An alternate universe where Natani met Trace when he first woke up instead of Flora, suggested by Brandon Awesome!

The only way I can figure this working is if Flora never ran from the arranged marriage with Sythe (or there never was an arranged marriage and Flora remained with the tigers) and at some point Natani and Zen were caught by slavers and taken into human territory. Trace would wake up and bumble across Natani cornered, fighting the slavers after having escaped them, and Trace would run in and help, not understanding the situation.

Natani would be immediately aggressive towards Trace, but then realize he’s an idiot and think “I could use this to get Zen back.” With the mental link, Trace and Natani start trying to track Zen’s location down. As they travel, Natani picks up human speech out of necessity - which he’d already started doing since being captured by humans - and in turn, Natani starts training Trace to stop him from being such a wuss in physical combat.

They stumble upon Keith like normal, since he’s in the nearby town. There would be a lot of aggression here, since this is early, Keidran-hating Keith. There’d be no run-in with Euchre since there’s no Flora, although Euchre would still be keeping an eye on Trace from a distance, and Nora would certainly still show up at some point. There’d also be no assassin ambush in the woods, since… that was Natani and Zen, obviously. Although there could be some other wolf attack here instead that might be interesting, what with Natani defending a human. I could imagine some moment of truth where Natani has the chance to betray Trace and almost considers it, but ultimately chooses not to, and the wolves label Natani a traitor. Keith would see Natani in a new light and start reconsidering his thoughts on Keidran.

Eventually they’d make it to the coast and it would turn out Eric’s family are the one’s that are housing Zen, having facilitated the slave trade. They’d break him free at night and then decide to steal Eric’s ship, since they’re still going along with the idea of traveling to the Basitin Island for Keith’s sake, and Natani & Zen has nowhere else to go, being labeled traitors.

That’s as far as I’ve thought about this. It is a shame that Flora gets written out of the story in this alternate universe, although perhaps if the arranged marriage never happened, Flora could still show up as a character when the party eventually travels into tiger territory. Which… still hasn’t happened yet, but yeah, there’s room for Flora to still show up.

There’s even ways to have her show up earlier, if, say… there was an arranged marriage, but she only ran after arriving in wolf territory, so she’d run into the gang right before Eric’s town. That might even be how the gang end up fighting wolves near the border, since they could be the ones trying to get Flora back.