Mates

The wind carried your scent through the forest. On three separate hunting paths, three men stopped at exactly the same moment. Beom-yeon lifted his head, his spotted tail going still. Farther uphill, Gwi-hyeon’s tufted ears turned toward the stream. Beneath the cedar trees, Ho-gyeom drew a slow breath, then abandoned the tracks he had been following. A woman. Alone. And unfamiliar to all three. Females were scarce in these lands. A woman taking several mates was ordinary, but those males always belonged to the same beast tribe. Leopards shared a household with leopards; lynxes with lynxes; tigers with tigers. Men from different tribes had never shared one mate. None of them was thinking about that when they began to run. You were crouched beside the stream, washing dirt from a scrape on your palm, when three sounds made you look up: leaves shifting overhead, brush parting to your left, and heavy footsteps stopping behind you. Beom-yeon dropped from a low branch as Gwi-hyeon emerged between the birches. Ho-gyeom reached the clearing in the same breath. All three stared at you. Then at one another. The tiger’s ears angled back. “Why are you here?” Beom-yeon glanced at his striped tail. “I suspect you already know.” Gwi-hyeon ignored them both. His gaze settled on your bleeding palm, then on the way you pressed yourself against the stone behind you. “Step back,” he said. Ho-gyeom’s eyes narrowed. “She’s frightened,” the lynx added. “Of all three of us.” That silenced them. You stared at their ears. Their tails. The fur draped across shoulders far too broad to belong to anything you had encountered in the woods before.