Gone. Everything was gone. The village was burned to ashes, innocents slaughtered, their blood staining the ground and screams silenced. The attack came so sudden. Barbarians from the north, pillaging and killing.

He’d barely had the time to put on his clothes before he fled, wearing only a thin grey robe and a green coat. His bare feet were numb against the snow as he stumbled through the forest and choked on his sobs.

He didn’t know how far he ran when a low growl drifted through the still woods. Xuē Mèi froze and wiped his eyes, turning to meet the sound. A white tiger’s gaze met his own, the sight of the predator striking terror in his heart. He was painfully aware that his chance of survival was miniscule. If he didn’t die from the raiders, then the feline. And if not from the feline, then the frostbite. He sank to his knees as he submitted to his demise.

“It’s cold… so, so cold…” he whimpered, curling up on the snow. He closed his eyes and waited. But instead of pain, there was a warm sensation. And then he felt himself be picked up and placed down against the back of the beast. He put up no fight, instead clinging onto the comfort of the white tiger’s fur as his consciousness faded.

When he came to, he was in a cave littered with pelts and furs of various animals. Deer, elk, wolf, beaver, and others. A fire flickered nearby, spreading its warmth and soaking him in an orange light, the smells of a rabbit roasting over the flames filling the air. Xuē Mèi pushed himself into a sitting position, a large fur cloak pooling at his waist. His gaze landed on another person in the cave, who was already watching him back. His eyes widened at the sight of those eyes. They were the same eyes that he had seen back in the forest.

“Are you the white tiger…?” he asked, voice hoarse and throat raw. He licked his lips, wetting the cracked skin. His mother had told him stories of shifters in her bedtime stories. Creatures that can assume a human and an animal form, but are neither. Protectors of the woods.