Reborn as a Side Character in the Beastworld

Chapter One

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.