Page 223 of Feralheart

Selira made a low sound that moved through the ground under us. The other dragons shifted their feet. Grimstone lifted his head. Even Reece’s dragon turned toward our small circle.

We witness you. You witness each other. That is all it is.

I didn’t know if what we were about to do was anything more than four exhausted people touching hands over a dying fire. But the magic in my palms had awoken, a warmth that knew where it wanted to go before I decided to send it.

I scanned each of them. If this went wrong, I’d be the one who pushed them into it. My magic. My idea. My fault.

“If we do this,” I said quietly, “I don’t think we can undo it. I also don’t know what making a pack bond means. I don’t know if it’s permanent or what happens if one of us dies.”

“Eradin.” Fen’s voice was gentle. “We know.”

“I don’t want to be responsible for⁠—”

“You’re not responsible for us,” Reece said. “We’re responsible for each other. That’s the point.”

Fen reached out, his hand extended toward the center of our circle. He didn’t look at the others when he did it. He looked at me.

“Together,” he said.

Reece’s hand joined his. “Together.”

“Together,” Lyndie said, her hand settling over theirs.

I laid my palm on top of the pile. “Together.”

The red lines woke without my asking. They crawled up from my palms and into my wrists. The heat behind them didn’t give gentle warmth anymore. It burned.

Magic spread from my hands into theirs, reaching out to each of them. Fen first, his awareness of me sharpening until his heartbeat echoed in my own chest. Reece next, his grief settling into my spine, a weight I now carried beside my own. Lyndie last, her kindness brushing against mine.

I could pull back. This was a door, and I was choosing to open it.

The warmth built, spreading outward from our joined hands. The air tightened. Our dragons shifted closer, forming a second ring around ours. Selira’s eyes caught firelight. Aristus’s scales brightened. Reece’s damaged dragon lifted his head higher than I’d seen since we’d started.

Pride, Selira sent. Pack-pride.

“Do you feel that?” Lyndie’s whisper barely made it past her lips.

Something bigger than all of us was watching, waiting to see what we’d choose.

We were choosing each other over the system that said only one of us mattered. Over everything we’d been taught about our place in this world.

Tears trickled down Lyndie’s face. Reece’s jaw flexed as he fought not to break. Fen’s hand tightened in the pile, his fingers finding mine through the others’, connecting.

Without planning it, we all leaned in. Our heads came together over our joined hands, creating a circle within the circle.

The dragons moved as one, their snouts touching above us.

Heat poured through me, starting where my palm pressed against theirs and flooding outward. It filled my chest, my throat, and the space behind my eyes. Too much. Too fast. I couldn’t⁠—

The magic detonated.

Light exploded from our joined hands, blinding white, turning the meadow into noon. The shockwave followed, rushing through our bodies and into the dragons’. It kept going until it hit the boundary of the valley, where it stopped.

Silence dropped so complete my ears rang with it.

The light faded quickly, bleeding back into our skin. The red lines on my palms glowed brighter than they ever had, but now I could see matching lines on the others. Barely visible, but there. Running up Reece’s forearms. Curling around Lyndie’s wrists. Tracing patterns across the back of Fen’s hand where it still held mine.

We’d marked each other.