She was sacrificed to the wood. He was the curse waiting at the end of the rope.

When the four crones of my village tied me to the Tree of Mothers and called it an honor, I made one promise to myself before the dark came down: I was going to live long enough to take them apart.

Then he came.

Nine feet of dark, gold-veined god with the skull of a great stag and hands that put three armed men in pieces in the moonlight before he ever turned them on the rope at my wrists. The Leshen of the Brzosk wood is supposed to be a monster. He is supposed to be the kind of horror you buy a girl to feed. He is supposed to eat me.

Instead, he carries me home. He builds up a fire in the hollowed heart of his oak. He heals my rope-burns with magic that has not been kindly used in fifty-three winters. He has a name no one has spoken aloud since before my grandmother grew her crooked back. He has a body the curse has done nothing to ruin, a self-loathing as deep as the wood is old, and shadow-magic that can lift a woman off the moss and fill more than one place at a time.

He thinks he should not love me.

He thinks he should walk me south to a stranger’s village and forget my face.

He has not, in fifty-three winters, met a Brzosk girl with a memory and a plan.

I am going to learn his name. I am going to learn the curse that bound him. I am going to learn the four old women who put a deer’s skull on a young man’s face and called it justice—and when I am done learning, my love and I are going to walk back into my village together at long-laundry, and we are going to finish what they started.

He calls me his small mouth. He calls me his Kalina. He calls me, when the knot is in me and the long pour begins, his.

He is correct.

Knotted by the Leshen is a full-length, deeply explicit, standalone Slavic monster romance for readers who like:

• A 9-foot cursed forest god with a deer skull, a giant gold-veined cock, and the softest hands in folklore
• A sharp-tongued FMC with a knife at her hip and a list of grievances she’s been keeping since she was eleven
• Slow-burn first night, then very, very fast burn every night after
• Shadow magic that floats, kisses, fills, and worships
• Knotting, the long pour, on-page squirting, anal play, oral worship, and a hero who will lock you to him for an hour at a time
• Touch-her-and-die protector energy delivered with extreme prejudice
• Slavic folklore, witch crones, blood vengeance, and a wood that has been waiting fifty-three winters for the right girl
• A morally grey hero who bakes you bread the morning after he ruins you
• Long, cinematic spice scenes you can disappear into for hours