Page 47 of The Frost Witch (The Covenants of Velora #1)

But I’d never heard of a dragon choosing a witch. The dragons were powerful in their own right. Familiars were usually less powerful creatures that allied themselves with the witch in order to share her power. But Isanara…

“Where are your parents?” I asked.

I did not know her well enough, but I imagined that was sadness that dimmed her bright eyes to a muted celadon. “My family is lost to me. Just like yours.”

How she knew… I sighed again. Three times in the space of as many minutes.

I expected Garrick to be impressed. But when I looked up, he was watching me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before.

Not the inscrutable mask, nor the smirking smile.

His mouth was softer, his forehead completely smooth. It almost looked like affection.

The knot at the back of his head had come loose, so that most of his silver-blond hair skimmed his shoulders. It always seemed to be coming loose. Was it because the strands were as silky-fine as I imagined in my fantasies?

“We should get moving,” he said. “Am I protecting two temperamental females now?”

“I withdraw my earlier approval,” Isanara hissed into my mind.

“Unfortunately, we are stuck with him.”

“I do not need to be protected. Familiars protect their witches. Not the other way around.”

Except to the best of my knowledge, familiars were either raised from infancy or came to their witches in maturity. Isanara was neither infant nor adult.

And the last place she ought to be was tethered to me. Garrick could defend himself—and me, if it came to that. But Isanara, despite her protestations, would be a glimmering lavender target if she stayed with me.

Garrick watched us from the other side of the fire, but he did not move to intervene. I understood the message he sent without words. The little dragon was my decision. Why, when he’d been so fucking opinionated about everything else?

The ability to make my own decisions had only led me to disaster. It had led to my death in a frozen riverbed and banishment from my coven. It had resulted in a Lifebind to a bounty hunter who was a lot more complicated than rumors had led me to believe.

But my decisions had also kept Kyrelle and all of her forbearers alive.

Maybe I could make this one, too.

I exhaled slowly, trying to ground myself within my own body like Tomin had attempted to show me. But I felt my power rising in time with my emotions.

“Isanara,” I paused, weighing my words and their likelihood of getting me incinerated by a moody teenage dragon. “ You should not be here.”

She paused in her perusal of my pack. What was she looking for? “A familiar’s place is with their witch.”

The words echoed with the same power that Maura’s always had. A witch is nothing without her coven. The covenants were all about sisterhood and community, the basis for the communal power we shared.

But they were covenants I’d broken. “I am a witch without a coven.” I was not worthy.

The words, even spoken within the confines of my mind, were physically painful. Even before she’d declared the bond between us, I’d felt the connection. There was an irresistible pull, stronger than any I’d ever felt to the sisters of my life or my death.

She was beautiful, but it was more than that. She was young and, despite the length of her fangs, vulnerable. Could she even fly yet? Breathe fire?

She needed protection.

But I could not even protect myself.

Isanara stared at me with a look that was not the same as the one Garrick favored, but equal in its intensity.

While Garrick’s turquoise eyes lit a heat low in my stomach that always spiraled lower, Isanara’s yellow-green gaze spoke directly to the power in my veins.

Not calming it, like Garrick did, but singing to it.

A rightness I’d never felt with any of my coven sisters.

But that changed nothing . I could not allow it to.

“We are bound to the Seven Gates,” I said.

Dark God, she probably did not even know what the Seven Gates were and what that meant.

“Do not offend me with such thoughts. Dragons are not bound by the limitations of your puny human minds.”

She could hear my thoughts even when I did not direct them to her.

I did not point out to her that I was not human.

“It is not safe.” My last appeal and the most honest.

Those yellow-green eyes rolled skyward. Dark God, help me. It should not even be possible for a creature to roll their eyes.

“Dragons were not made for safety .”

Made like the witches. I could not begin to unpack the meanings she’d couched in that statement.

The only adolescents I’d spent any significant time with were my elder sisters. As much as I tried to forget my past, both at Maura’s urging and for my own welfare, I knew that arguing with one was the ultimate exercise in stupidity.

She’d get her way—for now.

I nudged her head away from my pack. She snapped her fangs. I hissed through my teeth. I pulled the pack on and then layered my cloak over the top. “She is coming with us.”

Garrick watched the interplay with raised brows. “To the Devotion Gate?”

“To the Dark God’s frigid hell, if it comes to that, which seems inevitable given my current luck. She has made it clear that wherever I go, she goes.”

Before the Mercy Gate, I’d been alone.

I am still alone.

In my heart, yes . But the number of beings following me around was growing at an alarming rate.