TSROTRATBP Chapter 1

The place where I opened my eyes was pitch dark.

I pricked my ears forward—and heard it. Crush. Crush. The crunch of soil underfoot.

I stretched a paw out and nudged the wall in front of me. Through the sole of my paw came a rough, scratchy texture. Woven straw, or something like it.

'A basket? Surely not.'

My body swayed without any effort on my part. Given that I'd spent plenty of time in baskets before, the evidence was fairly conclusive.

Where were they taking me? The question had barely formed when a rough, unfamiliar voice answered it for me.

"A little further and we'll be in black panther territory."

"Let's get this done quickly. But honestly—how does it even make sense? Went through the coming-of-age ceremony and still can't take human form?"

"The temple priest declared it a curse from the Beast God, didn't he. ...Still gives me the creeps."

I had my ears sharpened to points. It took me almost no time to understand that I was the topic under discussion.

Funny, isn't it. I'd thought the same thing myself, often enough. I was a beastman in full possession of a reasoning mind—so why, why, why couldn't I shed the form of a baby rabbit?

Mother's face when she looked at me was always the same: brow pulled tight, voice pitched to carry.

'Why won't you transform? Your brother Kyri is already a proper beastman. Everyone manages it before their third birthday—why won't you!'

She screamed until my ears stung. Sometimes she reached for a switch when her temper got the better of her. Sometimes the punishment was confinement—forbidden from leaving my own bedchamber.

Though it wasn't as though I could have left on my own anyway. Without a lady's maid to work the handle, I couldn't open a door from this side.

Father was no different. He was ashamed of me too.

House Raebien.

Ours was one of the respectable noble families of rabbit territory.

Mother—Eivern Raebien, Father's third wife—had been mortified, as the eldest, I couldn't manage humanization promptly. My younger brother Kyri had succeeded before he was three years old. By that point I was already five, still in baby rabbit form, with no end in sight.

Beastmen reach humanization before their third birthday, as a rule. The question of why I had not was one nobody could answer—least of all me. That not-knowing pressed behind my ribs like something swallowed wrong.

Tomorrow I'll transform for certain. The day after, definitely. A week from now, things will be different. Time kept moving, indifferent and unhurrying, as if laughing at every hollow hope.

Last month, I had turned eighteen. I had gone through the coming-of-age ceremony. And nothing had happened.

Mother had taken me to the temple with a face like something gone slightly off. The priest had declared it in a voice so loud my heart lurched in my chest.

'This is a curse!'

"We're not going too deep, are we? Too far from the territorial boundary and we lose the protection of our own territory."

"We need to leave it far enough in that there's no blowback. ...We've been ordered to make sure the black panthers are the ones to deal with it."

"We can pull up some of those plants over there as proof—that variety only grows in black panther territory."

I understood, listening, what had happened. I'd been disposed of. I'd half-expected it, if I was being honest.

After the temple visit, the way my parents looked at me had changed. The irritation had drained out of their faces and been replaced by something colder. I had also clearly heard the muttering—too messy to kill ourselves.

"I really think we've gone too far. Cross the boundary line and the territory won't protect us anymore."

One man's anxious urging arrived at the same moment as a sound:

Tuk.

The basket settled to the ground.

"You're worrying over nothing. I was going to set it down here anyway."

If this was the black panther's territory, as they'd said, then it was almost certainly the Border Forest—the woodland marking the boundary with rabbit territory. The sort of place where black panthers were absolutely everywhere.

No. Please. Don't leave me here. I'll try, I'll keep trying, I'll try to become a proper beastman.

I scraped uselessly at the woven straw. My paws couldn't even reach the lid. My eyes blurred until I couldn't see properly.

"Aaaaaghh—!"

"Ugh—!"

In an instant, screams split the air, loud enough to make me flinch. I stopped mid-scramble. On reflex, I held my breath.

Every nerve along my skin stood up.

If this really was black panther territory—if those screams meant the two beastmen carrying me had just been hunted—then playing dead might be my only option.

Clatter. The basket began to shake, and then the lid opened. Sudden brightness flooded in. My eyes squeezed shut on their own.

Before I'd fully registered anything, I was seized by the scruff of my neck and hauled into the air.

"A baby rabbit?"

The voice that asked this was somehow a beat behind the moment—unhurried, clear, a pleasant mid-register. Like nothing in particular was happening.

I forced one squinted eye open. And there was a man, unreasonably beautiful, directly in front of my face.

Silver hair—like someone had poured liquid silver thread over his head—just inches away. Dazzled by the sheer brightness of him, I let my guard drop for a fraction of a second. Then survival instinct reasserted itself, and I began to struggle.

A-a black panther—!

The black panther clan. I'd only ever pictured them in my imagination, but looking at the man in front of me: this was a black panther, without question.

'Their red eyes are a bit unsettling, aren't they?'

'A little. I saw some of the black panther clan in the city district once—gave me chills, honestly.'

The lady's maids had gossiped that the black panther clan generally had red eyes. This man's eyes were a vivid, definitive red. And flashing between his parted lips, unmistakably, were fangs.

This was black panther territory. The man holding me by the scruff was, with overwhelming probability, a member of the black panther clan.

'Let go of me, let go—!'

I was swinging both front paws for all I was worth when I suddenly felt something cold move through me and stopped. The man's expression, entirely without affect, gave off an edge that was somehow too still.

'He might actually eat me.'

The man regarded my frozen self for a moment. Then his eyes curved into half-moons—a smile, or something adjacent to one. It looked, somehow, like satisfaction.

"Crying?"

Yes, I'm crying, what of it? I had probably been crying since the moment I'd woken in the basket. I'd tried not to show it, but something had been lodged in my throat, and the weight behind my eyes had never really left.

I had no time to think about any of this. Because what the man said next stopped my tears entirely—

"Cry more."

Good God. The man was completely out of his mind.