Wolves fighting for dominance as a “thing” came from observation of captive packs. Observation of genuinely wild packs has revealed that it is not, in fact, a “thing.”
Y’hear that, ya dumbass modern werewolf writers?
hear that, self-styled “alpha males”?
They weren’t even captive packs, they were a bunch of unrelated wolves shoved together in too-small a space.
So if you’re an ‘alpha wolf’ then you are, in point of fact, not the noble, fierce and imposing leader of a group who respects you, but a scared wild creature with no social support frantically lashing out at strangers to try and gain some semblance of control over a fundamentally uncontrollable environment?
Huh.
That would explain a few things.