Today on the site I’m delighted to reveal the cover of The Howling Dark by Brittany M. Willows, a bi m/m werewolf romance with aroace, pan, and trans rep releasing November 9th! Here’s the story:

Sylvain is an eclipse-born werewolf who knows neither his bestial form nor the post-nuclear wilds his kind hail from. Raised on the orbital research station Zodiac, he’s grown accustomed to a life of peaceful predictability. Though fantasies of visiting his birthplace may be out of reach due to medical restrictions, he has a loving boyfriend and all of his essential needs are met. What more could he want?

In the opinion of his elder brother, the answer is: everything.

Believing them abducted as children, Illia has always sworn to someday return with his brother to the mountains they were taken from. And when a peculiar turn in Sylvain’s health brings to light an ugly truth, someday becomes now—whether Sylvain is ready for it or not.

Soon enough, the brothers find themselves fugitives on the planet’s surface, pursued by the government and bloodthirsty huntsmen, and under the unexpected guidance of the rebel Sundogs. All that lies between them and home is miles of unfamiliar countryside, toxic wastelands, a parasitic garden of death . . . and the question of how much they’re willing to risk in order to get there.

And here’s the cool cover, designed by the author herself!

Buy it: Amazon

But wait, there’s more! Read on for the first chapter of The Howling Dark!

On the research station Zodiac, neither hills rolled nor rivers ran, and the closest you could get to forests were crop factories. The true wilderness lay hundreds of kilometers below, on a multicolored marble of a planet called Erda.

Supposedly, Sylvain had been born there, somewhere in the mountains, but he could not recall their snow-capped peaks or cone-heavy conifers. His only memory from that time—his first memory—was of the moon.

It had been blood red then, boding ill as he drew his first breaths. Now it hung bright and full above him whilst he lay on the zenith dome floor, so close that its pearlescent surface filled almost the entire window and yet still far beyond his reach.

He stretched a hand toward it, trying to imagine how its unfiltered light would feel on his skin. According to his elder brother, basking in that light was how canid wehrs such as themselves accumulated the power to shift between their human and bestial forms. However, without it to ignite their silverblood, both would remain disconnected from their other halves indefinitely.

If Sylvain even possessed that other half to begin with.

Not human enough to fit in on the station yet too long removed from wehrs to count himself among them, Sylvain often wondered if he belonged neither here nor there, but out on that pockmarked sphere, where nobody cared what he was or where he came from.

The whoosh of a door opening interrupted his reverie, and in came a welcome voice.

“Moongazing again?” Several clomping paces later, a partially-shaven head topped with chestnut curls leaned over to block Sylvain’s view. “You’re never gonna get your feet on the ground if you keep looking in the opposite direction.”

Unlike Sylvain, who’d simply been too young to memorize his pre-station life when he left it, this was the only life Lior Baudelaire had known. A spacer descended from spacers, he had followed his father’s footsteps into the military in the hopes of one day being deployed to the surface. And in three months, his wish would be granted.

All senior cadets were to embark on a trial run to earn their final credits towards graduation, and Sylvain had no doubt that Lior’s performance would be stellar. He’d be back for a month, maybe two, to complete his transition from cadet to bronze-wreathed Peacekeeper, and then he’d be gone again, chasing silver and gold and platinum. His visits to the station would become fewer, and they would see less and less of each other until they stopped seeing each other at all—hence Lior’s insistence that Sylvain do everything in his power to join him.

What he didn’t seem to realize was that Sylvain had no power.

Lior sat on the floor beside him, cargo pants and tee-shirt dampened by sweat from his morning drills. “Have you read any of that mechanic’s handbook I gave you yet?”

“Some,” murmured Sylvain. Not as much as Lior would’ve hoped. His grand solution to their impending separation was to have Sylvain study like mad, become a mechanic, and land himself a job repairing vehicles and equipment on the surface. That way, they could be there together as they always were in their daydreams.

Growing up, they had fantasized about it: how the winds would smell, how the rains would taste. If the grasses would be dewy, and the soil moist and fertile. Neither had ever so much as muddied their hands—only horticulturists were granted that privilege to keep contaminants from entering the crop factories. Their environments were so fragile compared to Erda’s, which now persisted in defiance of the war that once ravaged it.

Stories painted modern life there in a variety of shades, most far from glamorous though all equally engrossing, telling of treacherous voyages across the wastes or of growing settlements in the habitable zones between them. Of course, no matter how pithy or profuse the prose, none could convey how it felt to be there, tethered to the earth by true gravity.

But for all his childhood fantasizing, he couldn’t shake the fear that the weight of such gravity would crush him.

“Would it be so bad to stay?” he pondered aloud. “Everything we need is right here, and there’s no dangerous weather or wildlife . . .” Or huntsmen, he added privately. It had taken decades for humans to establish themselves in space, and now all they wanted was to go back.

