Winter Yield

De: Kora Valeka

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

*Each book in this series can be read as a standalone.*

She's a disgraced noblewoman playing dumb to survive. He's a celibate shaman who just recognized her scent as his fated mate. And he's done waiting for the spirits to be polite about it.

Lady Beatrix was supposed to be useless. Soft. Spoiled. Easily discarded. When her father sends her as tribute to the orc clans in the aftermath of a brutal war, she hides behind the "ditzy noble" act to stay invisible—and maybe gather enough intelligence to escape. But the Clan Shaman sees through every lie.

Hruul has been celibate for decades, waiting for the spirits to choose his match. The moment he scents Bea, he knows: she's his. The biological lock-and-key that will break his vow and claim his soul. So he does what any desperate holy man would do—he kidnaps her to his isolated mountain shrine to "purify" her. Alone. In a blizzard. With aphrodisiac ritual saps and a single question: *Will you stop lying to me, little vessel?*

Bea tries to manipulate him. Tries to perform her way to freedom. But Hruul punishes every deception with pleasure, every lie with truth, until she's stripped bare—not just her soft body on his altar, but her rage, her shame, her fractured sense of worth. And when he worships her, braids her hair, bathes her like she's sacred? She stops pretending. She stops running.

But the human army is invading the Ironwood, and Bea must choose: help Hruul unleash the forest's magic to defend his people, or protect the soldiers she once knew. The cost of power is steep. And when she uses magic to wake the trees and falls into a coma in his arms, the only question left is whether love is strong enough to bring her back.

Winter Yield is a dark fated mates orc romance with forced proximity, a mysterious shaman who uses ritual and praise to break down walls, a heroine who discovers her softness is strength, and a breeding/pregnancy arc wrapped in magic and devotion. This is Book 2 of the Ironwood Covenant trilogy—each book features a different couple, but the war is escalating and the stakes are life or death.