ALIEN AMONG US is a contemporary sci-fi novella that will give you the giggles, tug at your heartstrings, and leave you wondering if there really is life beyond the stars. ************************************************************************ Entered into the Open Novella Contest 2026 | @OpenNovellaContest - Rules & Guidelines: here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/406004197-open-novella-contest-2026 **Main Prompt** 25. You live with four other housemates, but one of them is secretly an alien trying to learn how to act human. ©2026 E. S. Elias, All Rights Reserved. Book Created & Published to Wattpad: 02.01.2026 Book Marked as Completed: 00.00.2026 Book Cover: Me @DesignsbyEH Word Count: 2,222 / 20,000 Goals: ✔ Round 1 _ | 2,000 words ✔ | Round 2 _ | 8,000 words Round 3 _ | 20,000 words LONGLIST _ | SHORTLIST _ Round Winner? _ | Honorable Mention? _ | Ambassadors' Pick? _ Mentioned in Ambassador Newsletter _ Rankings: #ONC2026: #ONC #2 02.03.2026

When the man she loves is about to marry someone else, she does the unthinkable - she goes to stop the wedding. But timing is cruel. Who would have thought arriving a day late would change everything? My second entry into the Open Novella Contes. A Frankenstory made of many prompts... can you spot them all? Each chapter is a song title with the corresponding song as a video before it. You don't have to listen. It's just an additional detail Trigger Warning: Adultery, Blasphemy and a whole lot of bad language

In the coastal town of Grayhaven, disappearances aren't crimes, they're cycles. Every twenty seven years, devoted parents vanish without a trace. Every twenty seven years, a quiet girl named Shanice appears soon after, as if the sea itself has returned something in exchange. Nineteen year old, Lucious Waters has lived with the aftermath of the last cycle. His mother was among those who vanished. Since then, he has carried a secret: when the fog rolls in and emotions run high, he sees something beneath certain people's skin, faint, drifting tendrils like jellyfish suspended in flesh. When the cycle begins again, Lucious realizes the truth is larger than grief, older than the town, and far more deliberate than anyone admits. Grayhaven Town is not cursed. It is protected. And protection always demands payment. PROMPT 38. Everyone sees an ordinary person but you are the only one who can see their true nature, a jellyfish in disguise. Tendrils of Grayhaven is a haunting supernatural mystery about grief, loyalty, and the terrifying cost of safety, where the greatest threat may not be what lurks in the deep, but what happens when it decides to change.

Before France burned and crowns fell, it once starved to live. Before he was a king, he was a boy who once feared the silence. Before she was a revolutionary, she was a girl who once believed in love. Years before his marriage to Marie Antoinette, before alliances forged him into the King the world will remember, Louis was only a quiet prince who found comfort in the laughter of a printer's daughter from the Third Estate. Camille was never meant to stand beside a monarch. She never asked to love a prince. She asked for bread. For justice. For a France that did not bleed its poorest dry. But when a prophecy, whispered in the still halls of Versailles, follows Louis into manhood, "He will love two women. One will save his life. The other will destroy it." The trouble is, love does not wear a name. As France trembles beneath famine, debt, and rising fury, the prince becomes king. The king becomes a symbol. And the girl he once loved becomes something far more dangerous than memory. Revolution has many faces. Sometimes, it looks like the woman you once promised forever. Kings have honour. Soldiers are brave. Poets have hearts. And all Camille has left... is rage. As history sharpens its blade and the guillotine waits for its final applause, Louis must decide which love was his salvation, and which was his ruin. Because in a country built on hierarchy and hunger, loving the wrong person does not merely break a heart. It breaks a crown.

Maeve Raines has seen golden strings since her teenage years-thin, luminous threads tied to people's pinkies, binding them through choice, emotion, and consequence. Friendship. Betrayal. Belief. Obsession. Love. Everyone has them. Some have many. Having only one is rare. Having none is impossible. Except Maeve cannot see her own. Now in her late twenties, she lives a life that demands silence and observation. Her secret stays hidden, pressed between unanswered questions and the letters she writes to the Fates-quiet confessions meant for powers she isn't sure are listening. Over the years, she has learned every shade of gold that exists and memorized their meanings. There is nothing left about the strings that should surprise her. To the world, she is someone else entirely. She goes by Juno-a name chosen, not given. A name she wears like armor. Under that name, she drifts. Watches. Learns how lives knot and unravel. Until she meets Theo Mercer. Her neighbor is gentle, reserved, and marked by something she has never encountered before. He has no visible strings. Not one. The absence unsettles her more than any bond ever has-because she knows what every shade should mean, and yet he fits none of them. Theo knows nothing of fate or golden threads-only that being near Juno feels fragile, like something he shouldn't expect to keep. What unfolds between them is not loud or dramatic. It is slow. Measured. Built from shared glances, half-confessions, and the quiet comfort of being understood without explanation. And for the first time, Maeve feels something she cannot categorize-a pull, a burn around her own pinkie whenever she turns away from him. Still unable to see her string, she prays-desperately-that if it exists, it will not be the worst kind. The color of love that never gets to stay. To the Fates is a quiet, tragic exploration of destiny misunderstood, love interrupted, and the cost of seeing what others cannot.

