen brother, though he was a brother no longer. Blood in the air, in mouths distended from monstrous fangs shredding gums, from muscles torn in wracking body spasms.
Meat.
Yellowing eyes glared in the half-light, the scent of black-rage-challenge momentarily eclipsing the redbloodmeat. The pack was in flux, no clear Alpha had established leadership. Lips, cracked and bloody already, peeled back from saliva-slick ivory fangs in feral grins. Snarls and guttural howls of challenge swelled. The room was a maelstrom of scent and sound, blood-rage-challenge-meat-MINE. Muscles bunched, taut steel cables about to snap the second the tension was released. Testosterone flooded the air. This wasn't just about meat. This was a challenge for leadership of the pack, the definitive fight to establish status for the rest of their lives.
The tension finally broke. Fingers hooked into claws, the rising chorus of howls rang off the stone walls as brothers and packmates threw themselves at one another. And as they clashed, a storm broke upon them. Grey clouds, cold iron and the scent of the bitter, snow-laced tundra air trailed in the wake of the Other as he moved into the heart of the conflict. Power-armoured gauntlets and boots lashed out, cuffing heads and throwing bodies forcibly into the walls. Ribs and skulls cracked under the force of his assault. Some of the pack tried to regroup, to work together and take him from behind, but he wheeled about easily before they could even launch their attack, staring them down with a steel glare.
He was Alpha.
The challenge subsided, quelled in the unquestioning superiority of the Long Fang now standing before them. The aspirants pulled themselves to their feet, nursing fractured or dislocated limbs, offering hands to those who were slower off the floor. Shame, hot and bitter, welled in their hearts. His disgust was palpable. He stood silent for another long moment, before curling his lip in a low snarl.
"You are weak. All of you. You must master the beast, it must never, NEVER master you."
He turned on his heel, easily lifting the prone body of their fallen brother over one shoulder as he stormed from the room. A moment later, the slam of a steel blast-door rang through the corridors. Then silence. None of them looked at the others as they filtered from the central room, back to their respective cells. Nothing else was said as they paced back through the corridors, the reproval of the Battle-Brother ringing in their ears.
Nothing more needed to be said.
