After a year spent healing at St. Francis Mental Hospital, Neillah must piece together the life she was forced to leave behind without getting caught. ⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂ ⠂⠄⠄⠂☆ When Neillah Thomas is released back into society she expects her family and friends to have moved on--not believe she's dead. Convinced it was for the best, her mother assures her temporary grief was better than long drawn hardship that could only end in pain, keeping her wellbeing a secret from everyone, but also single-handedly cutting off Neillah's entire support system. Sworn to secrecy, she attends college at her dream school only to find her former friend group in shambles. Between the cold stares, scathing retorts, and literal evasion, Neillah is shocked to find her first crush is a loner and that hot-headed best friend of hers? He seems to be staring in her direction a little too long. Clinging to her promise to remain out of sight, Neillah stubbornly fights for the closure they all deserve and answers she never got, no matter the cost. | An Open Novella Contest Longlister | | Cover by the Amazing @Caralogues |

Delilah Daine is the most ordinary girl in existence. At least that's what she wants everyone to believe desperately. After spending years in a residential treatment center as a pre-teen, she wants to be normal and fit neatly into the popular mold society creates for girls her age. She has a social media account, so she isn't considered too closed off, but she only posts nature photos and shares cute animal videos. She works as a librarian surrounded by people every day, but after work, she prefers to stay home and be alone. Her carefully curated existence shatters when she receives a letter from someone every doctor insisted never existed - a person who was supposed to be nothing more than a figment of her childhood imagination. Nathaniel Fitzpatrick knows he must leave Europe, especially after spending years caged in a delusional scientist's basement as a test subject. Only one thing keeps him from boarding the ship to America and disappearing for at least a decade - Delilah. A talkative little girl who once showed him he shouldn't spend the rest of eternity hidden in dark caves, only coming out for food. He decided weeks ago it would be best to write her a thank-you note before his departure and forget about her, the way he assumes she forgot about him. But now that it's time to board, he realizes a simple letter isn't enough. He needs to know if she's even alive and what kind of person she has grown into during the years he was imprisoned. People change, and he has to find out whether the only good person he has ever met managed to retain her kindness and compassion - or if she lost that battle the moment she grew up, the way most humans usually do.

🏆ONC2026 Entry | Longlister | Round 3 Winner 🏆 TheNanoWatt Longlister Two assassins. One royal secret. A lullaby of steel and secrecy. One last assignment to buy her freedom. The final phase of the mission was supposed to be straightforward: slip into the Spanish Royal Palace during the midsummer gala, incinerate the marked documents, and eliminate the crown and its heirs. It was supposed to be easy. At least, it would have been if she hadn't arrived twenty-four hours too soon. Forced to play a role her lethal training never prepared her for, the Royal Nanny, Elizabeth must use her supernatural abilities to navigate a world of silk and secrets while protecting the very heirs she was sent to kill. But she isn't the only one on a mission. Thomas, an assassin from a rival organization known as The Pendulum, is already embedded as the palace's head of security. In their battle to outspy each other, they realize they share more than just a job description. ~~~~~~~~~ ⚔️Genre: Espionage/Dark Fantasy/Romanstasy ⚠️Rated: MATURE (Violence, Physical Trauma and Psychological Distress) 📍Exclusively on Wattpad. © 2026 MiriamElade Main Prompt: 32. Two assassins from rival organizations are sent on the same secret mission, only to realize the assignment hides a much bigger truth. Sub Prompt: 33. It doesn't take long before everything in your life spins out of control. One moment you're a secret assassin, and the next, you've somehow been hired as a nanny and you're not entirely sure how it happened. Started: 1st February 2026 Completed: 20th April 2026

Sweat-drenched, rain-soaked and without another care in the world is how I like to strut through the streets, only paying attention to the tallest of buildings in M city, imagining something more interesting than the thousands of blinding lights illuminating store fronts. Mostly sex shops. It's kind of strange how this man wanted to do something beforehand; to treat this as anything more than a fleeting moment, but, nonetheless, it's where I'm heading. To meet that monster.

