76 One path to survival (2/2)

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.