This new breed is stronger, smarter, and far more beautiful than their parent race, and are endowed with psychic as well as physical gifts. They are destined to supplant humanity as we know it, but humanity won't die without a struggle.

    Almost.A deadly hunter.Hraban has dedicated his life to taking down creatures like Drakjan, protecting those who cannot protect themselves.An uneasy truce.When fate forces them together, the nix and the hunter discover a dangerous attraction… and a threat that can destroy everything Drakjan has come to love.~~~~~~This story was written as a part of the M/M Romance Group's "Love is an Open Road" event. Group members were asked to write a story prompt inspired by a photo of their choice. Authors of the group selected a photo and prompt that spoke to them and wrote a short story. "Still Waters" contains sexually explicit content and is intended for adult readers. ~~~~~~This story prompt and photo inspired "Still Waters":Dear Author,I only have two words for you: ginger merman! Everything else is up to you.Photo Description: A redheaded, muscular young man with a short beard stands in a lake, a scraggly stand of seaweed-draped deadwood behind him and mountains in the distance. He looks directly at the viewer, wearing a neutral expression. The water comes up to just above his waist, and he is lifting a sturdy white net from the water with both hands.

     A noted scholar of ancient literature and spellcraft, Lord Ashcroft "Andrea" de Bourbon, finds his world shaken when the new science of mechanical animation becomes the talk of high society. In response, Andrea takes to the presses gaining notoriety for his scathing critiques of mechanical animation and its founder the Marquis de la Marche. Then one night Andrea comes face to face with the Marquis de la Marche and discovers he is nothing like Andrea expected. Leon Gregory de la Marche VI, Marquis de la Marche is handsome, brilliant, and charming. While their clashes on paper have become legendary in person they are even more explosive. As passions rise Andrea knows there is no backing down ...

    Bodily autonomy and transformation, the importance of negative emotions, unhealthy relationships, and bad situations amidst the staggering and urgent question of how build and nurture meaning, love, and safety in a larger world/society that might not be "fixable."

    He never expected to have to retrieve his high school crush, aka the guy who ostracized him for being gay.Rescuing James Ayala isn’t going to be easy: he’s crawling with tracking nanos and has a cybernetic brain implant that’s granted him psychic power he isn’t sure how to control. That’s the good news. The bad? The implant is compromising James’s mental stability.So they’re on the run, avoiding surveillance by AI aircraft and hiding from enemy militia. Then James confesses he tormented Matt in high school because James wanted him. Matt can’t resist the temptation James offers, but he wants so much more than sex, assuming they ever make it home alive. Is James really a good bet when he’s got a ticking time bomb in his brain and there’s the question of how much he’s actually changed?

    Norrell in debut author Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light, featuring an Edwardian England full of magic, contracts, and conspiracies. Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it—not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles—and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.

    Generations of Russells have lived and died with only their familiars at their side. The presence of a friendly familiar is enough to keep even the loneliest witch sane, and yet Piotr deliberately hasn’t chosen one. He forces himself to keep busy instead, but the emptiness of his house haunts him even more the spirit of Great-Great-Aunt Elysia in the parlor. With Samhain and Halloween approaching, he’ll have much to do, and knowing that, his concerned coven seizes the chance to intervene and sends help to his door in the form of Bartleby Dorchester. The rarest of rare jewels, Bartleby is a human familiar: a witch with no magic of his own, and a desire to find a strong witch to help and serve. In particular, he desires to help and serve Piotr, and everything in Piotr wants to let him. Bartleby was meant to be his familiar; Piotr knows it as surely as he knows when it will rain or when the apples in his garden will ripen. But what Piotr wants from Bartleby, all he’s ever wanted, is for Bartleby to love him, something he thinks is impossible. Russells live and die unloved, and he won’t allow Bartleby to feel obligated to spend his life with him as his familiar if he could be happy in love with someone else. But Samhain is a time for change, when walls come down and borders grow thin, and Bartleby isn’t going to waste what might be his last chance to convince Piotr that they were meant to be. He might have no magic, but love is a power all its own.

    Featuring 19 stories by 23 different creators, The Other Side is a celebration of queer romance and the paranormal! Inside, you'll find positive romance stories featuring a wide variety of queer and trans protagonists-as well as poltergeists, shadow monsters, guitar-playing hypnotists, lost angels, genderfluid vampires, trickster ghosts, and many more!

    Like every other kid born in the neighboring country of Tophet, he’s heard the stories: No crime or pollution. A house and food for everyone. It’s perfect, and Rory is finally getting a piece of it.So is Tate Patterson. He’s from Tophet, too, but he’s not a legal immigrant; he snuck in as a thief. A city without crime seems like an easy score, until he crashes into Rory during a getaway and is arrested for assaulting a citizen. Instead of jail, Tate is enrolled in Beulah’s Rehabilitation through Restitution program. By living with and serving his victim for seven years, Tate will learn the human face of his crimes.If it seems too good to be true, that’s because it is. Tate is fitted with a behavior-modifying chip that leaves him unable to disobey orders—any orders, no matter how dehumanizing. Worse, the chip prevents him from telling Rory, the one man in all of Beulah who might care about him, the truth: in a country without prisons, Tate is locked inside his own mind.