The soul song is every witch's right of passage. Each tune represented by a dream warped of different scents that are like patterns which each witch must follow in order to be led to their chosen path and live an eternity with whatever it is the witch chooses. However, each witch must be careful after the song begins there's no escaping the calling-no matter where it leads to. When a witch gets their eye they must be bathed in the sleeping lake just north of werewolf territories and almost at the heart of fairies, not elsewhere. The ritual is simple. Irene is the daughter of a notorious blood witch, who hopes to not follow in her mother's footsteps, who begins to have dreams she can't necessarily remember and the worst of headaches. Then a scent-wet grass. Then, everything comes in voices and she's called by a song-her song. She's being called by the spirits as her fates are aligning. Every morning is an excruciating pain, time isn't a patient master of hers and her soul lines are devided, one leads to death, and sacrifice, and the other to becoming the one thing she didn't wish to be-like her mother. With her heart and life on the line what path will she choose? Can she help her feelings? Will death be her true fate? Or will her path lead her to the river? Prompts used: 11. The daughter of a powerful witch is nothing like her mother. 61. You have a vision of your soulmate but it's of the moment where they end your life. .

When a mage is found dead, and, at a rough measurement, at least a head shorter, the only clue to his fate lies in the key gripped in his hand. A very magical key that sets the leaders in the Guild of Mages, Prestidigitators, Illusionists and General Wielders of Magic (not including Witches) in a bit of a quandary, because none of them want to touch it. Thus, the investigation is left in the thoroughly incapable hands of the three mages in the highly dangerous, very almost deadly on a daily basis, Thaumatological Gubbins Department of the Guild. Accompanied by a young(ish, these are mages after all) member of the Guild tasked with recording the progress of the investigation, the three mages set out on a perilous journey that will involve several belligerent doors, a three cart race, and, probably, a number of people wondering what the Hel is going on and why one of the mages continues to shout 'Power!' at every opportunity. An ONC novella like no other.

Ten years after graduation, Aspenwood High's Class of 2018 reunites at the city's most luxurious hotel. Bethany Perez, a rising lawyer reeling from a devastating courtroom loss returns home hoping for one simple night of nostalgia, old friendships, and unfinished rivalries. But beneath the glittering ballroom, a secret biotech experiment goes catastrophically wrong. What begins as a breakthrough becomes a nightmare. When something inhuman claws its way into the reunion, the celebration turns into a blood-soaked trap. Cut off from the outside world, former classmates must fight to survive. Not just the horrors stalking the halls, but the secrets, betrayals, and grudges they never left behind. In a night where the past refuses to stay buried, survival will demand impossible alliances. Because at this reunion... not everyone is making it home. ------------------------------------------------ Written for Open Novella Contest 2026 ------------------------------------------------ Prompt chosen is: 59. You're at your school reunion when there is a zombie apocalypse. ------------------------------------------------

#ONC2026 Entry 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 Elizabeth 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. With the Blackwood Guild and Pendulum's cleanup crew closing in to expunge them both, Elizabeth and Thomas must decide: are they still property of these organizations, or can they destroy the system to free those destined for the same fate? Two assassins. One royal secret. A lullaby of steel and secrecy. ~~~~~~~~~ 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. Cover photo from Unsplash, edited in canva. Started: 1st February 2026 Completed: Rated: Mature Exclusively on Wattpad.

Jareth Coppersmith and Pol Flynt have one thing in common. They kill for a living. One works for GAME, the powerful Guild of Airship Mechanics and Engineers and the other, for the Royal Spymaster. But what happens when they are unknowingly sent on the same secret mission? At best they are rivals, at worst, mortal enemies. SciFi / Thriller/ Steampunk/ LGBT