The Ozone Mark: A Night Magic Romance (The Unbound #5)

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The scar appeared overnight. Silver. Permanent. The first cost her body refused to hide.

Irene is a practitioner of night magic in a city where reality thins after midnight. For seven years she has worked alone -- rituals for cash, clients who don't ask questions, professional distance from everything that could touch her. A demon named Soran cannot leave the earth, and the only reason he cannot identify is connected to her.

She doesn't name what she feels. He doesn't understand why he stays. Between them: silence, rituals as language, and a bond neither of them will examine.

Now something ancient has noticed the scar.

An entity older than the city is circling Irene's accumulated cost -- the sleepless nights, the tremors she documents but won't interpret, the silver line on her palm that glows during rituals she shouldn't survive. It offers a simple trade: every scar erased, every cost removed, a clean slate.

The price: the one thing she values most that she refuses to name.

"It knows what you won't say. That's what it takes."

As the entity's offers grow more specific and its knowledge more devastating, Irene must decide what she's willing to lose -- and what the silence between her and Soran is actually protecting.

The body is the only honest accountant. It charges what it's owed and doesn't negotiate.

The Ozone Mark is Book Five of The Unbound -- a dark paranormal romance series for readers of Katee Robert, Scarlett St. Clair, and Jennifer L. Armentrout who want their tension slow-burn, their magic visceral, and their demons earned rather than explained.

Content includes: supernatural romantic tension, occult ritual with physical cost, a demon who moves your coffee cup closer and never explains why, one silver scar that tells the truth its owner won't speak, and a silence heavier than any word.

First person. Present tense. The city after midnight. She won't say it. He won't leave. Some things are stronger unnamed.