    He has no memory, no future of his own, yet deep inside Pasha knows that that he is meant for better things. The day that Pasha spots the dangerous pirate in the bar, he knows that he mustn't let the stranger slip away, regardless of what he must do to attract his attention.Captain Griffin Hawke spent the greater part of a decade searching for his lost king, only to find Helios Dayspring crouched between his knees, swathed in the robes and shackles of a whore. Though he is appalled by the downfall of his king, the hardened officer finds himself falling for the allure of the sensual creature who has taken his place. Returning Helios to his position on the throne is the only right thing to do, yet Griffin knows that in doing so, he risks losing his lover forever."A whore is a whore is a whore, unless he's something else completely. I guess I must be an uncommon whore." -- Helios Dayspring

    It is the first in a series of gothic m/m romance anthologies called gothika. The stories in this volume are:Made For Aaron by Sue BrownAs a teenager, Aaron Fox was sent to an asylum by his parents because he was gay, leaving him emotionally fragile after the treatment. However it gave him Damon Fox, the nurse he later married. For over twenty years, Damon’s devotion and strength has never faltered. When Damon is killed in a car accident, Aaron’s devastation soon gives way to confusion when he is shown Damon walking away from the hospital. Despite a desperate search, Damon isn’t seen again, and if Aaron can’t live with Damon, he may not want to live at all. But forces beyond Aaron’s understanding work behind the scenes, and if he can find the courage to unveil the secrets, he might get a second chance at happiness.Watchworks by Jamie FessendenHarland Wallace made his name as one of the premiere watchmakers in Victorian London, so he isn’t surprised when a handsome young gentleman named Luke Prescott comes to his townhouse to hire him for a repair job. He is apprehensive when he discovers it is not a watch Mr. Prescott wants repaired, but a complex prosthesis he has in place of a hand.As further repairs are needed, Harland begins to wonder how much of Mr. Prescott is real and how much is mechanical, but he cannot deny the growing attraction he feels toward him. When he learns Prescott’s household servants pose a threat to the man they see as a monster, Harland must choose between what his culture tells him is wrong and what his heart tells him is right.The Golem of Mala Lubovnya by Kim FieldingIn a small, 17th-century Eastern European town, a rabbi creates a man of clay—a golem—to protect the Jewish people from the threat of pogrom. Awaiting a call to duty, the golem spends a long time confined to an attic, lonely and sad. His only joys are watching the stonemason at work across the street and listening to a lovely voice singing prayers. When the golem meets the mason, Jakob, the two become friends, and Jakob names the golem Emet. But devout Jakob struggles with his attraction to Emet, and Emet dreads being used as an instrument for violence. Though Emet’s name means truth, honest love between a faithful man and a golem will only survive if they risk everything for a miracle.Reparation by Eli EastonOn the harsh planet of Kalan, weakness is not tolerated. When young spore farmer Edward suffers an carriage accident that kills his mail-order bride and his factory manager, Edward has little chance of survival, until Knox—an enormous “reconstitute” labor slave—plucks him from disaster. Recons are part machine, part human remains from executed Federation prisoners. But Knox is different from other recons. He can read and has flashes of brilliance. With no one else to rely on over the bleak winter, Edward forms an alliance with Knox, and against social taboos, they become friends. Edward struggles against his growing lust for the large humanoid, and while Knox thrives in his new life, memories of his past torment him.A twist of fate brought Knox and Edward together, but there will be a price to pay in blood when they learn how deeply their lives truly intersect.

    Shifters claim their mates, and leprechauns pay unusual gambling debts. Undercover operative solving crime? Advertising executive seducing the boss? All business as usual at Lucky O'Reilly's.

     Lament! as an upstanding clergyman falls into the villainous clutches of a notorious criminal mastermind. Question your sanity! as a dissolute governess confronts blasphemies from beyond creation. Wonder! at the journey of the dashing skycaptain Byron Kae across sapphire oceans, through smog-choked streets, and to the depths of the sky itself. Gasp! at an entirely true and accurately rendered tale of pirates, cavalrymen, aethermancers, scientists, and a power to unmake the world. Plus, hitherto unseen extracts from the meticulous and illuminating journals of Mrs. Miranda Lovelace, rogue scientist and first of the aethermancers.

    Submissive by nature, he can’t help but fall in love with the master who treats him kindly.When the mistress walks out, Tam dares to hope his love will be enough. Then he’s ordered to purchase another slave.He wants to hate Kai for being unruly and ungrateful. For being of the same race as the men who murdered his family. For being his eventual replacement in their master’s bed. But it’s hard to hate a man who cries himself to sleep, flinches at the slightest touch, and blushes beautifully when he’s kissed. 64,000 words.THE FREE MEN SERIES:THE SLAVETHE SOLDIERTHE MASTER

    Explicit language warning but little erotic content. (11,000 words ~ 43 pages) First published in The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance 2 (2010).WARNINGContains confused lovelorn werewolves and very pretty ex-Goth mermen who are exclusively interested in each other. May also contain fish, Irish mafia, and a shocking lack of tea.