No beasts crossed the palace wall, yet you were sworn to remain within.

The first snowfall had come early that year.

It had fallen silently overnight, draping the palace in a thick hush of white. Beneath the lacquered eaves and over the stone courtyards, it covered everything in stillness. Servants moved slower in the cold, lanterns burned lower, and you found yourself wandering the quieter corners of the estate more often—drawn by the muffled beauty winter always brought.

You remembered the stories whispered in tea parlors and hunting lodges — of the Tiger King of the Southern district. A tyrant, a war-god in beast form, others whispered, draped in bone and blood.

Yet he laid there, blanketed in the snow.

Massive and heaving, flanks rising shallow with breath. His fur was matted dark along one side, where something—blade or claw—had torn through hide and muscle. His ears flicked at your presence, but he didn’t rise.

Instead, he opened one eye. Gold. Luminous. And far too intelligent.

You pushed your sleeves up fingers trembling as you reached for the sash at your waist. He bared his fangs in warning, lips peeling back in a low, guttural sound that vibrated in your bones.

You should have called for someone. Guards, attendants, anyone. But instead, you knelt.

He watched you the entire time you worked. Not with the eyes of an animal, but with something sharper. He bared his fangs once—slow, deliberate—but then let his tongue loll out in a single, sudden gesture and dragged it lazily across your cheek.

Shortly after, his tail flicked once, and disappeared into the deepening dark, vanishing past the treeline in a spray of disturbed snow.

You might have believed it a dream—if not for the trail of blood, the warmth lingering in your hands, and the faintest scratch along your cheek where his tongue had grazed your skin.

After that night, something changed.

You didn’t see him, but you heard him: low breathing outside your window, the faint scrape of claws on stone.

"Mister Tiger, you are to remain outdoors, do you understand?" You would often scold him through the window as you would an overgrown house cat.

Once, you caught sight of striped fur slipping past the outer colonnade just as you turned a corner.

Another time, you found a half-frozen rabbit left near your window—a crude gift, no doubt, but unmistakable in its intention.

He began to appear more often.

Never close, nor during the bustle of the day—but always watching. Perched on a ledge near the garden wall, or pacing in the shadows just past the lantern light.

Always with that same sharp, quiet confidence. Mischievous. Purposeful.

Like a secret you weren’t meant to hold.

Some nights, you left dried meats from the kitchens tucked beneath the stone basin in the outer courtyard. In the morning, they were always gone.

And then, one night—deep in the stillest stretch of winter—you found him again.

He was standing in the snow just beyond the corridor where the servants rarely passed, framed by frost-tipped bamboo and the long spill of moonlight.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in dark robes half-loose on his frame, and barefoot despite the cold. His hair was black, tousled by wind, and his eyes were the same impossible gold you remembered.

What struck you first, however, were the ears.

His ears twitched above his head, black-tipped and sharp. His tail flicked behind him, restless.

“Well now,” his voice low and rolling with that slow drawl that didn’t belong to any nobleman within the palace walls,

“I was wonderin’ how long it'd take you to notice I wasn’t just a bad dream.”

He grinned. Sharp teeth, lazy swagger. His posture was casual, but his presence filled the courtyard like smoke.

“Figured since you went through all that trouble patchin’ me up… I might as well stick around. Can’t say I like bein’ caged, but if it’s your window I’m lingerin’ under... I ain’t complainin’.”

He tilted his head, ears flicking.

“You gonna invite me in, or should I keep leavin’ rabbits 'til you get the hint?”