In a world where every person forms a lifelong Companion Contract with an animal, Yoo Seon-ju is the only one who has never been chosen.

Animals have feared him since childhood, and the people around him treat his lack of a companion as proof that something is fundamentally wrong with him. After years of ridicule and isolation, Seon-ju has long since given up on finding the partner everyone else takes for granted.

Then, while hiding in the mountains, he stumbles into a terrorist attack and discovers a mysterious egg. The creature that hatches from it is no ordinary animal, but a baby dragon—one of the legendary Divine Beasts—and, for reasons no one can explain, she immediately adores him.

That should have been impossible. It also should have been the strangest thing to happen to him.

Instead, a nine-tailed fox woman appears and insists that she is already his companion, the government draws him into secret missions, and still more ancient beasts begin forcing their way into his life. Each is powerful, possessive, and suspiciously uninterested in being treated as a mere pet.

Seon-ju only ever wanted one companion. Now he must survive terrorists, fanatical cults, forgotten grudges, ominous prophecies, and a growing household of Divine Beasts determined to claim him as theirs.