The Open Hand · Book One

Leashless

A Beast-Bonding LitRPG

Every tamer holds a Leash. Her class holds nothing, and the beasts keep choosing her anyway.

Everyone saw the stormcat. That was the point of her.

Maren Holt was born a lady of House Holt. Now she is twenty-five and mucks out Lord Varrow’s kennels, the last of a family struck from the roll, kept by the lord as a trophy. The kennel gate gave her a Gate class of Groom, Common, at twelve. Six years ago the Assize stone gave her a Bond class nobody had heard of: Open Hand, Unique. You hold nothing. What stays, stays. The yard still laughs about it.

Then, on a hunt day, Varrow’s huntsman Draws the lord’s Legendary Stormlynx until there is nothing left. The Leash snaps back, the field burns, and the stormcat walks out of the fire and sits down beside Maren.

Lord Varrow calls it theft by working, and in Hollin that is a hanging matter.

So Maren runs. She takes a boghound called Grub and a cat worth a village into the Brede Wilds, to an old drowned mill where beasts arrive that nobody holds and nobody owns. She can’t Leash them. She can only Ask.

Varrow wants his cat back, and the Kennel Court is listening. What happens when the beasts decide for themselves?

Leashless is Book One of The Open Hand: a beast-bonding LitRPG with System windows, a Unique class nobody understands, a sanctuary to build and beasts who choose for themselves.