NOVEL NEXT Chapter 62: Wait, what?
Warning: discussion of lion infanticide
After admiring the beginnings of his mane, Leo moved to find a shady spot not too far from the water. Closing his eyes, he slept in the sun, knowing that his keen senses would detect anything coming too close.
He slept for a little while, feeling the heat of the day reduce little by little, the sun creeping ever closer to the horizon. He didn’t bother to rouse himself even when it had dropped to comfortable levels: animals would be coming by around sundown, so he might as well enjoy the time relaxing now.
When the first animals started appearing, Leo just stayed quietly hidden in the thorn thicket, even when his brother started encouraging him to hunt them.
‘Come on,’ Dominic whined like a cub which hadn’t been allowed to chew at the communal carcass while his father ate. ‘We’re only twenty-three Prey Points away from another level. Kill a couple of these small creatures and we’ll probably earn enough to get it.’
‘Yet in the process, we’ll scare off the rest of the prey and potentially the predators with them,’ Leo explained, growling a little at his brother’s impatience. In gaining a little, they risked losing a lot. ‘We will earn enough Prey Points for our level up soon.’
Numbers were something else Leo had had no idea about before he’d merged with the human. He’d had enough sense of it to know whether enough of his pride members were surrounding prey to make it worth chasing. And he’d known that a larger number of creatures meant a better chance to make a kill. But as for counting? No.
Now, he understood it only through his contact with his brother’s mind; he still didn’t get it sometimes. However, what he did know, had known since long before the world changed, was that some things were more important than others.
He’d known that when he was a cub and his sire had growled in a particular way, it was more important to stop than to continue playing with his sire’s tail. He’d known that when hunger was gnawing at his stomach, it was more important to focus on getting a kill than whining about it to his mother and aunts. Yet, he’d also known that avoiding getting injured was more important than filling his belly when hyenas came to chase him off his solitary kill.
Now, he was driven by more than just pure survival, yet the base understanding remained: long-term survival was more important than temporary gain.
By the time the sun was touching the horizon, his patience was rewarded.
‘They’re beautiful,’ he thought to himself, admiring the sleek lines of his new pride.
‘Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you?’ his brother grunted in amusement from his corner. ‘We haven’t defeated the resident lion, have we?’ Leo growled softly in annoyance at his brother actually having a point this time.
Still, that didn’t stop him watching the pride come to drink with both assessing and hungry eyes. Each of the adults and almost-adults stopped to scent-mark a tree near the waterhole, not that far from where Leo was hidden. Fortunately, being downwind meant that he was able to smell them, though they couldn’t detect him. Having made their mark, they went to drink.
Now with the understanding of numbers absorbed from Dominic, he was able to count them. One, two, three, four….six adult females, with three almost-grown females, and two almost-grown males. Then among the ones that didn’t mark the tree were eleven cubs of varying ages, most likely a mix of males and females.
Leo opened his mouth and inhaled the air. The young females are not long before their first heat, he decided when he registered their scent. As for the other adult females, two were likely to come into heat soon, perhaps had even begun to feel it, while the other four were not. One was pregnant, though she was barely showing. She would depart the pride soon to have her cubs separately.
The other three must be the mothers of the younger cubs. They would come into heat soon after he killed his rival’s offspring.
‘Wait what?’ his brother’s voice intruded, breaking his concentration. He growled and shook his mane a little, as if the human’s voice was a buzzing fly around his ears. It was a good-sized pride, nine females in total if all three of the young females stayed. There was no reason why they should not, but it wasn’t unheard of that- ‘Why were you thinking about killing cubs?’
Evidently, Dominic was not going to give up on this topic, and Leo clearly needed to explain it to him for him to give the lion any chance to plan.
‘When we take over a pride, we will chase out the three sub-adult males, and kill the rest of the cubs,’ he explained as patiently as he could. Humans had such strange practices with offspring. Not only did they continue supporting offspring long after they could support themselves, but they even voluntarily took on responsibility for offspring which were not their own.
Look at Dominic’s father: despite having no blood relation to his brother, not being his sire, he’d still put years of his own time and effort into raising the boy his mate had dumped on him before becoming a nomad. But humans would do as they would do.
The lion way was much more sensible: kill the non-productive or potentially-competitive members of the previous lion’s pride, and then seed his own offspring in the newly-fertile females. That way, he was sure that none of his own efforts would be wasted on helping the other lion’s offspring mature rather than his own.
‘That’s not…that’s not how it works,’ the human told him in tones that Leo was only able to identify as horrified because he dipped into Dominic’s own understanding. ‘You can’t just kill kids!’
