Elijah. Alessandro. Samira. Rafael. Ren.
The five with teeth. The Wolf would keep them close. Feed them charm, mystery, a flicker of warmth—enough to keep them circling. Enough to keep them predictable.
Camden and Anastasia? Potential. Not dangerous—yet. But worth watching.
Mateo, though?
He wore his bravado like armor, convinced it made him untouchable. It didn't. He was the weak link in the Lions. And the Wolf had no intention of snapping that chain. Not yet.
No.
They'd let Mateo think he was in charge. Let him puff up, play leader, draw fire.
He'd be much easier to use and break that way.
Then came Elijah's team—the Serpents.
A strange group. Slick and coiled, every one of them hiding something just beneath the skin. Even from a glance, they moved differently. Like they weren't just playing a game—they were trained for it.
Ilira Kelmendi claimed to be the second-oldest contestant at thirty. But that was the first lie out of her mouth. She wasn't thirty. Not even close. And Ilira Kelmendi? Please. That name was chosen from a stack of passports. Convenient. Unmemorable. False. A schoolteacher, she said. Worked with small children. Cute. But the hard glint in her eyes didn't speak of patience and crayons. It spoke of strategy and survival. There was a lethal sharpness to her that screamed conditioning. Military, likely. Navy if the Wolf had to wager. She moved like the ocean had taught her discipline.
Said she was from Tirana, capital of Albania. But her accent wasn't inland—it had salt in it. Durrës, coastal-born. The real Albanians would've spotted that slip, but Ilira bet on global ignorance. The Wolf didn't grant that luxury.
Tojo Rakotoarisoa came next. Said he was twenty, which made him technically younger than the Wolf—though not by much. And that part might've actually been true. But the name? Too clean. Too rehearsed. He wore it like a borrowed shirt. Yes, Malagasy for sure, but the accent wasn't from Tamatave like he claimed. That was a central lilt—Tana, Antananarivo, the capital.
Still, some parts rang real. Said he was studying to become a teacher, and that one hit the gut differently. That wasn't a lie. There was a gentleness in him, a wide-eyed belief that the world still made sense. He hadn't learned to weaponize his truth yet. A rare thing here. Maybe dangerous, maybe doomed.
Choi Minho was third. Another East Asian, and this one had confidence slicked across him like cologne. Said he was from Seoul, 22 years old, a bartender. But his _Daegu_ accent was thick enough to stir with a stick, and once again—age was impossible to pin down. He looked twenty-something, but the Wolf had met too many Koreans to take those numbers at face value. Mid-thirties, easily.
And bartender? Laughable. The way his eyes scanned the room—it wasn't to find a tip or pour a drink. That was a systems mind. Cold, calculating. STEM background for sure. Engineer or physicist, maybe something darker. He hadn't even tried to make the lie believable. That in itself was telling. Arrogance? Or confidence that no one would look close enough?
Klara Hoffman closed out the team. And unlike the others—she didn't stink of falsehood. That was her name. And she was from Berlin, Germany. Even the claim of being a neuroscientist had weight to it. That was the kind of job you don't fake unless you're an idiot or a gambler—and she didn't strike the Wolf as either.
Still, her age? She said twenty-six. She was at least thirty-two, maybe a shade more, and wearing it well. But it was a small lie, and in this game, a small lie was practically honesty.
Then came Rafael's team—the Sharks.
And with them came the stink of overcompensation. They were the loudest, flashiest, and by far the sloppiest liars in the entire arena. Sharks? Barely. More like guppies in leather jackets.
Eko Hidayat claimed to be twenty-eight, from Bali, Indonesia. Said he worked security at a resort.
Triple lie. That wasn't a Bali accent. That was Jakarta all day—urban edges, clipped syllables. And the age? Sure, he looked worn down, like life had rolled over him a few times—but that didn't make him older. That made him young and burned out. Twenty-one tops, probably younger. Security guard? No way. He had the twitchy attention span of someone raised on algorithms. Finance, likely. Something fast-paced and merciless. Numbers, not nightsticks.
