Tethered by Fire

By Mark Otto

In a near-future America, every citizen is born with a glowing Ledger Mark tattoo that displays their total debt in real time. Medical bills. Student loans. Mortgages. Bad decisions. Ninety percent of it is inherited.
For Kael "Kai" Voss, that number is obscene:
$480,000 of her grandmother's medical debt and her own student loans, carved into her skin and her future. Her dragon, LEDGER, is a scarred, wheezing Medical Drake slated for euthanasia as "unbondable." Taming him at The Crucible-a brutal dragon academy in the Nevada desert-is supposed to erase her debt... or kill her trying.
For Rhys Calderon IV, debt is something other people drown in. Born to the elite Interest Guild, his golden Sovereign Drake, BOND, is a trophy bolted to his family's empire of dividends and bailouts. When a public Tier Black safety system glitch almost kills him on live feed, he's shipped to the Crucible to "toughen up" and become the heir the Guild needs.
Then a freak solar flare forges an impossible Resonance Pair between them.
Their dragons are twin aspects of the same crisis-Medical and Sovereign, rust-belt and Spire-and Kai and Rhys must literally link minds and bodies to keep their dragons from tearing the academy apart. The more they train, the more their psychic bond leaks: pain, memories, guilt... and a heat neither of them can write off as a "stress glitch."
As they fight through deadly trials, feral dragon uprisings, and sabotage from Rhys's viperous ex-fianc e, Kai uncovers a horrifying truth: the academy doesn't discharge dragons-it harvests them to fuel the wealth of the elite.
Now the pair at the bottom and top of the ledger are the only ones standing between a rigged world and a global reset.
To free themselves-and everyone marked like them-they'll have to hack the godlike Tier Black kill switch, unite the Basement's feral dragons, and decide how much of the economy they're willing to burn down.
Because in a world where debt is a dragon with your mother's name, you either tame the system...
Or become its next meal.
Perfect for readers of Fourth Wing, The Hunger Games, and romantasy with teeth, TETHERED BY FIRE blends dragon academy trials, enemies-to-lovers heat, and late-stage capitalism rage into a propulsive, high-stakes love story.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G4763VD2
• ISBN13: 9798276275109
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 638 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.0" x 10.0"