76 One path to survival

Laune looked down at the wolves observing their futile efforts to escape from the hole in the ground.

The wolves who had been worn down from chasing the rabbit and then their efforts to escape from the hole began to panic further.

One wolf came up with his own thoughts since the leader was believed to be dead. "If we continue to climb out then we will be easy targets for the enemy, we could just stay here and wait it out until they lose interest."

If the wolves stayed there then the enemy would have to come to them and give them the advantage or the enemy would leave after getting bored.

The other wolves paused a moment before nodding in response.

Unfortunately for them...

Laune watched them with emotionless eyes, noticing that they decided to stay where they were there was no trace of surprise or anger towards their actions.

Almost as if she had already expected this to happen.

She began to speak as her voice sounded very calm and relaxed. "If you want to see who can wait longer I have more patience than you. You can not last long before you will start to need food or water."

The wolves bodies froze in place after hearing her words, she was correct.

If the wolves became hungry while trapped the only way to overcome their hunger would be to eat one another.

Doing so would decrease their numbers just to stall for time, would they still be able to hold out until the enemy gave up.

The enemy sounded well prepared so there were chances that they brought food with them before encountering them.

Seeing that her words were working she continued. "The longer you stay down there the easier it will be to kill all of your pack. I am sure some will come soon after noticing something is wrong, there is only one way in and out of the valley and they are now trapped. The longer you wait to climb out of there the more lives I take and the larger my food supplies are."

This was a completely shameless threat towards them but Laune spoke calmly without a trace of shame on her face.

Now the wolves began to know why the tiger above them was so calm, this whole plan that was executed was done in order to split the alpha from the pack, use the hole in the ground to trap the strongest wolves that had any ability to fight.

The next part of the plan relied heavily on Laune maintaining the high ground and fighting the escaping wolves one on one.

So if the wolves did not try to escape then she would have to motivate them into doing so, with the lives of their pack that could not defend themselves.

There was nothing stopping her from killing them at any time, any of the remaining wolves without any fighting ability could wander close by.

While they would starve if they waited she could solve her hunger with their pack members, even if they eat one of themselves when they get hungry it would make no difference.

All creatures have the will to preserve their own lives, there are exceptions that involve others sacrificing their lives to save another because of love or friendship.

The wolf pack had always been a close family so of course they would want to save the others, preserving their own lives also came into their minds briefly but the situation would not allow them to do anything but what the enemy wanted.

The enemy was basically taunting them like 'I can kill you anytime, want to protect your family then fight! Want to stay down there, no problem I can wait but your family will not last long.'

Facing this crisis they could only grit their teeth in anger, one of the wolves finally spoke up after a long period of silence. "There is only one chance to survive now, I hate to admit it but we have no hope of survival if we stay where we are. I will go up first and try to delay the tiger, hopefully they are only fighting alone. If I can survive long enough then more of us can get out and help me to take the tiger down."

The other wolves thought it over for a moment before agreeing with the plan and began to act on it.

The wolf began to slowly and carefully climb up again and approached the top.

Just as his front paws touched the top of the hole and were placed on the ground a pair of nails pierced through the top of his paws holding them in place.

With a struggle the wolf tried to free themselves but it was a useless act as their lower body was still trying to climb up still.

The wolf tried to pull his head closer towards the pair of paws pinning him in place to take a bite out of them.

Unfortunately the tiger watched her preys every movement and did not allow him to free himself or cause herself any harm.

She lowered her head and bit into the top of the wolfs head increasing her jaw strength, releasing one of the wolfs paws she turned the wolf onto its side and let go of the wolfs head.

She then bit into the wolfs neck and dragged the wolfup out of the hole before increasing her jaw strength to crush the wolfs windpipe. [1]

Shortly after confirming her kill she went back to perform the same actions on the others who tried to escape.

The last ones who tried seemed to put up less of a fight when they got caught because of witnessing the same scene happening one after another to their companions.

Every one of them died tragic deaths, leaving a lone tiger overlooking their dead bodies.

[1] Throat clamp is method of subduing often seen in predatory felids and occasionally canids and hyaenids. It involves the predator grasping the throat of the prey and clamping tight so that the windpipe is either crushed or blocked. Cats use this to kill prey while dogs and hyenas use this to weaken the prey before eating it, generally alive. It's more often used than the muzzle clamp and is generally safer, though slower. It is usually and most effective when positioned as near to the mandible as the carnivore can get. Between the larynx and the jaw, the windpipe is surrounded with less cartilage and is more malleable, while lower down, near the chest, the passageway would be increasingly harder to collapse, so the throat clamp is usually positioned high up on the animal's neck.