Taming the Beast World with a Frying Pan

"You’re stuck," Ren whispered again.

The white tiger didn’t answer. He kept his golden eyes fixed on the fading sunset, completely silent.

Ren’s stomach dropped.

She knew the rules. Once a male shifted into his beast form under the influence of the Feral Madness, there was no going back. That was the point of no return. After that came the red eyes, the hunger that no food could fill, and then nothing at all. Just a Shadow Beast wearing a familiar face.

"No. Nope. Absolutely not," Ren muttered, scrambling across the cave on her hands and knees.

She grabbed the tiger’s massive face with both hands and pulled it down to her level. He let her. His head was nearly as wide as her shoulders, and one snap of his jaws could have taken her arm clean off, but he allowed her to drag him close until his hot breath fanned across her nose.

She stared into his eyes.

Gold. Warm, deep, molten gold. Not a single speck of that terrifying, glowing crimson.

Ren let out a long, shaky breath.

"Okay," she said, patting his furry cheeks. "Okay. Good. Stuck is not feral. Stuck is just a glitch. We can fix a glitch."

The tiger blinked at her slowly. Then he gently, but firmly, pulled his face out of her hands.

Ren sat back on her heels and chewed on her bottom lip. It was fine. It was totally fine. She had communicated with difficult men before. She once got a hungover French pastry chef who spoke zero English to make four hundred macarons for a celebrity wedding using nothing but hand gestures and threats. She could handle one silent tiger.

"New system," Ren announced, holding up a finger. "I ask questions. You tap your paw once for yes, twice for no. Got it?"

The tiger looked at her.

Ren waited.

The tiger continued to look at her.

It wasn’t a blank look either. It was focused and piercing, the kind of stare that made Ren feel like she was being examined. Every inch of her face was being studied, measured, and filed away. Something about the intensity of it tickled at the back of her memory, but she couldn’t quite place it.

Then, very slowly, a massive white paw lifted off the stone.

Tap.

"Yes!" Ren pumped her fist into the air. "Communication! We have contact! Houston, the tiger has landed!"

The tiger’s ear twitched. Ren chose to believe it was amusement.

"Okay. Question one," Ren said, rubbing her hands together. "Can you understand everything I’m saying?"

Tap.

"Question two. Are you hurt?"

The tiger didn’t tap.

Ren frowned and leaned closer, finally paying real attention to the state of his fur. His snowy coat was a mess, streaked and matted with dried blood from his fight with the bears. She crawled forward and began combing her fingers through the thick fur on his chest, searching for wounds.

Most of the blood wasn’t his. She found a few shallow scratches, but they were already healing, the thin pink lines slowly closing up right before her eyes. Beastman healing was so unfair. If Ren got a paper cut, she had to live with it for a week.

Then her fingers brushed over something that made her pause.

Right in the center of his broad chest, hidden beneath the thick white fur, was a scar. It was round, puckered, and pink. The wound had clearly been made by something sharp being driven straight into him. It had healed over, but it wasn’t old.

Ren’s brows knit together. She didn’t remember that being there. She had seen Kael naked more times than she could count. She would have definitely remembered a hole in his chest.

"When did you get this?" Ren asked softly, running her thumb over the raised skin.

The tiger pulled away from her touch so fast she nearly toppled over.

He retreated to the mouth of the cave, sat down with his back to her, and went right back to staring at the darkening sky.

Ren stared at his broad, striped back. A small, cold knot formed in her stomach.

’He must have gotten hurt while I was gone,’ she reasoned to herself. ’Maybe that’s how he got his beast form back. Some sort of near-death experience.’

That made sense. Sort of. She would just have to ask him about it again when he had a mouth that could actually form words.

Since her tiger clearly needed some space, Ren did what she always did when her emotions got too big for her body.

She cooked.

With a flick of her wrist, her trusty ten-inch Lodge cast-iron skillet materialized in her grip. Ren nearly cried with relief. For one horrible moment back in that clearing, she had thought she’d lost it forever, abandoned in the dirt.

"Never leave me again," Ren whispered, hugging the pan to her chest.

She propped the skillet over the crackling fire on two flat stones and opened her System inventory, scrolling through her supplies.

She still had most of the loot from her raid on Syris’s pantry. There were the rough brown tubers. There was the basket of dark, leafy greens that tasted like garlic butter. She had her premium cooking oil, her sea salt, and a small pouch of those red swamp-peppercorns that could make a grown beastman cry.

She scrolled a little further, looking for meat. There was none. Every last scrap had gone into the feast for two hundred carnivores.

"Vegetarian night it is," Ren sighed.

She pulled her chef’s knife from her inventory and got to work. She peeled the tubers and cut them into thick, even wedges, then poured a generous glug of oil into the skillet. When the oil began to shimmer, she laid the wedges in one by one. They hissed and sputtered, and the smell of frying potato filled the cave.

She let them fry until the edges turned deep golden brown and crispy, flipping each wedge with the tip of her knife. Once they were done, she tossed in a big handful of the garlic-butter greens. They wilted almost instantly, coating the crispy wedges in their rich, savory flavor. She finished it with a pinch of sea salt and the smallest crack of swamp-peppercorn. Any more than that, and she would be breathing fire.

On the side, she added the few things she had picked from the branches during the ride. She cracked the wild walnuts open on a rock and toasted them in the leftover oil, then split a handful of figs and let them blister cut-side down until their sugars caramelized into a sticky, amber glaze.

Ren took a bite of a wedge and closed her eyes. Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and dripping with garlicky, buttery goodness. It was the best thing she had eaten all day. Granted, the competition was nonexistent.

She piled a generous portion onto a large, clean leaf and carried it over to the mouth of the cave. She set it down right in front of the tiger’s front paws.

"Dinner is served," she announced proudly. "Crispy fried tubers tossed in garlic-butter greens, with a side of caramelized figs and toasted walnuts. On the house."

The tiger glanced down at the leaf. He sniffed it once.

Then he looked back up at the sky.

Ren’s jaw dropped.

In all the time she had known Kael, he had never, ever turned down her food. This was the same man who licked his bowls so clean she barely had to wash them. The same man who whined pitifully if she took too long to plate a meal. If the world was ending, Kael would still ask for seconds.

"Okay, now I’m actually worried," Ren said, crouching beside him and pressing the back of her hand to his wet nose. "Are you sick? Is this a cat thing? Do you need to eat some grass? I can go find you some grass."

The tiger huffed, a sharp puff of air that blew her red hair back from her face. Then he stood up, stepped right over the leaf, and padded out into the twilight.

"Hey!" Ren shouted after him. "Where are you going?! I was being nice!"

The dark forest swallowed his white shape in seconds.

Ren stood at the mouth of the cave with her hands on her hips, fuming. She had just been left on read.

By a cat.

She stomped back to the fire and plopped down beside it, stabbing at the embers with a stick. Five minutes passed. Then ten. The forest outside grew darker and louder. Crickets chirped. Something hooted in the distance. Something else snapped a twig.

Ren’s anger slowly drained away, and anxiety crept in to take its place. What if he didn’t come back? What if the bandits came back first? What if a swamp gator had followed her all the way from the bog out of spite?

She pulled her skillet into her lap and gripped the handle tightly, her eyes glued to the dark wall of trees beyond the cave.

Then, the bushes rustled.