“I think what you’re experiencing is called cold feet.”

“Aren’t yours even a little cold?”

“They’d be a lot warmer if I had company.” Lior slid a cheeky look over his shoulder, umber skin limned by the moon’s silvery light. When his flirtatious quip didn’t break Sylvain out of his funk, he gave his leg a reassuring knock with a boot. “They should have what you need down there, too. Most bases have medical facilities. I’d make sure you were taken care of.”

“They’ll never give me the clearance.”

“You can’t know if you don’t ask. They might.”

“Not if I’m getting worse, they won’t.”

There, bad news dropped. It sent Lior’s head sinking between his shoulders. “Been feeling weird again, huh?”

Sylvain grunted in confirmation, running a nail along the seam of his hempen shirtsleeve. After arriving on Zodiac Station, he’d been diagnosed with an antibody deficiency that required him to undergo infusion therapy once a month every month since he was a toddler. The treatments allowed him to lead a mostly normal life . . . if you ignored the intermittent ear infections, digestive problems, general malaise, and bouts of pneumonia or bronchitis that had him hacking up all sorts of fun stuff.

Over the past year or so, however, a whole new set of unpleasant symptoms had crept in. At first he’d found himself plagued by fatigue, and his head dizzy or aching or both. Then came the visual disturbances, the electrified nerves, and oversensitivity to—everything. Lights, sounds, scents. It turned Lior’s minty body spray, which he couldn’t get enough of on a regular day, into an assault on his sinuses. He’d been bruising in weird places, too.

The symptoms did wane following each infusion, but returned and intensified in the lead-up to the next, and the periods of respite were shrinking. He barely got a week after his last appointment, which culminated in the worst discomfort yet as he waited for today’s. Only in the zenith dome, with the moon’s gentle glow and the engines thrumming decks below, had he found relief.

Wehrs were supposed to be resistant to diseases and disorders. How unlucky did he have to be to get stuck with one?

Unlucky enough to be born under an eclipse, he thought.

“Have the meds helped any?” asked Lior.

A shrug and a huff. “Dr. Wincott keeps giving them to me, so she seems to think they’re doing something. I’ll bring it up again, though . . . see if she can prescribe an alternative.” He just wanted to feel normal again. His version of normal. The thought of piling more lifelong ailments atop the ones he already had made him feel sicker.

Lior turned over and lowered himself to the hard metal floor, elbow-to-elbow with Sylvain. “Wanna know what I’d prescribe?”

The twinkle of mischief in his dark eyes—deep, deep brown, almost dark enough to envelope stars—was what finally lifted Sylvain’s spirits. “What’s that?” he asked, amusement tugging at the heavy corners of his mouth.

“Let’s see . . .” Speaking all slow and sensual-like, he closed the gap between them one teasing centimeter at a time. “I’d start you on a glass of sugar wine—to help you relax. Tunes are a must—y’know, ‘cause music therapy and all that. And I’d recommend a deep tissue massage. Administered by me, obviously.”

Nearly brushing noses, Sylvain had to fight off two urges at once: the urge to pull away from the overpowering mint scent that now engulfed him, and the urge to eliminate the last few centimeters between them himself. The former helped with the latter, at least. He hummed skeptically. “I don’t think you’re qualified.”

“Wait till this evening; I’ll show you just how qualified I am.” Instead of sealing that vow with the kiss he’d dangled over Sylvain, Lior patted him on the chest and withdrew. “But right now, you need to get your ass to med.”

As Lior pushed to his feet, Sylvain groaned in protest. He’d much prefer to squirrel themselves away someplace for some fun. Although, he wasn’t sure how much fun he’d be up to at this precise moment.

Lior bent to grab the begrudging patient’s hands and dragged him up from the floor, and the way it seemed to sway beneath Sylvain told him that not much was the answer. “I’ve still got time before my refresher class. I’ll walk you there.”

From the zenith dome, it was a short jaunt to the medicentre. It was here that Sylvain had spent the better part of his childhood, tended to by a gaggle of caretakers in one of the in-patient units. They’d also tended to his brother in the beginning, but seven years older and bold as he was, he’d made for an unruly patient. Not that he was a troublemaker, per se; he just didn’t take kindly to humans or their authority. The wilderness Sylvain had shed remained instilled in Illia to this day.

Strange how these gray-carpeted halls which felt so foreign and hostile to one brother could evoke a sense of home in the other. Unfortunately, the familiarity did nothing to alleviate the nervous pangs in his gut. Being vertical had exacerbated his symptoms, making them difficult to ignore, and his façade of coping must have slipped, because when Lior retook his clammy hands outside the medicentre, he asked:

“Do you want me to come in?”

He was worried. Ugh, he was worried. Sylvain couldn’t have him worrying about him when he had important lessons to focus on. Hoping to cast them aside, he shook his head and forced another smile. “I’ll be fine. Go to class. It’s not like they’re going to let you in, anyway.”

