A three-striped king in a tribe that lived or died by strength. His white-gray rat ears stood high, alert and tense, and his long tail moved only once behind him in a slow controlled sweep that said far more than any shout would have. Beside him stood several other males, all of them powerful, all of them carrying the same tense authority.
As Lin Huahua looked more carefully, she recognized them too through the placeholder's memories.
They were her mother's other males.
Not all of them, but enough that the picture became clear at once. In this world, a female could have multiple males, and her mother, as the king's mate and a high female in the tribe, naturally did.
One of the males at the Rat King's side was a heavy-shouldered bear beastman with a scar crossing one collarbone and a face that looked severe until he turned his head and checked the crowd for females first.