‘They’re not kids,’ Leo huffed at him, exasperated – something else he’d learned from the human. ‘They’re cubs. And this isn’t human society; this is the savannah. I don’t tell you how to human. Don’t tell me how to lion.’ There was silence, though Leo knew better than to think that the human had suddenly seen the sense of his argument.
‘I can’t be party to killing kids, not even if they’re cubs,’ his brother said finally. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t.’ Leo found himself tensing.
‘And what do you mean by that?’ he growled, his lips rising to bare his teeth.
‘If you want to kill those cubs,’ his brother said, terribly, awfully seriously, ‘then you need to challenge me and win. Because until then, you agreed that I would lead our little duet here. And I say that I’m not prepared to kill cubs, just because we’re taking over their pride.’
Leo thought about the ultimatum carefully. Should he challenge the human for full control over the body? Perhaps. The human had made some odd choices lately. But on the other hand, they had both survived and grown stronger despite, or perhaps because of those choices.
‘What would you suggest instead of killing them, then?’ he asked, more than half-curious to see if the human actually had a decent idea, or was just letting emotions lead his decisions. Again. Dominic took a while to answer, long enough that Leo was starting to wonder if he would answer at all. In the meantime, Leo was wondering whether to display himself to the females: the male didn’t seem to have arrived yet.
‘What if we raised them instead? No, hear me out,’ the human interrupted Leo as he tried to say that he’d already explained why that wasn’t an option. ‘Look at my dad. My step-dad, technically, as you pointed out earlier. I don’t care that we’re not blood-related: he took care of me from the moment he and my mum got together, and that didn’t stop when my mum left. I would pick him every time over the sperm-donor who was my biological father. My sire, as you would say. If we raise these cubs, won’t they be loyal too?’
‘Lions are not loyal,’ Leo pointed out. ‘Females are loyal to each other and will protect each other and each other’s cubs. Males come and go, few staying for more than a few dry seasons. Years. Male cubs raised to adulthood won’t be loyal; they will be competitive. We might be raising the rivals which attempt to chase us out of the pride as we get weaker in age and they get stronger. Conquering a pride is about creating as much of a legacy as we can. When at least two of these females aren’t going to be fertile for more than a year because they are already caring for cubs, that reduces our chances of having offspring who survive to adulthood by a third.’
‘Though if you’re right and at least half of those eleven cubs are female, that would mean five or six new females to mate with in the year, rather than just those two females who would come into heat,’ his brother pointed out slyly. Leo paused before responding. He hadn’t thought about it like that. ‘After all, we can’t mate with females which are related to us, so any cubs we have are out of bounds on the mating front. But the cubs which are already there aren’t related to us.’
‘You make an interesting point
,’ Leo allowed after a few moments’ thought. Although his leonine instincts didn’t have any problems with mating with his daughters, what he’d learned from Dominic’s memories indicated that it really wasn’t a good idea. ‘Though that doesn’t change the fact that perhaps half of the cubs are male too. There is no benefit to protecting them until they reach adulthood. The opposite, in fact.’‘That was the way in the old world, right? Pre-System? But we’ve seen how animals have changed. You’ve seen how you’ve changed. Maybe by the time the cubs reach adulthood in this new world, they won’t act the way lions have always acted. Isn’t it worth trying it?’
The words were so close to what Leo had himself been considering earlier that he was sure Dominic had been paying close attention. Yet, despite knowing that…the human was right. The world was changing, and Leo was no different. Could he have become what he was now, Before? No, probably not. So could he say with certainty that the cubs he now regarded couldn’t change just as much? No.
There was one thing he could say, though.
‘We’re chasing out those two juvenile males, though,’ he growled to the human.
‘Why can’t-’
‘Because they are already almost adults,’ Leo interrupted his brother’s objection. ‘I’m not suggesting we kill them unless they attempt to fight me, but they will attempt to challenge us if we leave them. Their own sire would be chasing them off soon anyway.’
‘It seems so barbaric,’ the human sighed, but Leo sensed that he had given in. ‘Fine.’
‘It’s the way it has always been,’ Leo reminded him. ‘It’s what happened to me: my sire fled from a trio of males who came to take over our pride, and the new males spent little time in ensuring that all rivals were long-gone. It is the way of things.’
‘It was the way of things in the past,’ Dominic reminded him pointedly. ‘However, this is a whole new world.’ Leo decided that he’d been discussing things long enough; if he waited much longer, the females would disappear and he wanted to see their reactions to him ahead of challenging their male.
With another glance up the slope from whence the lionesses came, Leo couldn’t see any hint of a male lion approaching. He must be patrolling somewhere, the lion decided. Oh well, all the better for me.
Standing up, Leo stretched and then emerged from the bushes.