Dominic Bauer claimed twenty-three. Said he was a weightlifting competitor from Klagenfurt, Austria.
Weightlifting? With a body that looked like it came from a soccer pitch? And the accent—Vienna. Plain as daylight. Not even trying to mask it. Klagenfurt was a good distance off, and no one from there sounded like that. But more than anything, the Wolf saw it in Dominic's eyes: he was a kid. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. And terrified. Like someone's little brother wandered onto a battlefield and was too proud to admit it.
Victoria Kjeldsen had her story wrapped up in a neat little bow: twenty-two, romance writer, from Helsingør, Denmark.
Sounded poetic, right? Like she'd walked out of a Shakespearean sonnet. But the Wolf didn't buy it for a second. That accent was Copenhagen, thick and familiar, not the literary dreamland she painted. And a romance writer? No. The way she calculated every word, every blink, every breath—she wrote code, not prose. Probably worked in a lab or behind a glowing screen somewhere in an underground data hub. Late twenties, too. Not quite thirty, but nearly there.
Beatrice Fairbourne brought up the rear. Supposedly the youngest in her team—nineteen, flipping burgers in York, England.
Except she didn't have a York accent. She had a surgically polished London one, the kind that cost money to learn. That face might've fooled others—soft, cherubic, clean as porcelain—but the Wolf wasn't buying it. She was older than she let on. Mid-twenties. Twenty-four to twenty-six, with good skincare and a practiced pout. Burger flipper? Not a chance. The way she studied people's faces screamed numbers. Probably a cryptographer. Or a mathematician pretending to be harmless. That made her the most dangerous Shark in the tank after Rafael.
Then came Samira's team—the Bears.
The only group with more women than men. That alone made them stand out. But what really made the Wolf pause was the weight they carried—not physically, but in silence. This team wasn't the loudest or the boldest, but there was calculation in how they held themselves. Not born leaders. Survivors.
Asha Mehra was the first to speak. Said she was twenty-nine, from Mumbai, India, and sold lingerie for a living.
And that was adorable.
The Wolf didn't laugh out loud, but the smirk was involuntary. Asha wasn't twenty-nine. She was pushing forty, at least. Not that it showed—she wore her years like silk. That in itself was dangerous. Age, to someone like her, wasn't a weakness—it was camouflage. And lingerie merchant? Please. She had the hands of someone who lived under fluorescence and microscopes. Her posture screamed academic, not retail. Research scientist. Probably biology or chemistry. Maybe pharmacology. And whatever she was studying, it wasn't push-up bras.
Maria Sokołowska came next, with her soft voice and harder eyes. Said she was twenty-six, from Kraków, Poland, and made indie sculptures.
Every part of that was wrong.
First, the name. Fabricated. One of those common-enough Polish names to pass undetected if you didn't listen closely. Second, Kraków? Not even close. That was a Warsaw accent—central and clipped. And her age? The Wolf would've bet good money she hadn't hit twenty-one. She had the fragility of someone still learning what the world actually was. And sculptor? Definitely not. Her hands didn't have the calluses or the subtle injuries of someone who wrestled with stone or metal.
She was a student. Likely knee-deep in machine learning, cybersecurity, or AI frameworks. Too smart to be caught off guard, too young to hide it well.
Tomás Morales was the third. Twenty-four, from Santiago, Chile.
The Wolf wanted to call bullshit on the name—mostly because it had become too famous thanks to pop culture. But everything about Tomás checked out.
The name? Real. The age? Accurate. The city? Absolutely.
He claimed to be a Pentester—an ethical hacker. That, too, was true. And that kind of honesty in here? That was either suicidal or admirable. Maybe both. The Wolf respected it. Didn't mean it was smart. But it was rare. Tomás played clean in a world designed for dirt, and that took a special kind of courage—or naivety. Still, the Wolf liked him. That didn't happen often.