Surrender by Eric Alan Westfall ♥

Photo Description:
A black-haired, muscular young warrior, leather shirt open, six bleeding punctures in his chest, stares off to the right. Blood is everywhere. Dripping from the bared blade of his sword; from his open-palmed right hand and wrist; from the fangs of the monstrous Stone Beast on a pedestal behind him. Its eyes are blood-red, its long snout open in a snarl, its wings arced high. The scene is lit by thick candles oozing white wax.

See the photo here

Story Letter:
Dear Author,

I’m intrigued to learn who this man is. Why does he have the blood on his chest and wrist? Is it the gargoyle that did to him? Is the gargoyle a shifter? Tell me what is the story behind this image.

My requests: Set in dark fantasy. No BDSM this time. I want a story that’ll creep me out. I’m more interested in plot than sex. So keep sex to minimal 😀 Length doesn’t matter. The ending is entirely up to you. It can be a bittersweet, HEA, or HFN.

Sincerely,

Zach Sweets the one that loves horror 😀

Story Info:

Genre: dark fantasy with a hint (or more) of horror
Tags: The Kingdom and Empire, mages and magic, shifters, warriors, Stone Beasts, a mysterious Wall, a more mysterious painting, a tested love, an enduring love?
Content warnings: No HEA, no HFN, violence and blood, pain and suffering, mental/physical rape. Perhaps hope; perhaps not.
Word count: 43,639

Acknowledgments:
Thanks to Averin, Kaje and Rick (alphabetical order only) for stepping up to the plate, without even a cyber-bribe, and helping with beta reads of the first, very rough, draft of the story. They pointed out things that needed pointing out, and I’m sure that whatever quality this story has, it would be less without their help.

A very special thanks to Enny for her above and beyond efforts in creating a fantastic cover in such a very short time frame.

And especially to Zach, for selecting an image and writing a prompt that took me into new writing territory. Whether it worked is for others to judge.

Cover design by: Enny Kraft (http://ennykraft.weebly.com/)
Gargoyle image by: Andrew Borgen | Flickr
Warrior image by: Nikolay Klimenko | Dreamstime

Author’s Foreword:
The tags told you. The content warnings told you. Now it’s my turn.

This is not one of the HEA or HFN stories you have already read or will read from most if not all of the other LHNB authors.

Is this an M/M romance? Most definitely so. But it’s not an easy romance. Not for Karel and Caaroc. And not for the reader.

So if those heads-up! words in the tags trouble you, make you uneasy, give you a Gibbs gut feeling that you really don’t like stories that are like “this”― then honestly, you’ll be better off reading something else.

On the other hand, if the warnings and tags intrigue you, or perhaps make you want to get out of your usual reading comfort zone (and we all have them, I think), I hope you’ll take a chance on Surrender.

Eric