A herbalist who counts stones to keep the dark at bay. A beast who can’t remember his own name. And a bargain that gives them thirteen petals before one of them is lost forever.
Wren Alcott has survived debt, grief, and his dead mother’s secrets by turning everything into a transaction—care for payment, loyalty for shelter, love for nothing, because love is a ledger and the numbers never balance. When the Thornlands steal his village’s harvest, Wren walks into the cursed forest alone and strikes a bargain with the monster who rules it: his presence for a life. Stay until the bone rose loses its petals.
Simple enough.
Theron, the antler-crowned Beast bound to the Thornlands, should be easy to endure. Except he leaves food at Wren’s door. And his nest is full of things that smell like Wren.
Trapped together in a castle that shifts and watches, Wren and Theron are caught in a curse shaped by something ancient and hungry—a story that expects them to play their parts. Wren has survived by keeping score. Theron has survived by forgetting who he was. But the bone rose doesn’t measure time. It measures connection. And every time Wren pulls away, another petal falls.
As the bargain tightens and the story closes in, Wren must decide what he is willing to give for freedom—and whether breaking the curse will cost him the one thing he never meant to bargain away.
A dark fairy-tale MM romance featuring a cursed Beast, forced proximity, slow-burn intimacy, and a love strong enough to break the story itself.
Book One of the Grimm Bargains series
