𝑀𝑂𝑅𝑇𝐴𝐿𝐴 - S.S.

{five;}

There are eight of them.

Lined up in a neat little row in an old abandoned warehouse in the northernmost town of Beacon county, were eight yellow-eyed betas. Shaking and beaten, they sit bound at the wrist by rope slicked with wolfsbane, gagged and on their knees at his feet.

He kicks the one closest to him in the stomach and relishes in the yelp she lets out as she keels over.

"One of you mutts are gonna tell me where your Alpha is," he states, and he's confident, like he's playing a game he's already won a hundred times before.

Rightfully so, because he knows who'll talk already just by the look of them.

He grabs the dirty blonde hair of the beta directly in front of him, crouching down and pulling her head back to look at him.

Her head is tilted back as far as it'll go, her throat bared and he can hear her growl through the tape across her mouth.

He uses his free hand to tear it off.

"Is it going to be you?" He asks, knows it won't be.

She spits in his face — or tries to — bares too-sharp teeth at him as she snaps out, "fuck you," rough and bitter, as if she's trying to cut him with it.

He tuts, yanks on her hair again with a gloved hand, "you know, that's a real shame, don't you think, Ricky?"

He looks up to where his brother stands at the other end of the row of betas.

The man spins a blade aimlessly around his fingers, he hums in agreement, watches as Mietek pulls a pistol from the holster on his thigh and presses it up roughly under the young girls jaw.

"Because if you don't have any information for me," Mietek raises his voice, makes sure the squirming betas know this goes for every one of them, "then we have no use for you."

The girl glares at him with defiant eyes, he stares back blankly as he removes his hand from the back of her head and pulls the trigger.

The bullet rings out loud in the empty warehouse, as is the sound of her body slumping to the floor.

He cocks his gun, checking the chamber indicator — not that he needs to — as he takes a couple steps back.

A few of the wolves scream against their gags, tugging on the ropes that bind them with renewed fervour.

None of them will make it out of the warehouse alive, but not all of them know it yet.

Erick saunters over to the wolf farthest down the line, the eldest as far as Mietek can tell, a middle aged man — a father, if the trembling little boy at his side is anything to go by.

The man glares, straight backed and courageous as Erick approaches him, but the fear in his eyes is blatant, even from where Mietek is stood.

He'll beg for his sons life, but he won't break loyalty to his Alpha, they never do.

It's always the young ones that talk, the ones that don't realise they were dead the second the Mortel brothers walked through the bullet torn metal doors.

Erick's always been one to drag these things out though and Mietek isn't bored enough to put a stop to it yet, so he lets him play his game.

He watches as Erick brings the tip of his wolfsbane slicked blade to the bearded man's throat, pulling the tied gag from his mouth as he asks, "what about you, are you going to tell me where your Alpha has wandered off to?"

The man grits his teeth, sneers "go to hell, you sick fuck," and wow, he's bolder than Mietek gave him credit for. Or maybe just more stupid.