The Bracken Woods Apathy

The young doe, heavy and thrashing, was kept weighted down by the male wolf clutching the rigid arch of her spine. He kept a grip on her that was as firm as a lion's, and she stumbled once, twice, three times before the overbearing weight of both hunters felled the brackenwood deer. He ripped into the doe's fleshy rump, swallowing a mass quantity of flesh without much regard for choking. The prey was very much alive, kicking and crying, attempting to fight away the shadow near her neck and unable to guard against the beast on her back. Warbone was not consciously aware that the onyx Amazon was dispatching the catch, draining her with life-taking fangs; he only knew that the body beneath him was weakening, and her fight was ebbing like the tide. Dying.

Warbone continued to eat. Alive or not, he was desperate to sate his craving belly. In his singular status, he often chased larger prey—and though he could not take down such a thing on his own, the brute was almost always certain to take a mouthful of meat with him. Sometimes it worked out fortuitously: injuring an ungulate to the point where it died later after exertion. He only need follow. A manifestation of death when it follows.

He was vaguely aware now that the deer had stopped moving completely, and he was on his third or fourth mouthful before the black she-wolf would detach herself from the certainly dead creature and find what he was doing to their bounty. She would either join in the voracious activity and treat herself to the belly, or find affront in the starved male's lack of manners. Neither of which mattered to a feral, dauntless wolf as he.