Huntervshunted Stories

**Title:** *Wulfric: Rise of the Forsaken Beast* **Book Description:** Once a free wolf among his kin, Wulfric's life shattered the night humans invaded his forest, slaughtered his family, and dragged him into chains. Sold to a noble family, tortured by magic, and treated as nothing more than a beast, he endured agony no creature should face. But he watched. He learned. Now, reborn through pain and driven by vengeance, Wulfric escapes to the shadows of the wild. With a growing pack and a power that defies both sorcery and steel, he rises-not as prey, but as predator. This is not a tale of a hero. It's the beginning of a reckoning.

The Hunter. The Hunted. One driven by fear, the other by desperation. But in the end, when their worlds collide, something greater than them both is discovered. Selected as one of the ten best stories from the TVWF short story competition, 2016

Seventeen-year-old Elara Voss has always been different. With her ghost-pale skin and sea-glass eyes, she's the girl no one trusts-the girl who doesn't quite fit. No one knows the truth: that her little brother's "accidental" death years ago wasn't so accidental, and that every man who's ever tried to hurt her has never walked away alive. Now she's the quiet storm behind a string of killings, balancing the scales her way, while the world calls her a monster. Detective Elias Vale, a twenty-two-year-old prodigy with a sharp mind and an unshakable sense of justice, is assigned to the case. But the deeper he digs, the more every trail leads back to her-the pale girl who seems to haunt every shadow of the murders. He knows she's hiding something. She knows he's right. What begins as interrogation turns into obsession. What begins as a hunt becomes a twisted slow-burn dance between predator and prey. Elias wants to stop her. Elara wants to ruin him. And somewhere between blood and law, hatred and fascination, something darker begins to bloom. The only question is-who will destroy who first?

Japan, 1603. The age of war is ending, but for one outcast warrior, the true battle has just begun. After his clan is annihilated in a brutal siege, Takeshi Elias Arakida-a half-Japanese, half-English ronin-wanders the war-scarred mountains of a newly unified Japan. Marked as a disgrace for surviving when others died, he carries the shame of a broken name and blood no samurai truly accepted. But something unnatural stalks the forests he now calls home. Warriors vanish without a trace. Bodies are found torn apart-armor ripped open, bones shattered, weapons untouched. Locals whisper of a demon from the old stories. A sky spirit. A tengu. A yokai that hunts in silence. Takeshi, haunted by his father's foreign tales and his mother's strict code of honor, begins to suspect the truth: this is no man, and no spirit born of Earth. Whatever is out there doesn't kill for conquest... it kills for sport. As fear spreads across the countryside and old superstitions rise, Takeshi must choose: run from the darkness-or face it. Alone.