Onc2026 Stories

[ONC 2026 SHORTLISTER] *** In a ghost town where cornfields outnumber people, Lieutenant Gianna Park arrests the new arrival, Nicolae Badea, for biting her on their first date. When bodies begin to surface-young men found mummified, bitten, and strangled-Gianna suspects the man she once handcuffed. Yet the evidence refuses to align. The wounds are wrong. The hunger is too controlled. Eighteen years ago, a boy was killed and forgotten. Now the dead are returning the same way. As Gianna uncovers a hidden world of vampires who police their own kind, she learns that monsters are not defined by blood, but by what they choose to feed on. Nicolae Badea insists it was never desire that restrained him. It was faith. He survives by restraint, faith, and silence. The killer survives by power. Only one of them hunts humans. The Coffin of Nicolae is a gothic crime novel about addiction, faith, romance, and the violence we excuse when it wears a human face. It asks what justice means when the law has no language for the truth. And what waits inside Nicolae's coffin. *** Content Warning: This novel includes strong, explicit language and depictions of violence, sexual scenes that some readers may find offensive.

Almost good. Almost talented. Almost enough.

SPOILERS FOR SUNRISE --------------------------- An Eternal Sunrise one-shot! Main prompt: Fall #63 Sub-prompts: Spring #16, Fall #78, Fall #80, Winter #93, Winter #104 -------------------------------------- The Wolves of Glindale are a species of wolves as old as time. Blessed with powers beyond human imagination. Also known as 'The Mother Wolves', they were the ones who created the first werewolf. Ever since their creation, early werewolves have dedicated The Temple of Lycaon to them and made pilgrimages to gain their blessings. Every 100 years, when the first blood moon of the year appears, the temple's gates emerge, signalling the beginning of another pilgrimage season. Thousands look for its whereabouts, but without success, save for a chosen few who had their spirit as their guide. Yet, finding the temple is only the first step in a series of daunting challenges, and only those worthy can see the end of the finish line. Dr Melissa Ortega and her associate, Dr Christopher Bentley, are tasked by the Director of the Ministry of Lycan Affairs (MLA) to look for the elusive temple and study the legendary wolves. But of course, he won't let them venture into the unknown alone without a powerful guide. Who is this mystery guide? And, will they find the Mother Wolves? Keep reading to find out! ----------------------------------------- This tale can be considered as an alternate timeline to the main series, and is a standalone! Also, this book is rated Mature for violence, gore, and mentions of SA, trauma, and body horror common in the genre. -------------------------- 2026 (c) All Rights Reserved. All writing done is mine, and so is the cover design using Canva. NO AI USED! No stealing, or I will send AJ and the McIntyre family after you. 😤

[[ONC 2026 Honorable Mention]] 25-year old Lee still hasn't figured out why they could not form any long-lasting relationships, even friendships for that matter. Aside from family members, which they are obligated to talk to, there is no one else Lee had even come close to calling a friend. Well, maybe except for one. -------- Submitted for ONC 2026 @OpenNovellaContest Using the following prompts : 29. You will meet many people in your life. Many will come and go, but some will leave footprints in your heart. 104. While wandering in the woods, you dismiss the rustling behind you as nothing more than wind through the trees until you turn around and realize it isn't the wind at all. 106. After waking at 3AM to a freezing room and a door you're certain you closed, you find wet footprints and melting snow leading from your bedroom into the hall. Realizing someone or something is inside your home, you follow the trail to uncover the truth. ------------- © 2026 J. Lee Kennedy. All rights reserved. Cover design © 2026 J. Lee Kennedy. Images used in this work belong to their respective copyright holders and are used under license or in accordance with applicable Creative Commons terms. Edited or altered images are copyrighted by the author in their final form.