Illia used to be allowed to stay until the prep phase since he was family, but that was more for his own comfort. Later, they banned him from the procedure room for Sylvain’s comfort. And in the end, he’d been forbidden from entering the medicentre—period.

That was for the staffs’ comfort.

Reluctantly, Lior yielded. “Alright. I’ll be here when you get out.” He glanced around to check for bystanders before giving Sylvain a parting kiss on the cheek. Then he slipped away, and the farther he walked, the quicker Sylvain’s heart raced.

He couldn’t believe how badly he didn’t want to go to this appointment, the willpower it took not to run after Lior and beg him to take him anywhere else. What did he have to be so anxious about? He’d been getting these infusions for as long as he could remember and didn’t even have to be awake during the procedure, so why were his instincts screaming at him to turn tail?

This was silly, and he was late.

He took a breath to smooth his nerves—that was the trick, right? Breathing?—and forced himself to cross the threshold into the medicentre’s reception area.

Already too bright without his senses heightened, the lights, oddly haloed, sent pain zinging through his temples as he approached the fresh-faced stranger manning the front desk. To nobody’s surprise, they recognized him before he could reach it.

“You can head in,” they said, “Dr. Wincott’s ready for you.”

With a nod, he proceeded into the back, fingers skimming the wall for stability. Whereas most wehrs could blend into a crowd of humans, Sylvain tended to stand out with his two-toned hair and two-toned eyes: jet black and cedar-brown on his left side, and ice blue peering through a shaggy curtain of white on his right.

Sometimes he wondered if his bestial form would stand out similarly in a pack of wolves, and if it would garner the same mixed reactions his human shape did. Fascination, repugnance, admiration, caution. Caution stung, as if people expected him to sink his fangs into them the first chance he got. Even Illia wouldn’t go that far unprovoked.

Had they forgotten wehrs were once human, too?

Sylvain knocked on the doorframe of the procedure room to announce his arrival, and Dr. Sabrina Wincott—a plump, middle-aged woman—greeted him in her tepid nature from her wheeled stool. She was his third doctor to date and friendly enough, better than the second for sure, but still far from his first and favorite. He’d cried when she resigned.

Rumor had it Dr. Eun had been forced to leave at the onset of senility, which was shocking news to Sylvain. She had cared for him into his early teens, and as far as he could tell, her wits never wavered. The only oddity he’d noticed was how emotional she’d been during their last couple of appointments together.

Maybe she was good at hiding it, the way he tried to bury and ignore his own ailments. Maybe she’d realized she couldn’t anymore. Whatever the case, her departure was so swift that Sylvain didn’t get to say goodbye. They transferred her to another orbital habitat to live out the rest of her years in retirement, and he never saw or heard from her again.

He missed her jokes and post-treatment sweets, and how gentle she was with him. She made it easier. In comparison, Dr. Wincott was a wet blanket. All business and essential bedside manner, no superfluous acts of kindness.

She gave the treatment chair a rather firm pat. “You’re late. Sit, please.”

He wasn’t that late.

Sylvain slid onto the vinyl seat, relieved to be off his unsteady feet, but that nagging urge to flee grew stronger when the doctor wheeled over to connect him to her assortment of monitors. She’s trustworthy, I’m safe, this is normal, he tried to convince his body.

It argued, wrong, wrong, wrong.

Dr. Wincott glanced at the now-live vital signs on the screen behind him. “Your blood pressure’s elevated. Are you still experiencing those other symptoms?” She went on to tie an elastic band around his arm and wipe down his inner elbow with an alcohol pad.

“Yeah . . . The pills aren’t really helping.” He’d been popping those gel capsules for months. If they were going to make a difference, it should have become apparent by now.

“Any changes in appetite? Nausea?”

“The symptoms are the same, they’re just coming on sooner. And stronger.” Which made the prick of the needle piercing his skin feel more like a gash than a small puncture. He tried his best not to squirm as she attached the IV tube, taking comfort in the knowledge that, in a few moments, he wouldn’t feel anything.

Dr. Wincott started the sedative drip and assured him that his symptoms were no cause for alarm, promising to revisit the issue at his next appointment if they continued to worsen.

Why couldn’t she address it today?

While she prepared the infusion supplies, Sylvain watched the clear liquid trickle down the line into his arm. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for his senses to dull. The sharp edges the lights and noise wielded became soft, his limbs heavy, and as the beep of his heart rate slowed, its fading echo lulled him into a peaceful slumber.

Buy it: Amazon

Brittany M. Willows is a queer author and digital artist from rural Ontario, Canada. Initially inspired by video games and the stories they told, she began creating her own fictional universes at a young age and has no plans to stop any time soon. When she’s not writing about post-apocalyptic lands, wild magic, or daring misfits gallivanting through the stars, she can be found hunched over a tablet drawing the very same things.