The Hybrid’s Curse

By BOUMMI

This book tells the story of Elara, a young healer in a village steeped in fear and superstition. Her life changes when she finds Kael, a hunted and wounded hybrid creature—half human, half supernatural.

 Instead of leaving him to die, she defies her village's laws and secretly nurses him back to health.
A bond of trust and forbidden love forms between them, uniting them against the hatred of her people and a more dangerous threat from Kael's own kind.
After a violent confrontation, they are forced to flee, leaving her old life behind.

 However, the peace they seek is shattered when they are tracked down by a mysterious and organized force of both humans and supernatural beings. Now, they must uncover the conspiracy hunting them and confront the legacy of blood and magic that Kael cannot escape, all while protecting the powerful bond that unites them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BOUMMI
• Release date: Oct 29, 2025
• ISBN: 9798232967598

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Hybrid’s Curse

Echoes in the Mist

They said hybrids were never meant to exist—half human, half beast, cursed by the blood of both worlds. But when I looked into his eyes, I realized my curse was never the blood... it was destiny itself. That thought, a whisper of heresy in a village built on superstition, was the first crack in the foundation of my world. Before him, my life was a tapestry of predictable threads, woven with the scent of herbs and the quiet murmurs of Oakhaven’s fearful prayers.

Our village was nestled in the arm of the mountains, perpetually shrouded in a silver mist that clung to the ancient oaks and blurred the edges of reality. The mist was our guardian and our jailer, keeping the horrors of the outside world at bay, but also locking us within our own narrow beliefs. We were a people of tradition, governed by tales of monstrous creatures that lurked in the shadowed eaves of the Whisperwood, the forest that bordered our home.

The greatest of these horrors, the one spoken of in hushed, terrified tones, was the hybrid. They were cautionary tales made flesh, beings born of forbidden unions between humans and the Fae, the ancient shapeshifters of the forest. Soulless, they said. Unholy abominations possessing the cunning of a man and the savage hunger of a beast. To see one was an omen of death; to touch one was to invite damnation upon your own soul.

As the apprentice to the village healer, Elara, I was privy to the deepest fears of our people. I mended broken bones, brewed potions for fevers, and listened to the anxieties that festered in the dark corners of their minds. I dealt in the tangible, in the logic of sinew and bone, yet I was expected to uphold the intangible beliefs that held our community together. My mentor, Maeve, a woman whose face was a roadmap of wrinkles and wisdom, always reminded me that faith was as potent a remedy as any poultice.

But a quiet rebellion simmered within me. I longed for a world beyond the mist, a world where knowledge was not feared and the unknown was not immediately condemned. My nights were spent poring over forbidden texts—scraps of medical journals and anatomical sketches left by a traveling doctor who had been run out of town decades ago for his blasphemous curiosity. He had dared to suggest that reason, not ritual, was the key to understanding the world.

The whispers started on a cool autumn evening, carried on the same wind that rustled the dying leaves. A shepherd, his face ashen and his eyes wide with terror, had stumbled into the village square, babbling about a creature at the edge of the Whisperwood. He described it as a shadow that moved with the speed of a wolf but stood on two legs like a man. Panic, a familiar and unwelcome guest, settled over Oakhaven like a second mist.

The village elder, a stern man named Alistair whose piety was matched only by his intolerance, immediately declared a curfew. The hunting parties, meant for deer and boar, now sharpened their blades for a different kind of prey. Their fear was a palpable thing, thick and suffocating. They saw a monster in the shadows, a manifestation of their darkest legends, and they intended to meet it with fire and steel.

I felt a cold dread, but it was laced with a strange, unsettling curiosity. What was this creature? Was it truly the soulless demon of their stories, or was it something else entirely? Something wounded, perhaps, or lost. The healer in me, the part that saw only injury and not sin, felt a pull toward the forest, a dangerous and inexplicable urge to understand rather than condemn. It was a foolish impulse, one I tried to crush beneath the weight of common sense.

A few days later, the forest fell unnervingly silent. The usual chorus of birdsong was absent, and a heavy stillness hung in the air. Maeve sent me to the edge of the woods to gather shadow-moss, a rare herb that grew only on the oldest oaks and was crucial for her sleeping draughts. She warned me to stay within sight of the village, her usually steady hands trembling slightly as she tied my satchel. The fear had seeped even into her pragmatic heart.

I promised to be careful, my own heart a nervous drum against my ribs. The edge of the Whisperwood was a place of deep, primordial twilight, where the sun struggled to pierce the dense canopy. The air was