Your blood intoxicates me more than wine. Your scent lingers like fate. In the dead of winter... let me warm you with my bite. In the coldest winter, a werewolf crashes from the sky like a meteor-mysterious, powerful, and cursed. His name is Aldric, a lone wolf of unknown origin, discovered by the werewolf Evander but enslaved by the ruthless vampire Darren, whose experiments blend ancient magic with twisted science. When Darren uses Aldric's blood to create a monstrous hybrid and plans to awaken an ancient force using the blood of a girl named Rose, the fate of the world begins to unravel. But Rose is no ordinary girl. She is the reincarnation of Princess Clara, a warrior of the Middle Ages and the long-lost love of Rigel, a vampire prince who once adored her... and accidentally took her life. Grief-stricken, Rigel sealed himself in a deep sleep- and awaken in modern times, drawn once again to the woman his soul never forgot. Now, Rose lives again-but with new memories, new choices, and a new protector. When a feral Aldric injures her by accident, guilt drives him to protect her. What begins as care blossoms into something deeper-a love that may rewrite fate. Torn between two supernatural souls-one who loved her in a past life, and one who guards her in this one-Rose must unravel her destiny. Will she choose Rigel and rekindle a love centuries old? Or will she stand beside Aldric and help him break his curse and defy Darren's dark grip? As monstrous forces rise and the underworld threatens to awaken, only love can tip the balance between salvation and destruction. Vampire or werewolf. Past or present. Love... or destruction. "Is it a curse or a blessing... to be loved by those who are not human?"

William Grombo is a librarian who tries to forget the fact that he has super powers, but then he meets Kaya Ravens, who is just as obsessed with super heroes as he once was. But like William, Kaya hides a secret she doesn't want anyone to know.

Ian has always had very vivid dreams that feel like memories. Seeing people she's never met before and even places she has never been to before. Her therapist told her that there are just dreams and not memories. She performances hypnosis to help her shut out her memories. But not all dreams have disappeared. The moment she arrives in a town called "Zoey." Upon her arrival, she continues to be mistaken for Anna. But the question is: Who is Anna?

ALIEN AMONG US is a small-town sci-fi novella filled with humor, heart, friendship, and enough secrets to make you wonder what-or who-might be hiding in plain sight. ************************************************************************ 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 _ Top-5 Winner? _ Rankings: #ONC2026: #ONC #2 02.03.2026

One moment, Avery was the author. The next... she woke up inside her own novel. Her characters are alive. Her plot is wrong. And Aiden-the man she wrote to break hearts- is looking at her like she's his. The scariest part? She's no longer the one holding the pen. Every page pulls her deeper, every twist makes her question who's really writing the story-her, or something else entirely. And somewhere between fiction and reality, she'll have to decide... does she want to escape this world? Or rewrite it forever? [New chapter: Every week on Monday.]

Aunt Mabel is dead, found lying amongst her daisies in her garden. Two eyes anxiously watch over her. The police arrive, but questions soon crop up. Is it actually Aunt Mabel? And who or what did it? A wild animal? A person? A baby dragon? Something strange is afoot in the Auntie's garden and it's up to Officer Holt Martinez, Estelle, and her cousin Julia, to figure it all out before it's too late. Little does she know that an unplanned trip to the Dragon's Lair Bookshop will upend everything she thought she knew about life, this world, and those beyond. *The Novella Version was a Open Novella Contest ONC 2026 Long List Winner!

Mari thought that coming home to a ghost town after her mom's death was bad. It turns out it's worse having to attend her estranged father's wedding and letting her childhood best friend break down the walls she carefully built. ***** Mari Chasey's life is suspended. She returns to her hometown in a cold November day following her mother's death, after years of studying abroad in Europe. Pinewood is sleepy in the bitter cold, the deserted shoreline stretching further than she can reach, but that's okay. Mari is good with temporary things and at not lingering. She's not planning to stay for long, just enough to sort out her mother's affairs without poking at open wounds. Then her father returns. Jack Chasey, former renowned superstar, absent for most of her childhood, is getting married to a woman Mari hardly knows. He gets to begin again, build something new, while Mari grapples with a fractured life and all the scattered pieces of herself. Her mother was supposed to live forever; Jack was mercurial and always at arm's length. But now he's here to stay. Enter Kinney St. James. Once Mari's closest friend, then another person that passed by like a comet, she still knows Mari and all the shards of her. Even the sharper ones. In the stillness of winter, Mari reconnects with the quiet life Jack always wanted for her, the softer parts of her that only Kinney can tap into, and what it truly means to be her mother's daughter. ***** Open Novella Contest -- prompts 24, 29, 46, & 77 [[OPEN NOVELLA CONTEST 2026 ROUND 1 WINNER, SHORTLISTER]] © 2026 caterina george // all rights reserved

