When the stars whisper your name will you heed the call? To travel over ocean currents and through the tangles of fate designed to keep all in it's ever stretching web? Or will you let them burn just like you always have? --- [ONC 2026]

Nicole Brenner has been missing for three years. Sort of. Trapped between worlds and bound to a cabin deep in Pennsylvania's western mountains, Nic has spent every day since keeping an ancient evil locked behind the door at the end of the hall, and trying not to lose her mind. She's got a grimoire she's memorized cover to cover, a weepy cryptid named Pierogi, and exactly two weeks of corporeality per year to shore up defenses against the monsters called to kill her. Then Cal Muir walks through her front door - ex-Navy SEAL, ex-almost-something, and the last person she ever expected to see again. He's here to find out what happened to her; he doesn't know she's standing right behind him; and he's wasted no time dismantling her meager defenses (and she cannot stress enough how much of a problem that is). Now Nic has six days to figure out how to save a man who can't see her, from monsters he doesn't believe in, before Halloween night blows the door open for good - all while reckoning with the fact that the magic she once told him wasn't real might be the only thing that saves them. A second-chance paranormal romance steeped in Penn Dutch folklore, veteran mental health representation, and the kind of magic that challenges both fate and faith.

#ONC2026 PROMPT 120. You survive a werewolf bite because your blood carries a rare, deadly condition that poisons them, and now you hunt werewolves by letting them bite you. Edwina Dawley, a rational wildlife biologist, enters the forest to study wolves and emerges with her reality shattered after surviving an attack by a massive wolf that transforms into a man. This encounter fractures her belief in the ordinary world, leading her to the ancient Order Sapientae Antiquae, which tracks her blood anomaly-an obscure condition lethal to werewolves. She becomes a hunter, using her body as a weapon, but as her reputation grows, so does her isolation. Her closest friend, Graham, begins to see the Order's hidden violence, while Darnell Key, the Order's mentor, recognizes Edwina's potential as a stabilizing force. Everything changes when Randolf, an ancient werewolf, chooses her and bites her, binding their fates together. Their intense connection ignites a love that challenges everything Edwina thought she understood. Caught between the safety of her old life, the allure of order, and a forbidden love, Edwina must choose her identity: scientist or myth, weapon or woman. As the Order tightens its grip and the world approaches exposure, she navigates a new role-neither prey nor predator-rewriting the rules with blood, choice, and consequence.

After Travis McPherson dies, his fiancée receives a voicemail, recorded an hour after his passing. *** Candace and Travis have known each other their entire lives. First as best friends, and later, high school sweethearts. As far as anyone in their small town is concerned, these two were meant to walk down the aisle together. But when a flash flood takes all that away, Candace is left grieving and heartbroken. All she has left of him is a mysterious voicemail recorded an hour after his confirmed death. It's impossible, yet she plays it over and over again, desperate for the sound of his voice. And a sign. Something, anything to ease her aching heart. All as their lives flash before her eyes. Travis always told her he loved her to Heaven and back, and beyond the grave, sends a final, heartfelt message moments before his death. The only remaining mystery is how as death parts two halves of the same heart. *** (Prompt 90: You receive a voicemail from someone you love, recorded one hour after their confirmed death). Wired for the Open Novella Contest 2026