dark - Stories

Owen has never met his best friend.

For four years Xavier has been a voice in his headset. Xavier knows about the dog Owen lost at nine. He knows which voice Owen uses when he's lying about being fine.

Xavier lives two thousand miles away. That's what Owen believes.

At midnight, when a man appears under the tree across the street and won't leave, Owen calls the one person who always picks up.

Xavier tells him to breathe and stay away from the window, and promises he's safe.

Xavier means every word.

He's lying about almost everything else.

Cade has spent eighteen years underground, learning medicine and fearing the ruined world above. Then armed strangers invade Bunker 34 looking for his seven-year-old brother.

Forced to flee, Cade has one goal: keep Sable alive. Their best chance is Jared, a guarded survivor who knows the surface, carries too many secrets, and is becoming far too difficult for Cade to stop noticing.

But Sable is changing the world around him, someone wanted him badly enough to kill for him, and every mile west pulls them deeper into a mystery none of them fully understand.

It is Sunday morning. Liam sits alone in his room, at the top of the building, and hides himself away. The world outside has suddenly become a dangerous place and he must stay away from it, and he must also remember that his name is now Leo.

This story follows Liam through one fateful Sunday and, through flashbacks, tells the story of how he came to be there.

In a world where orcs and humans are forced to live in symbiosis, only one thing is certain and for everyone the same: death.

And gravedigger Kalten is one of the few who actually knows what comes after...

Eli Mercer never expected the Vesper Society to want him. But once they do, he finds something he’s never really had: friends, warmth, and a place where he feels chosen instead of useful. Then he discovers Lucien, a vampire imprisoned beneath the campus chapel and bled for generations to sustain the families behind Vesper’s power. The more Eli learns, the more impossible his new life becomes. Because freeing Lucien may mean destroying the first people who ever made Eli feel like he belonged.

Blackwater is not a school. It is a pressure cooker.
For boys deemed a problem by their families or the law, the remote fortress on the North Sea offers only one path to freedom: break, or be broken.

As he navigates the unforgiving hierarchy Calloway discovers that rebellion is not just possible. It is the only way to survive. Their growing connection becomes the foundation of a resistance that threatens to expose the unspeakable truths hidden within Blackwater's walls.

The tide is coming in. And not everyone will make it out.

Matt has spent most of his life going wherever the road takes him. Considering how long he's been alive, that's a lot of road. A chance encounter in the Nevada desert puts Andrew in his path. Their meeting is accidental, but what follows may not be. As three ordinary days unravel everything Matt thought he knew about his place in the world, he considers something he never has before: stopping. But some lives are easier to walk away from than others, and his family has waited a very long time for him to understand why. Sometimes a Fool needs to get lost before he can discover where he belongs.

In a 1990s cruising park, a young AIDS outreach volunteer approaches a middle-aged man who looks like someone’s dad. What starts as a simple condom hand-off escalates into something more risky as one decision leads to another in a public restroom.

Content Warning: This story contains explicit M/M sexual content, power imbalances, and themes related to the AIDS crisis including cruising, condoms, and unprotected sex. Characters navigate complex realities, including sexual risk.

A CSIS operative witnesses a suicide on a Toronto subway platform. He tries to stop it. He fails. Now everyone wants what the dead man was carrying—and they think Andrew Carter has it. Caught between a corrupt RCMP officer, a ruthless Conservative fixer, and the desperate operatives of a Liberal leadership contender, Andrew must find the truth before the evidence he's doesn't have destroys everything his fiancé Will has sacrificed to rebuild. The wedding is in three weeks. The shadows won't let go. Someone is going to get burned.

In a world, where humans and orcs are forced to live in symbiosis, the shaman’s apprentice Thokk is deeply conflicted. On the one hand, he recognizes the need for his people’s survival; on the other, he despises humans for their weaknesses.

That is, until he meets Henry...