When the big, bad dragon meets his match, he's forced to do something no dragon has ever done before--find help. And with enigmatic knight Sir Crispin de Harriff-Scarnley hot on his scaled heels, it's science--in the unlikely form of humble and slightly sozzled apothecary student Alyx--he turns to as his saviour. Naturally, Alyx is appalled--knights are good and dragons are bad, right? Everyone knows that. But as he fights to save first his skin and then the dragon's hide, he'll discover that when it comes to concepts such as good vs bad, magic vs science, and nature vs 'progress', the choices aren't always as obvious as he might think. And he'll do it while dodging spells, grappling with gryphons, negotiating hangovers and, perhaps scariest of all, confronting his classmate crush. Meanwhile, in the background, a sinister figure looms...

At eighteen, she begins dreaming about a boy she has never met-yet somehow knows by heart. In her dreams, he feels like her missing half, someone who understands her in ways no one else ever has. She wakes up every morning wondering if he's real... or just a creation of her lonely imagination. Then one day, she spills her coffee on a stranger. Late, stressed, and embarrassed, she expects the moment to ruin her day. Instead, it becomes the beginning of something unexpected. The boy she drenched in coffee is kind, funny, and strangely familiar. Too familiar. As their awkward meeting turns into friendship, and friendship slowly turns into something deeper, she starts noticing unsettling similarities between him and the boy from her dreams. The same smile. The same voice. The same way he looks at her like he's always known her. With every shared laugh and late-night conversation, the line between dreams and reality begins to blur. Was their meeting just an accident? Or was fate slowly guiding them toward each other all along? And when love begins to bloom, she must face the truth- Some souls are destined to meet... long before they ever touch.

When a cautious Formula One engineer crosses paths with a damaged comeback driver, she discovers that the most dangerous variable she should assess in the sport isn't speed-but attachment. ✦✦✦ Adriana Santos has always known her place on a championship-winning Formula One team is contingent. Excellence, she learned early, is not the same as security. She works in a role the paddock barely understands-simulating failures before they happen, answering 'what ifs' before they become 'what went wrong', and treating the car like a living thing whose future rests in her hands. Her work is quiet, precise, and easily erased the moment she becomes inconvenient. She is careful because she has to be. She knows Joshua Thomas long before she meets him: the driver who changed his name to fit in, the anomaly on a rival team forever tipped for titles. To Adriana, he's a reaction curve that never quite returned to baseline after last season's crash. His comeback is framed as resilience. Many are simply waiting to see him fail. They meet by accident, in a moment stripped of his usual extravagance and pretence. Adriana notices what she always notices-the face behind the mask, the way he laughs through failure like it doesn't frighten him. Adriana doesn't forget him, though. She keeps her distance but Joshua doesn't, and their reluctant friendship begins to bend into something riskier. And they both know exactly what it could cost them. ✦✦✦ ✦ Open Novella Contest 2026 | Prompts 24, 29, 30, 44 ᴄᴏᴘʏʀɪɢʜᴛ © 2026 ʙʏ ᴀᴜᴅʀᴇʏ ᴀʟʟ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ ʀᴇꜱᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ.

