Dive into the dark underbelly of England’s most ancient university, where behind closed doors a circle of privileged students enter into a dark pagan ritual—one that holds tantalizing power and comes at a terrible price.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Caitlin Breeze’s The Fox Hunt, which releases on February 24th 2026.
When practical, unassuming second-year student Emma Curran wins an exciting research fellowship, she is ushered into the glittering debauchery of the University elite. There, she falls for the devastating, aristocratic Jasper Balfour, leader of the all-male Turnbull Club: a shadowy secret society that has created centuries of Britain’s leaders, power brokers and history-makers.
One night, the Turnbulls propose a sinister little game: a fox hunt. The women run. The men chase. And Emma finds herself fleeing for her life through the streets, hunted by the boy she loves.
Torn from her ordinary life and trapped in a dangerous, otherworldly realm, Emma awakens transformed. No longer mortal, she’s become something beastly. And now she must summon every ounce of cunning and ferocity to save herself.
Intro to the excerpt: Emma ventures into the University Library, and explores its dark and dizzying depths, with hints of the magic to come. Emma meets the Librarian, and comes away with the beginnings of suspicions that things are not quite all they seem at the University…
The Library was astonishing. Emma had never seen anything like it. Shelf upon shelf of books soared upward in dizzying towers. Walnut desks crouched below, with brass lamps hunched over them like gargoyles. The lamplight caught glints from gold- embossed spines, sank without a trace into leather bindings, slid over carvings in timeworn wood. Shadowy librarians flitted through the gaps between bookcases, silent as fish.
Yes, one librarian said, there were archive photographs of the river. But they had to be ordered a week in advance. Emma put in her request and headed for the exit. Three steps later, she groaned and tramped back. Her next land tort tutorial was in two days. Her tutor would fall over in shock if she actually came prepared. And the reading list he had pressed into her hand was still in her pocket.
It looked as though there was no avoiding it. Emma started for the law section.
She was still walking ten minutes later. The map in her hand had begun to seem like an elaborate joke. Emma wandered through painted galleries, shelves filled with scrolls, rooms whose occupants looked up as though she was the first person they’d seen in a hundred years. The quiet was oppressive. Emma was considering retreating the way she’d come, when she spotted someone her age in the reading room ahead. A student with spiked hair and leather trousers sat cross- legged at the base of a bookcase, bent over the volume in her lap.
“Is the law section near here?”
The girl’s eyes widened, and she dropped her book. She leapt to her feet as Emma approached, and fled into the stacks.
“Wait — ”
The shelves stretched into darkness, a catacomb of books. There was nowhere in those empty avenues the student could have hidden. Yet she had vanished. Emma stooped to pick up her fallen book.
A History of Magickal Bargains.
Prickles rose on the back of Emma’s neck. She had never enjoyed the weird and inexplicable, and she was not about to start. Quickly, before the part of her that wanted to investigate could lure her into the shadowed stacks, Emma shoved the book onto the nearest shelf and forged on.
The map finally came into its own. The rooms in this wing were modern, the books on the shelves no longer leather- bound. But if the rest of the Library had been quiet, this was silent. One floor from her goal, she found a creaky metal cage was her only way up. The lift screamed through the silence. Exiting, Emma found herself in total darkness.
The diabolical architect of the building had apparently decided that windows were an unnecessary luxury for the second floor, and dispensed with them. Emma’s nerves did not appreciate this design choice. But she stepped bravely forward. The light above her switched on with a few sharp chinking sounds. Like a teaspoon against bone, Emma thought, and then wished she hadn’t.
The room seemed to run the length of the building. Seemed, at least, because the lights only switched on for a few feet ahead of her. Melamine bookcases stretched to her left.
The receptionist had scribbled the shelf location code onto the map. The numbers on the bookcases almost matched it. She had only twelve more to go.
Behind her, the first light began to gently, silently wink off. Emma had reached the right shelf. She knelt, puzzling over her tutor’s scrawled list, and started pulling out books. Light by light, the motion sensors blinked off. Absorbed in her task, Emma didn’t notice. Until the final light went.
Somewhere, in the darkness. A creaking.
It was coming from the opposite end of the room.
Emma froze. It was louder, closer. Now it was joined by a rhythmic, dragging rasp. Breathing. Someone was trying to breathe.
The sound came nearer and nearer, until Emma could no longer bear it. She jumped to her feet, coursing with adrenaline. The motion sensor light blinked on.
She was face- to- face with an old man.
“Hello, child,” said a wandering voice. A chill flooded her chest. “I am the Librarian.”
His hair reached away from his head like a cloud escaping a kettle. His eyes were the blue of sky reflected in water, fixed on a spot above and to the left of her head. They gave him a visionary air. She found she was no longer afraid, once she looked at him. She was ashamed that she ever had been.
“Did you find what you sought, child?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Emma gently, “thank you.”
“Would I had your luck. You know, the Library has every book ever printed.” He wheezed. “And yet, look though I might, I cannot find the one I seek. As you see.” He fanned a hand behind him to a trolley piled high with books. Emma turned them over gingerly. More than one had the word “grimoire” on the cover. She saw another called Compendium of the Beast. The writing inside made her flinch. It was the color of old blood.
“What book is it?” said Emma, edging away from the trolley.
“I shall know it when I see it.” His eyes were still fixed somewhere above her. “I hold it in my mind.”
“Oh,” said Emma, stepping back. “Good. I — I should be picking up my books. I left them — just here, you see. It has been lovely talking to — Thank you.”
“Books of the law.” He peered at the stack in her hands. “Not what I thought of for you. You are unlike the lawyers I once knew. They were men of tooth and claw.”
“I — oh. Well.” She wondered if he was really as vague as he seemed. “I actually meant to be a vet, at first. But my father said I should apply for law. That I could do more good for animals fighting for their rights in court, not patching them up one by one. And that’s what I wanted. To make a difference.”
An ethereal smile lit his face. “A kindred soul. I, too, love our brothers and sisters of fur and feathers. I had a dog, I remember. When I was young.” His gaze wandered to times past. “Endymion. The very finest creature.” A glint of humor crept into his eyes. “And when I wished to become an artist, my parents did not approve either. But we find our own ways in life. I wish you luck of the law, child. May you turn it to your own ends.”
He bent over his trolley, still laboring for breath. He looked as though he might be scribbling something. But he was moving painfully slowly. When she peered over the trolley, she saw why. The hand around the pencil was a lump of meat, set sloppily around a tangle of bones. She bit back a gasp and stepped away. She did not want him to think she had been staring.
“I would not wish to alarm you.” His blue eyes glowed. “But I ask that you have a care. The darkness is not always kind to a child like you.”
He thrust something into her hand. She could not look at it without dropping her books, so she thanked him and stepped into the lift.
He was haloed under the light, white hair fuzzing around his head. As he pushed his trolley away, it creaked. The light blinked out, and he passed into shadow.
She did not examine what he had put into her hand until she was safely out of the Library. It was a scrap of manuscript with a drawing on it.
A monstrous eye, edged in teeth.
