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Listen to emotionally charged novels for free, one chapter at a time.
I’m Stephanie Chamberlain, an indie author writing about the raw experience of being human. Stories of survival, profound change, and the occasional inadvertent comedy of living through it all.
I believe the written word offers an irreplaceable way of encountering ourselves, one another, and the world. Something so powerful should remain within reach, regardless of what a reader can afford. That is why I serialize my novels in both text and audio for free.
Season 1 is The Wolf That Hunts Me, a haunting YA psychological and supernatural thriller about mental illness, fear, control, and a creature that pushes a fifteen-year-old boy to the edge of both body and mind. The danger stalking him is terrifyingly real.
Read along at Letters from the Bone on Substack, the public home of the serialization:
https://lettersfromthebone.substack.com/
You can also read through Inkitt:
https://www.inkitt.com/stories/1846993
Keeping these books free requires support. Patreon is the space for readers who want to stand beside the work and help sustain the writing, narration, and continued free serialization. Support any paid tier while The Wolf That Hunts Me is being serialized, and you’ll receive the complete digital reading edition when it becomes available to the public:
https://www.patreon.com/StephanieChamberlain
Production note: The audio narration is produced using an ElevenLabs digital voice.
If Asher hadn’t known any better, he would’ve said that the wolf’s eyes reminded him of a warm fireplace in the middle of a snowstorm. But after everything that had happened the day before, he knew that in reality, those eyes contained the wildest and most vicious flames that he had ever seen.
They were an infinite fire pit with a burning desire to consume him. How could such a beautiful and mesmerizing creature be so cruel and evil?
Asher went back to looking at his plate and eating his pancakes as he got ready to attack.
“Your father, Gabriel, is a good man and a great musician. And Emma, your mother, what an intelligent woman. Her love and warmth make you feel calm and safe.”
Asher didn’t know where the wolf was going with these words or how he even knew these things, but he was starting to feel uncomfortable.
“But what if your mother was not here? How would you feel without her loving company? Or your father? What if you lost his reassuring presence? That is, the person who he is during the weekends.”
A knot formed in Asher’s stomach. He had just been thinking about these things the night before. And now that he heard them being spoken by the wolf, the idea of something happening to any of his parents felt more real and menacing.
“You should protect them. That is clear. But, Asher, how is it possible that you have not thought about protecting them from their closest threat?”
For once, Asher kind of agreed with the wolf. He had to protect his parents. But was he missing something? What was their closest threat?
The knot in Asher’s stomach tightened. He felt like it had begun to move around, too, creating an extremely uncomfortable sensation in his abdomen, like a simultaneous tug and punch to the gut. It was impossible for Asher to keep eating.
“Do you really not know to which threat I am referring? Naive, as usual…” The wolf made a short pause. “It is you, Asher! You!”
Asher felt the color leaving his face as the air around him became thinner.
“You live with them. You share frequent hugs with them. But what if you hugged them too tightly? What if you made them choke?”
Asher’s mouth was getting dry, the knot in his stomach almost painful, the lack of air dizzying.
The wolf looked sternly into Asher’s eyes. “Just like with Noah, you could kill your parents with your bare arms and hands. You could even strangle them! You are the greatest threat to them! You will kill them!”
Asher’s heart started to pump faster. He knew that what the wolf was saying wasn’t true. He loved his parents. Asher was sure that he would never do anything to harm them. If he looked at their faces, maybe he would be able to focus more clearly on how strong his feelings were.
Trying to act natural, Asher casually directed his eyesight at his mom, who was sitting in front of him.
The second his eyes met her face, a cavernous growl resonated in his head. Asher immediately flinched and looked back down at his plate, the fear in him increasing by the second.
“Look at me!” the wolf commanded.
The memories of how the animal had attacked him before made Asher feel terrified of not obeying. He lifted his head slowly and looked at the wolf. The amber fire in his eyes had become blinding. The skin on his face and snout was wrinkled from the effort of baring his teeth. His face almost looked distorted. It was haunting. Asher’s trembling was coming back.
“Boy, you cannot hide from me. You cannot escape me! Accept the truth! You will kill your mother! You will kill your father!”
Asher needed to stay in control. He couldn’t let his parents notice anything weird going on. He took his phone out of his pocket and pretended to be very concentrated on it. At the same time, he glanced above the phone’s edge to look back at the wolf. Asher was scared, but he wanted to fight.
“I would never hurt my mom or dad! I love them!” Asher spoke loudly inside his mind as he met the wolf’s eyes.
“Foolish boy! Love is not everything! Accidents happen every day if you are not careful enough.”
“But killing them? Even if there was an accident, I would never end up killing them! I want to protect them, to take care of them!”
The wolf’s gaze became more piercing. “I can see it happening, Asher. Look at your mother’s face!”
Dread and anger blended and twisted inside Asher’s stomach, making the knot larger and tighter. But he still wanted to keep fighting the wolf until he could make the creature leave him alone. Taking a shaky deep breath, Asher shifted his eyesight to the right and met his mom’s face again.
She was taking some notes on a piece of paper. The sunlight illuminated her snowy skin, bringing out her delicate, sandy freckles. Mom’s eyes shined like clear, calm waters. Just as Asher was starting to find wisps of solace in Mom’s peaceful presence, a scene exploded in his mind.
Emma’s skin was pale. Her eyes were weak. And there were fresh red marks on her neck. She was gasping for air when a set of hands appeared. They were Asher’s. His fingers wrapped themselves tightly around her neck. Their grip became stronger and tighter until Emma’s skin became blue and her eyes rolled backward.
