The Tangle but if this changed your life did you have one before

@Eske

winter is only one of caw’s favorite seasons for what it drives wolves to.
 
he finds many much more willing to fight when there is food on the line, and though the snow is beginning to melt into spring its effects will not disappear so quickly. caw knows this as he knows few other things. and after it, as always, comes children, and they are so much easier to take then adults. to fight is one thing he enjoys; to control is another.
 
it is yet early morning. there is the remnants of a deer’s body practically under caw’s feet, the protruding ribs all but picked clean by scavengers, the bare remainder of thawing meat underneath freshly gnawed apart. there are toothmarks sunk into caw’s muzzle, scored faintly along one shoulder, and the half-starved coywolf who has caused them struggles weakly, snapping and pawing at caw’s chest and legs with blunt claws.
 
his own teeth are sunk deep into its throat, and the taste of blood and the sharp sting of fresh wounds only spurs him on. his tail wags excitedly behind him, ears cupped forward and eyes gleaming, murmuring in soft, cheerful latin through a mouthful of fur and flesh. the sun rises higher, and eventually, with slow inevitability, the last trickle of life bleeds away beneath his fangs.
 
caw always savors death the way few are able. he can feel the moment the other wolf dies – the moment the muscles resisting him lose all tension. there is always an abruptness to it, an abruptness that grants him one of the few periods of true emotion he ever has.
 
his ears flicker faintly, and his jaws part, and the wolf – mouth still wide, teeth still gleaming in the light – slumps to the ground. avis flutters down from caw’s shoulder, shooting him a brief look that he ignores in favor of lapping at the wounds on his muzzle. it shoots delicate tendrils of pain through his body, and he grins, dripping red across the patchy snow.
 
“digna,” he trills, as closely to respectful as he ever gets, and lowers his head to tear its stomach open. thick blood spills into the grass and snow, so dark it is almost black, and avis joins him, stripping fur and flesh away as caw prods his muzzle into the gash, searching out the organs within.