Reborn as a Side Character in the Beastworld

Chapter One

*beautiful art provided by @IreneS942

My mate and I had fled our village after many residents had become sick with an illness that spread like wildfire. Both our families had become victims to the fever. Their bodies rejected both food and water for days before painfully wasting away from heat and dehydration. After over half the village had been lost and unsure if the illness was a curse from the Beast God or a poison from the earth, we fled. Our destination was decided. The Beast City with the famously knowledgeable Ape King was our only hope.

After traveling for over a week through ancient forest, we had decided to rest when we came upon a lake with a small waterfall. It was beautiful and tranquil. The perfect spot to catch our breath. Or so we thought.

We were attacked. Three scorpion ferals ambushed us from their tunnels beneath the ground. They had waited until nightfall before bursting from the earth in a shower of rock and debris. They all went for my mate who I knew would be no match for them. Despite being outnumbered and his fox form being smaller than the scorpions, he bit and clawed at them with a ferociousness I had never seen before. Desperate to defend and protect me. But the armor of the scorpions was too tough to pierce. He was eventually seized by one of their large claws and I could feel the pain of his ribs breaking through our bond.

Despite knowing I would not be able to save him, I rushed the scorpion holding him with a cry but was intercepted by another. Scorpions do not know how to gauge their strength, and so when he used his claw to push me back, I was flung into a tree, my head smacking back sharply with a loud crack.

The sound of my heartbeat was so loud in my ears that I could hear nothing else. Besides the ache in my head, a searing pain on the skin of my chest just above my heart indicated that the worst had happened. I screamed in anguish and rage. My emotional pain far worse than any physical injury I had ever felt. My mate and longtime friend was no longer tied to this world and his mark upon my body was burned away with his exit.

Knowing what awaited me at the hands of the brutish ferals, I welcomed the darkness that crept into my vision. Hoping to follow my mate wherever his soul had gone, I greeted unconsciousness with open arms.

While I floated on the brink between life and death, memories passed before me and through me. Memories of another me, in another place where beastmen only existed in novels and gods had slowly been replaced by science and technology.

"Do you remember?" A voice both familiar and strange reverberated through my soul. Mine from before. Before I was me. "This is what you wished for. You were granted this second life. Are you really going to let it go so easily? Keep fighting you foolish thing. There will be no more chances."

The voice faded and silence filled the void. The vague and splintered memories that had been playing also faded like a slowly melting movie reel. And then there was blissful nothingness.

I could feel my body undulating with the movement of something beneath me. I lay upon thick fur, warm with the life of whoever was carrying me. I had been dreaming but I couldn't remember what the dream entailed. I was alive. I had not died. That thought snapped me back to consciousness, my eyes flying wide and I raised myself up. I moved too quickly and ended up losing my balance, falling from the beastman I'd been riding and landing sharply on my backside onto a dirt road. Ignoring the pain, I looked up eagerly. But it wasn't him. It wasn't my mate. My heart which had been pounding in hope, now choked my throat with disappointment. My eyes stung with the threat of tears. Instead of fiery orange fur that resembled my own, I was met with black and white stripes. A tiger.

He was twice the size my mate had been and he gave off a powerful aura that prickled across my skin. Fear made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. The tiger was looking at me. His sharp silver eyes bored into my amber ones, evaluating me. A gruesome scar across his left orb drew my attention away from their piercing gaze. The tears that had been welling up, slid down my cheeks as I trembled. Though not a scorpion, nor a feral, this male could kill me more easily than either. He exuded violence and power and I squeezed my eyes shut in expectation to be devoured whole.

Nothing happened. After a few moments, I opened one eye to peek. He was gone. In place of a tiger, a wolf male with grey fur and a single stripe on his jaw was kneeling in front of me with a wood cup full of water in his hands.

"Winston said you were awake. Are you feeling better? I brought you some water." He was young and eager to please. His long gray tail wagging behind him at a dizzying speed.

With the threat of the tiger gone, my dry mouth begged for the wolf's offering. I didn't bother answering him, but I took the cup from him and gulped the water down.

After emptying the cup and feeling a little more in control of myself, I spoke. "My mate?"

The wolf's tail halted its dance and his ears drooped a bit. "Winston killed the scorpions that attacked you but he couldn't save your mate." My chest tightened painfully at his words and I looked down to see flawless skin where once had been an image of a fox over my heart. "You were lucky." He continued. "If he had been any later, you would have been taken by those ferals." His voice filled with genuine disgust at the thought. "You don't need to worry about anything. We're headed to the City of Beasts. You'll be able to find new mates there." A blush colored his cheeks with genuine hopefulness that he might be among those I choose.

"Who is Winston?" I asked in a small voice, the name feeling familiar. By rights, the male who saved me could demand to be my mate.

He pointed down a dirt path to my right. "Over there. That white tiger. That's Winston. He's a tetra marked beastman." A shadow of the fear I had felt earlier came back. He was the tiger I had been riding on. The one with that horrible scar. The idea of having to be his mate made me tightly clench my sweaty hands. He had saved me, and I wasn't ungrateful, but he terrified me. He felt more powerful than any male I had ever met and his cold, emotionless eyes made it impossible for me to think we could be anything other than prey and predator.

The laughter of females drew my attention to behind the wolf in front me. Four women sat on furs in the long grass with their mates, and prospective mates around them. The males were supplying them with an array of fruit and freshly roasted meat. A fire with the remains of a boar on a spit had been set up nearby.

Noticing my gaze, the wolf male ran over to the fire and loaded a broad leaf high with cuts of meat before running back. "Are you hungry? We caught it this morning and roasted it with cedarwood. Here." He said, shoving the feast under my nose. I hadn't had a decent meal in over two days and while my emotional state was still too chaotic to process everything that had happened, my stomach prioritized itself by grumbling loudly.

Under normal circumstances, accepting food from a male means accepting their courtship. But these were not normal circumstances and if the male got his hopes up from this, then he was a fool. I accepted the meat without hesitation.

The fool sat next to me and started talking nonstop, informing me of our situation. We were a total of thirteen on our way to the City of Beast, the largest city this side of the mountains. The four females, with their mates in tow, had been sold by their village for salt. The other males had originally come from the city on a month-long journey, going from village to village negotiating trades. We were only three days away from the city on the last leg of the journey.

Winston, the tiger and leader of the group, had wandered off the road to hunt for larger game when he had heard screaming. After killing the scorpions and rescuing me, he had buried my mate's body and carried me on his back for over a day.

After the females had filled their bellies and rested enough, we would be resuming the trek to the city. Once we got there, there would be a competition between the unmated males and the females would be able to choose the ones that appealed to them.

I could not wallow in the despair of losing my mate. It was common for males to fight and die while defending their female. I would have to find a few mates of my own if I wished to survive. Though my heart ached, I would have to move on, and quickly.

After filling my own stomach, the group prepared to leave. The wolf offered to let me ride him until we reached the city. I would take him up on his offer for this day but to do more, was tantamount to promising to mate with him. For the next few days, I would need to show my favor to a few different males while searching for ones that may be worth keeping by my side. This wolf, while sweet, was young and would not be strong enough to protect me from the many dangers of this world. Though none of these males were as strong as the tiger, He was too fearsome to be desirable. I may be forced to take that tiger as my mate but I'd be damned if I couldn't also choose others more compatible with me.