I am one with the animal inside

Alastor was wildly confused by the enthusiasm and amusement Scylla showed not only in tagging along to be a part of this murderfest but also at his own warning and attempts to look out for her wellbeing. He looked to the tiny pixie of a wolf at his side when she patted his paw and turned the question back on him. What the fuck did that even mean? She was a weird wolf, but Alastor did not get much time to linger on that thought before she was pressing an innocent kiss to his cheek that momentarily dumbfounded the giant brute before off she went traipsing straight into the fray. For a moment, Alastor watched the scene unfold before him while Scylla wove a tail and acted her tail off, luring the poachers into a false sense of dominance and security. Ordinarily he would have been worried about her going straight in like that, but he reminded himself that Scylla was not a child, nor was she his child. He was no more responsible for her than he was anyone else.

The dire brute saw the way those scavengers looked at her; lecherous gleams in their sickening gazes and sharklike grins on their faces. Ebony lips peeled back from deadly fangs. None of them would get their chance. When the time was right and the wolves began to encircle Scylla and put their paws on her, Alastor rose from his hiding spot and strode into the camp behind their quarry. Despite his size and bulk, Alastor demonstrated his skills as a natural hunter, moving like a silent shadow in the dark, only the occasional flicker of firelight showing he had moved at all. Like a scene out of a horror movie, the light would illuminate his steady approach towards the wolf closest to him like a freeze frame, appearing closer and closer until he was right behind the much smaller, scrawnier wolf. A runner in the hunting pack, designed to tire their prey but not to bring it down. He never stood a chance.

As soon as Scylla made her move and cut the throat of the ringleader, the other wolves jerked back in shock and anger, fangs bared at the tiny slate fae. "Get he-" The brute's voice was cut off with a gurgling gasp as one giant black paw wrapped tight around his throat, and then sharp razors burrowed into his flesh, piercing meat and veins. The wolf glanced up in horror, seeing the hulking dire brute looming over him like the angel of death. Alastor snarled, squeezed his paw tighter until he felt tendons pop in the wolf's throat while he gagged and choked, eyes wide in abject horror, unable to scream for help or beg for mercy. Alastor savored the look of terror on the wolf's face just before he parted his jaws and clamped them down around the smaller brute's head, engulfing the upper part of his foe's cranium in his maw. The wolf tried to scream again, a gurgling feral sound of panic all that came out while he kicked and flailed, fighting for his life, but it was far too late.

With a sickening crunch of teeth and bone, Alastor snapped his jaws closed, using his unnaturally strong muscles to fully bisect the poacher's head and rip the upper part of his skull away in a spray of gore and gray matter. The wolf's body jerked and instantly went limp as nerves lost contact with a brain that was no longer there. By now, the other three had noticed the monstrous wolf behind them and what he had done, gazing at Alastor in sheer terror like they had seen the devil himself. "What the fuck?!" one of them shouted. Alastor responded only by tossing the limp body to the ground and spitting the bloody pulp of lupine skull from his mouth. The coppery taste of fresh blood on his tongue triggered his primal senses, and the feral animal inside his brain broke free of its cage. Eyes widened, pupils dilated, and Alastor reared up to his full height, blood dripping from parted jaws as he eyed the wolves like a predator studying his prey. The animal was loose.

Finding the giant wolf to be the greater threat, two of the three remaining poachers diverted their attention to Alastor. Both of these wolves were larger than their friend—not quite the leader, but definitely part of the takedown crew. They tried to strafe Alastor, going in different directions while the third tended to the much smaller Scylla, falsely assuming she would be an easier target. Alastor's gaze was laser focused on the wolves, watching them move about him until they had separated themselves for him. Alastor snarled and rushed the smaller of the two, immediately throwing his weight against the wolf with jaws snapping ferociously at his face, head, and neck, biting at any part of his opponent he could reach. The wolf tried to fight back with snarls and snaps of his own, but he was no match for Alastor's sheer size and strength.

Alastor continued to push the wolf back and back, driving him backwards until the wolf hit one of the stone pillars. With his back to a wall, all Alastor had to do was find his opening. That opening came when the wolf foolishly tried to lunge for him in an attempt to push him back. Alastor intercepted the wolf's bite with a giant paw, lodging his paw in the wolf's jaws. His foe's fangs sank into his digits, but Alastor barely felt a thing. The flashes of pain felt like rushes of ecstasy coursing through his system, the agony an aphrodisiac of the highest order to the feral animal. This was what it meant to be alive!

Alastor grinned, a menacing flash of his lethal teeth. The wolf realized his mistake too late. He couldn't withdraw, he couldn't get away. Alastor had sacrificed a few bites to his leg to ensure a solid grasp on his foe. Sharp siam claws extended from his toes and gripped the wolf's cheeks and jaws from around the bite, gripping the panicking wolf in an inescapable hold. The wolf thrashed, trying to pull away, but Alastor held his foe's head firm. With animalistic snarls, Alastor jerked the wolf towards him, then slammed his paw forward to bash his opponent's head against the unrelenting stone pillar, shivering with an almost carnal delight at the fleshy thud sound it made when the wolf's skull hit the stone.

The first hit dazed the wolf, his eyes rolling in his head. The second hit made the wolf's body jerk and twitch. The third hit left behind a splatter of blood on the stone. Then came the forth. The fifth. The sixth. Each blow left more blood on the stone and less skull on the back of the wolf's head until there was a sickening squishing sound with each strike. But before he could finish the second wolf off, his friend leaped onto Alastor's back, biting and clawing at the dire wolf. Alastor snarled and dropped the twitching wolf to the ground, bucking and thrashing to try and throw his new opponent off of his back and escape the fangs and claws that were tearing into his back.

"Alastor Mendacium"