My heart hammers in my chest. Fire trails down my spine. My shoulders contort, my back stretches, my face breaks... I fight him. I struggle. I rage. And still I am being taken. My sight fades. The sharp tang of blood is an endless. The world around me is nothing but the black of my own insanity and I am dying. It mocks me. I cry at it, cry my anger, my sadness, my pain, and it hangs listlessly in the sky, suspended by heartstrings and I know I want nothing more than to cut them and take it from it's sparkling home in the sky and hold it out to my brother and say, "You see? You see what this had made me become?" And then running. Running and running and running and, then, red.

Hunters have always been the greatest enemy of the immortals; killing them off for being abominations. Now they have found a new strategy: kill off the females so there will be no offspring to ensure the continuation of the race. Raine, Alpha of the werepanthers, will not allow this, as it is his duty to ensure the continuation of the race. He figures that capturing human females will fit just perfectly in his plan. What starts off as a simple task of capturing and mating human women becomes more complicated as the men realize that these woman will be very hard to pacify, and even harder to love…

The brave warrior Searon is haunted by the deaths of his wife and children at the hands of the savage reptilian draeyks, who are on a bloodthirsty rampage. He walks the land of Calthoria alone and thirsty for vengeance. He hunts the creatures down one by one, showing no mercy. But Searon is a one-man army-and no match for the legions of murderous draeyks. Lucky for him, the powerful wizard Karceoles finds him during his travels and enlists Searon in this coming war. Karceoles believes Searon can unite the races to defeat the draeyks once and for all. Searon discovers he can do more damage with Karceoles and a band of warriors they find along the way. But as the war rages in earnest, Searon must make a choice: Is it more important to destroy the draeyks at all costs, or will his quest for vengeance endanger the lives of his new brothers and sisters at arms?

She is the assassin who roams the night and kills those who would betray her. Having escaped from the Academy many years ago, she still hunts the night and attacks those that serve them. As she tracks down the headmaster of the Academy to end it all, she must defeat those who would guard him. It will get bloody and dangerous with rest as a rare treat. She will throw her all into its destruction.

For twenty-five years, L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest has discovered and nurtured a steady stream of new authors who have changed the face of SF. Chosen by an impressive panel of judges drawn from the biggest names in the genre, taught at a remarkable week-long workshop, and celebrated at world-class venues such as the Kennedy Space Center, the United Nations and the Science Fiction Museum, Contest winners are given the best possible foundation for a long-standing writing career. Filled with more than a thousand spectacular images, interspersed with over one hundred success stories and testimonials, this book celebrates the first quarter century of Writers of the Future. This is truly the gold standard of SF awards. For more info, please visit: http://www.writersofthefuture.com/