Sempiternal: • Savages • || BOOK 6#

23. Returning the beloved

"Junhan and I were born together," Hajun recounts as Jimin slowly and gently combs his hair. "He and I mommy's belly. He's smaller than me. He was born after me."

"After me." He corrects gently and Hajun gives a snort, clearly irritated that he got it wrong. Jimin cocks his head to one side and his hair falls over his shoulder. "He's your little brother... Are the others your siblings too?"

"No. Other moms. One and the same Alpha for many weak females. Their Alphas weren't doing well. They didn't know how to keep them happy. So dad took over," he explains in a quieter voice. he's too sleepy. Being combed makes him too sleepy now. Maybe because Jimin runs his fingers very gently over his head. It's a tender, loving massage that he enjoys to the fullest. "Dad was a great Alpha. He left me this pack. He's long gone."

"Were you here before?"

"No. We were near females, but little food" Jimin muses that perhaps because it is a slightly less spacious country, there are fewer animals and fewer people except for the cumulus. It is easier for Alphas to move in larger territories. "Here cold. Very cold, but with food and plenty to hide. Also, people think we're not here because it's cold. We don't like the cold... We can't stand cold. Long time out, we sleep and... week goes by, to die."

"They're pretty smart then to make that trap." he opines partly to himself, wanting to keep the peculiar tidbit of information to himself What does he mean by sleep and then die? He'd have to think about it more. Hajun throws his head back, leans against Jimin and looks into his eyes. Jimin has strange eyes. They are a mix between brown, red and yellow. A dirty, murky orange like plumbing water.

"Alpha must always be smart. If not, prey escapes. And females flee. No females, no more Alphas."

"Why aren't you with an Alpha then?" he asks outlining his face. Hajun purses his lips.

"They smell bad. They're not good hatchlings. It doesn't make sense. Must be female from sick people. From them, Alphas come out. The ones like you: they always give good offspring."

Jimin draws a delicate line with the whole explanation. Hajun obviously doesn't understand the rationale, it's something that's imprinted in his instinct. Avoid female Alphas because they won't give offspring, seek immunities to reproduce. Jimin assumes it's a way for the virus to mix. The attacking part and the immune part. Have the good of the virus and the bad of the virus.

Alphas are not superior series.

They are a failure.

They are a mistake.

Because if they weren't, they would have the ability to talk, the ability to understand more.

Hajun is a failure when it comes to quantities, understanding thoughts and so on. Jimin has proven it little by little. In spite of being able to evolve his lexical capacity, his ability to enunciate, to retain a lot of words, to write... It is the only thing he can do. It is the only thing he needs: to communicate.

Everything else does not exist. There is no morality, no decency, no capabilities. It is a talking animal, roughly speaking. It is the fusion of good and bad. Jimin perfectly concludes that because he is a failure, what he transmits is the same failure to every child he makes.

The child that gestated inside him is an Alpha as well. He will be just as useless, just as libidinous and stupid. Jimin can't stand the idea, it generates so much disgust in him.

The only thing he has managed to teach him apart from the language, is to expose to him that, if he gives him oral sex instead of just penetrating him, maybe he will achieve something more than making him cry or keep quiet when they copulate.