A reimagining of the enchanted fairytale we all know as Sleeping Beauty, in which the evil fairy has a son. ~ The unseelie fae know many stories. Their favourite is that of their mistress's son, Draco. The unseelie prince of thorns. With his vivid eyes and small horns, his brave, kind heart and his unexpected adventures. For when his mother, known as a witch amongst the humans, cast a spell only to be broken by true love's kiss, no one would've expected that Draco would be able to break the curse. No one expected him to love a human princess. No one expected Briar Rose to love him. However, it is for this very reason that the unseelie fae love the story of Draco and how he came to love Briar Rose. How the two of them reunited a realm torn apart, the humans and the fair folk. And how they brought peace and joy amongst their people, creating a story lost with generations to come. ~ Wattpad ONC 2026 LONGLISTER

ONGOING! Couture Magazine: the most prestigious fashion publication in the world, where hemlines are sacred, deadlines are deadly, and the coffee runs are... surprisingly literal. Every intern who walks through those gleaming Manhattan doors dreams of landing a full-time position-complete with vision, dental (including twice-yearly cleanings), and an endless supply of designer clothes fresh off the runway. Sure, the demands from editors, photographers, and even the notoriously temperamental writers can be exhausting. But an intern's day at Couture is pretty ordinary, right? WRONG. Alcide Lancaster is about to discover that his summer internship working for the iconic-yet-terrifying Ellen Montclaire comes with a few... unexpected job requirements. Like why he and a select few employees-including the formidable Editor-in-Chief herself-are the only ones taking mandatory two-hour lunch breaks. Why his thirty-to-fifty-something coworkers look suspiciously athletic, eerily youthful, and are borderline obsessed with eyewear that definitely isn't just a fashion statement. And why A-list celebrities who stop by the Couture offices seem less interested in the magazine's latest cover shoot and oddly fascinated with Alcide himself. But most importantly... What does any of this have to do with Alcide's late family, their disturbingly narrow worldview, and the real reason they wanted him out of their lives forever? All excellent questions for a young man trying to survive a summer packed with Fashion Week chaos, superpowered coworkers who treat the office like their personal runway, and a boss who's less Anna Wintour and more fierce-but-loving grandmother. Between navigating new friendships, an unexpected romance, and enough secrets to fill an entire September issue, Alcide is about to learn that in the world of high fashion... Not everything is just an illusion.

Enid Rose Ferron had one goal in her mind when she enrolled herself into undergraduate vivimancy programme at Alchemy Institute - clear her fathers name and show the truth of her mother's role during the Second Necromancy War. But wearing fake surname and trying to keep distance from her best friend, Apollo Holdfast, doesn't seem enough as one of the top students notices her similarities to Helene Marino and starts placing the dots. Keeping her facades never felt heavier, as she tries to balance it all, wondering if some things are simply meant to fall apart. 🔥 Story is written as a fanfiction on "Alchemised" by SenLinYu, planned as sequel on Enid Ferron and Apollo Holdfast, placed just after epilogue. I hope some day we get a real second book following those characters, but in the mean time feel free to make any suggestions how to make it feel more compelling.

When 15-year-old Izel Aziz gets a note during his last period at school, warning him not to touch any electronics in his home, he thinks nothing of it (or at least thinks he doesn't.) That is, of course, when he goes to log into his and his sister's co-op save of Moonwillow Hollow, only for him to be sucked into the game upon pressing the save file. When he enters the game due to being sick of having to be stuck in the closet, though, everything seems a lot more real than he thought this pixel filled world would be... ONC Prompts: 8. You wake up inside Stardew Valley with no idea how you got there and no guarantee you'll ever get back home. 79. A letter arrives addressed to you, written by someone who shouldn't exist.

Aurelia Jade Maddison was derided , humiliated and harassed by her own mother and step- Sister , her fiancé betrayed and pushed her over a cliff a day before they're wedding but she was reborn stunning and talented. But will she fall in love again?

For Centuries Grim has been collecting souls. It's what he does, it's his purpose. One day, while collecting a soul in the park, he comes across a lost puppy. For reasons he can't explain, the urge to return the small dog to his owner is overwhelming. He soon finds the animal's owner, a woman in her mid-twenties named Maria. He is struck down by her beauty and realizes that he had once claimed the soul of someone she loved. He becomes even more conflicted when he realizes he has just one year to claim her soul.