Asher was horrified at the sight of this. He shut his eyes and immediately redirected his face back towards his phone, frantically looking for distracting content.
Despite his efforts to focus on anything else, the scene wouldn’t stop playing in his mind. His hands kept choking his mother. She was going to die! Asher’s heart began to beat even faster. The sensation of being punched in the stomach became stronger.
Asher’s brow furrowed as he focused even harder on his phone. But no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t stop seeing himself in his mind. He kept strangling his mother violently, making her entire body move back and forth. And suddenly, her body became limp. She was dead.
Stifling a scream, Asher got up and only managed to mutter the word “toilet” before running up to his room and locking himself in the bathroom.
He sat down next to the bathtub, his whole self shaking now. Trying to slow down his breath, Asher pushed his back against the wall and the side of his body against the tub. Then he brought his knees to his chest and wrapped them with his arms. The slight pressure that this position was generating on his body made him feel a little safer. His heart beats slowed down. Asher tried to close his eyes for a second as he rested his head on the wall.
“You killed her!”
Asher’s eyes opened with a startle.
The wolf was standing only inches away from him. He could even smell the meaty breath coming out of the creature’s mouth. Asher was paralyzed with terror.
“And just like that, you will kill your father, too!” the wolf said with a roar.
“I… I… w-will… n-not,” Asher replied out loud with his mouth trembling and his teeth chattering.
“Of course you will! You just saw it happening with your mother! You will kill your parents!”
“No—”
Before Asher could finish his sentence, the images started flooding his mind again. The scene of him strangling his mother vigorously. The sounds she made as she gasped for air. Her limp, blueish body falling to the floor with a thud.
Asher shut his eyes tightly, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t help. Everything was playing inside his head. He couldn’t stop seeing it.
Breathing faster and shaking uncontrollably, Asher kept trying to fight the wolf. He had to make him stop. “I won’t kill them! I love them!” he shouted in his head.
“Trust me! You will kill your mother! You will kill your father!” the wolf yelled in return.
The image of his mother choking kept playing over and over in Asher’s mind.
“No! Stop! This is not real!”
“You will strangle your father, too!”
A scene where Gabriel was trying to fight Asher back started playing in his mind. Since his father was stronger, Asher was having a harder time with him. Gabriel threw punches at Asher as he tried to break free from his grasp. This only made Asher angrier and more violent. He punched his father’s abdomen and face repeatedly. He hit Gabriel in the face with such force that the skin around his eyes and on his nose and cheekbones tore open.
With blood trickling down his face, Asher’s father looked into his eyes with horror, pleading for his life. But Asher took advantage of this moment to grab him by the neck very tightly. He squeezed his throat with all his might, feeling how the bones in Gabriel’s neck creaked and moved around.
Strangling him aggressively, Asher saw how his father’s face started to change color, his bones breaking under the pressure. The man struggled for air with that same awful look in his eyes until his body stopped moving. Another blue limp body fell on the floor.
Asher was terrified. He was shaking more violently than ever. He felt like his heart was going to leap out of his throat.
The image of him hitting his father, the blood, his hands wrapping tightly around his neck, the sensation of the bones breaking… It all burned into Asher’s brain. And the look in his father’s eyes… So helpless and horrified…
The pressure on Asher’s chest had reappeared. And things around him were starting to look fuzzy again.
“Not going to happen…” Asher managed to say weakly inside his head. He felt like he was losing his strength in every way.
“It will! You will strangle your father, Asher. You will kill him with your bare hands.”
Alternating images of Asher shaking his mother’s body as he grabbed her by the neck and of him mercilessly strangling his father flashed in Asher’s mind. At the same time, the wolf kept repeating the words, “You will kill your mother. You will kill your father. You will kill your parents,” over and over again.
It was tortuous. Asher’s anxiety kept climbing and taking hold of his body, threatening to debilitate him completely.
Mustering what felt like the last of his strength, Asher successfully summoned some memories of him having pleasant moments with his parents. He tried to use them against the wolf by placing them in front of the terrible images that the animal was replaying in his mind.
But the wolf was relentless. He couldn’t be defeated. No matter how much Asher repeated the same words or how vivid his happy memories with his parents were, the wolf kept going. It was as if Asher’s words and memories were made of wax and the wolf’s ones were made of burning flames. The wolf’s fire simply melted every effort made by Asher. He couldn’t make the wolf shut up or stop showing him images in his mind.
After a few minutes, Asher was completely drained, but the wolf just kept going on and on. Asher shut his eyes and grabbed the sides of his head, shaking it in a desperate attempt to reject it all.
“No more, please… No more… Stop… Please…” Asher begged faintly in his mind.
Opening his eyes again, he noticed that his surroundings had become even fuzzier. It all looked immensely unreal, which made Asher feel even more frightened. The thought of him going crazy rapidly grew stronger in his mind. And right then, he felt that horrible sensation again of becoming separated from his own body, as if he were watching a movie of himself.
Asher felt like everything was slipping out of his control. The anxiety in him was reaching new heights. He wished so badly for the wolf to go away and leave him alone for good. But weakness had taken almost full possession of Asher’s muscles. He could only think of one other thing to do.
Making a colossal effort, he stood up and ran towards the wolf, tackling him as forcefully as possible. They both fell hard on the floor.
Then the lights went out.