Claimed By The Exiled Tiger King

The first thing Abigail registered was the smoke.

It clawed at her throat, a dry, rasping burn that forced a cough from her lungs. The cough was violent, shaking her entire body, but it only dragged more ash and heat inside. Her vision was a blurry smear of orange and gray.

Where am I?

The last thing she remembered was the heat of a different fire. The kitchen of Étoile, her three-Michelin-star restaurant in Paris. The gleaming copper pots. The scent of thyme and butter. The reporter from Le Monde waiting in the dining room with his notebook ready.

And then—the explosion.

A faulty gas line. That's what they would later say. She had been standing right next to the stove, adjusting the flame on a demi-glace she had been perfecting for six months. There was a sound like a dragon inhaling. Then nothing. Just white light. Just silence.

She was supposed to be accepting an award tonight. Instead, she was here. Wherever here was.

Her vision swam, dark spots dancing before slowly solidifying into shapes. She tried to lift a hand to cover her mouth, to shield herself from the smoke, but her arms wouldn't move. A rough, fibrous pressure bit into her wrists. She twisted, and the feeling of coarse bark scraping against her skin told her she was tied to something. A post. A thick, unforgiving wooden post.

A wave of intense heat washed over her legs, so close it felt like standing in front of an open oven. She looked down.

Dry branches and kindling were piled high around her feet. Flames, bright and hungry, were already licking at the edges, crawling rapidly toward her.

They're burning me alive, she realized, the abstract fear in her mind congealing into a cold, solid knot in her stomach.

Her head snapped up, her eyes frantically scanning the surroundings. She wasn't in a hospital. There were no fire trucks, no emergency crews. Instead, a wall of strange, hostile faces surrounded her. People dressed in animal skins, their faces painted with crude symbols, some with features that were unnervingly bestial—sharp teeth, pointed ears, cat-like pupils.

A guttural roar erupted from the crowd. They were shouting, chanting in a language that was alien yet somehow, impossibly, being parsed into meaning inside her head. Her stellar-universal translator implant—standard issue for all interstellar travelers—was working, but the realization offered absolutely zero comfort.

"Burn the outsider!"

"The curse must be purged!"

This is a beast world, she realized, her culinary-trained mind somehow still sharp despite the terror. I've transmigrated. Into a primitive society of beast-kin.

In her previous life, she had been Chef Abigail Chen. Twenty years in the finest kitchens in the world. Three Michelin stars. James Beard Award. Author of The Art of Extraction, a cookbook about drawing maximum flavor from minimal ingredients. She had cooked for presidents and royalty. She could taste a dish and name every spice, every technique, every mistake.

But none of that mattered here. Here, she was