When her office burns down an editor must work together with the most infuriating man alive or risk the promotion she's been working her entire career for. **** Chielozonam 'Elo' Williams is doing great. All things considered. It doesn't matter that the job she loves as editor at PerfectRomance, the publishing imprint she's been working at for the past five years has started to feel more like a chore these days. It doesn't matter that her judgemental father might be right about her wasting her life away by not using her full potential. What really matters is getting her dream promotion and enjoying the prime years of her youth. That is until the unthinkable happens. After Elo's office building burns down overnight she's forced to share an office with the one person that makes her blood boil: Connor Price. Archenemies since their days at college Connor makes getting under her skin an art form. He's brash and rude and irritates her like nobody else can with his scathing looks and contemptible behavior. It's not long before they're locked in a battle of wits, neither willing to back down or give up. When they have to work together to acquire a potentially lucrative manuscript, they are forced to put aside their long-standing animosity for an adventure that will blur the line between hate and desire until neither of them can tell where the fighting ends and the falling begins. PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION meets ANYONE BUT YOU meets THE HATING GAME in this contemporary rom-com about resilience, self-discovery and two sworn enemies who can't tell the difference between wanting to kiss or kill each other. An ONC 2026 story inspired by prompt 40. THIS NOVEL IS ONLY AVAILABLE ON WATTPAD AND INKITT. IF YOU ARE READING THIS ANYWHERE ELSE, PLEASE INFORM THE AUTHOR VIA WATTPAD, AS YOU MAY BE READING FROM A MIRROR SITE WHERE IT HAS BEEN PLAGIARIZED AND YOUR DEVICE MAY BE SUBJECTED TO A MALWARE ATTACK.

** 𝑺𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒔𝒆 - 𝑹𝒊𝒅𝒆 𝒂 𝒄𝒐𝒘𝒃𝒐𝒚 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒅 - 𝑭𝒍𝒆𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒉𝒖𝒔𝒃𝒂𝒏𝒅, 𝑨𝒍𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝑾𝒚𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒈-𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒔 𝒖𝒑 𝒊𝒏 𝒂𝒏 𝒆𝒎𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝒓𝒐𝒅𝒆𝒐 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒐𝒐 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒑𝒐𝒘𝒆𝒓. ** After her husband not only cheated on her but also took her best friend for this little ride, Alice digs up her past, packs her bags and heads straight for the one place he's sure not to follow her: her hometown Grandfalls in Wyoming. What awaits her there is her parents' run-down ranch, dusty roads, stubborn horses - and cowboys who throw her good intentions out the window with a smile. Shortly after her arrival, Alice stumbles upon the charming cowboy Blake at a town festival and straight into a hot one-night stand that turns out to be a load of horseshit the next morning -because Blake turns out to be working at her parents' ranch. As if that weren't enough, Blake turns out to be a charming mess with a talent for chaos, while his gruffy brother Cole criticises her every idea as if it were his personal mission in life. And then there's Byron Carter: dashing, influential, and clearly too interested in the ranch... and in Alice. Between bankrupt finances, broken high heels, old enemies, and way too hot cowboys, Alice quickly learns that a heart is harder to tame than a wild ranch horse. In the end, she is faced with the all-important question: does she trust her feelings, or does she save the ranch before everything goes down the drain?

** 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 - 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐬.** In the dirty mining town of Dragon's Creek, no one believes in heroes. People trust in alcohol, guns, and the fact that death is faster than any prayer. The mountain is rich, the whiskey cheap, and life worth less than a bullet. Madame Scarlet's world consisted of booze, her saloon girls, and the art of making drunk men and penny-pinching dwarves understand where their filthy hands had no right to be. Then the damn mountain collapses. The mine swallows most of the men, spits out gold, and buries any form of order. What remains is grief, greed, and a mining town that is suddenly open to gold diggers, fanatics, and all kinds of scum. Along with the new scum arrives a priest in town - and Preacher Solomon Knight comes not only with his dogs, but also with his own ideas of mercy and order. As he speaks of salvation, he uses dark magic and drowns people in holy water. As if that weren't enough, the nights suddenly no longer belonged to the living. All that can be found are the leftovers: corpses torn apart, disembowelled, and picked clean to the bone. The mountain was sacred. Now it is hungry. Welcome to Dragon's Creek. Those who pray will die on their knees. Those who survive better load their guns.