Bonded
In a world built on bonds between humans and powerful creatures, those who remain unbonded survive at the edges of civilization. Nairis Vale has never wanted anything more complicated than a life in Alderwick, the warm crossroads village her family helped build around the Hearthstone Inn. Then violence reaches the frontier, forcing Nairis, newly returned warrior Rowan Fen, and the people they love onto roads governed by cities that promise protection while deciding exactly who deserves it. What begins as a fight for shelter becomes something much larger. Refugees vanish into classifications. Stable hybrids are called monsters. Entire communities are abandoned because saving them would cost too much. The deeper Nairis pushes into the systems meant to protect them, the clearer it becomes that the growing crisis isn't an accident. Bonded civilization has spent generations hiding what bonding can become, and pushing the consequences beyond its walls. But the truth buried beneath that history is older than the cities themselves. Dragons are supposed to be extinct. Hybrids are supposed to be failures. And humanity is supposed to know where one species ends and another begins. As Nairis gathers survivors, allies, exiles, and unlikely believers around her, those certainties begin to collapse. Because bonding was never simply about power. It was about connection. And the world may have forgotten what happens when connection is denied. **BONDED is an ongoing epic fantasy saga about found family, biological magic, hidden history, institutional power, human survival, and the dangerous possibility that becoming something new may be the only way forward.**