Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
I lashed out instinctively, my claws raking across his chest. He snarled, shifting halfway, his own wolf rising to meet mine.
“You don’t understand-” Max growled, blocking another of my blows.
“I understand enough!” I slammed him into the nearest wall. Dust rained down around us. “You betrayed her! Again!”
He ducked my next punch, barely. “I was trying to keep her alive!”
“You LIED!” I bellowed, striking again, fueled by a rage so vast it felt endless. “You let them use you!”
“She would’ve been dead by now if it weren’t for me!” Max shouted, blood dripping from his mouth. “Carrow wanted to bind her with a rune-dagger, Nathaniel. You think the council would’ve hesitated after that?”
I paused-just long enough for doubt to splinter through the age
And Max used it.
Successfully unlocked!
He shoved me backward with a snarl, breathing hard, his chest heaving. His face-bleeding and furious and desperate- looked nothing like the smug bastard I remembered from last year.
“She’s alive because of what I did,” he panted. “You want to kill me? Fine. Do it. But don’t forget-we’re wasting time. They’ re taking her. Right now.”
My hands shook.
My wolf paced, furious.
But deep down, I knew he was right.
And then Bastain’s voice cracked through the smoke and fury:
“Nathaniel! Enough!”
I turned to see him standing at the broken threshold, blood soaking his tunic, his sword dripping red. His eyes burned into mine.
“This isn’t the enemy!” he shouted, gesturing at Max. “The council is scattering! The rogues are overrunning the school! If we don’t focus-we lose her. We lose everything!”
For one horrible, dizzying second-I wanted to ignore him.
I wanted to tear Max apart piece by piece.
But then I thought of Jiselle.
Of her laugh.
Of the way she’d kissed me before the trials began, fierce and stubborn and beautiful.
Of the way she had looked at me like I was her whole world.
And I knew what she would want.
Survive first.
Fight later.
I snarled once-low, dangerous-but pulled back.
Max staggered, blood slicking his side, but he nodded grimly.
A temporary truce.
Bastain pointed to the eastern wing. “That’s where the last group was seen heading. If they’re taking prisoners-they’ll go through the river tunnels.”
I didn’t wait for more.
I sprinted forward, dodging rubble and bodies, my heart hammering in my ears.
Eva.
I skidded to a stop when i saw her collapsed near one of the shattered pillars. Blood stained her shoulder, and Ethan knelt beside her, his hands pressed to a wound in her side.
“Eva-” I crouched down, scanning her quickly. “Is she-“
“She’s alive,” Ethan said hoarsely. His face was pale. His own side was bleeding through his uniform. “Barely. Bastards hit her when she tried to cover a retreat.”
I swore viciously.
“We have to get them out,” I said “Both of them. Now.”
Max arrived a second later, limping slightly, his face grim.
“I’ll cover them,” he said. “You go.”
I hesitated-every instinct screaming not to trust him.
But then Eva moaned softly, her fingers clutching Ethan’s jacket, and I knew we didn’t have a choice.
“Touch them wrong and I’ll gut you myself,” I snarled.
Max just nodded once, grimly. “Understood.”
I stood, my body vibrating with restrained fury.
The school around us was crumbling-figuratively and literally. Columns collapsed. Fires burned unchecked. Council members fled into the hidden tunnels. Students fought wherever they could.
The war wasn’t coming.
It had begun.
I lifted my head to the sky-saw the full moon burning above the open crevice-and made my vow silently, to the stars, to the goddess, to whoever the hell was listening:
I will bring you back, Jiselle.
I will tear down this world if I have to.
I will burn the earth to its roots before I let them keep you.
I ran faster.
Through the blood.
Through the fire.
Through the ruins of everything we had once believed in.
And as I sprinted into the darkness beyond the mountain, the only truth that mattered was this:
She was gone.
And I would burn this entire world to the ground to get her back.
END of Part 1.
*Jiselle*
Darkness pulsed behind my eyelids like a second heartbeat-dull, aching, constant.
It wasn’t the peaceful kind of dark, the type that blankets you when you sleep in your own bed, safe and warm. No. This, darkness was jagged and clinging, heavy with something I couldn’t name. The first thing I registered, even before the pain, was the scent. Not blood. Not fire. Not even smoke, But earth. Damp, cold earth, as though I had been buried beneath it. Moss, metal, and something faintly herbal-like crushed sage or old ash.
I tried to move.
Agony lanced through my spine, sharp and unforgiving, and I bit back a cry. My limbs were slow, unresponsive, like they no longer belonged to me. My tongue was dry, stuck to the roof of my mouth, and when I forced my eyes open, the dim light sent a violent pulse of nausea through my gut.
Stone.
That was the first thing I saw. Not polished marble like the Academy halls. This was rough, ancient stone, the kind that remembered blood and secrets. I was lying on a slab of it-cool, solid, unyielding-and my hands… they wouldn’t move. Chains. Silver, rune-etched, wrapped tightly around my wrists. I followed the shimmer of the restraints up to the ceiling where they were bolted into iron rings.
Not just a prison.
A containment cell.
Panic tried to claw up my throat, but it was smothered by the dull weight pressing against my magic. Or rather, the void where my magic should have been. I reached inward instinctively, searching for the familiar warmth of my gift-silver light, wild energy-but it was gone. Nothing but cold silence. Like someone had poured ice water through my soul and locked all the doors.
I struggled to sit up, managing only a twitch of my fingers and a slow turn of my head. I wasn’t alone.
He stood just a few feet away, watching me with a calm that made my skin crawl.
Tall. Broad. Hair dark as ink and just long enough to fall over his brow. His features were sharp, aristocratic even, but there was nothing soft in them. His eyes-grey, storm-cloud grey-held no warmth. Just interest. Calculation. Like a man studying a weapon he was deciding whether to sheath or wield.
He didn’t move right away. Didn’t speak.
Only observed.
“You’re awake,” he said at last, his voice smooth and deep, touched with something ancient. “That’s good. I was beginning to wonder if the suppression disc had done more damage than intended.”
I flinched at the sound of it-suppression disc. The memory slammed into me like a falling boulder: the rogue, the rune pressed to my neck, the cold that had swallowed everything inside me. Nate’s face in the distance, his voice screaming my name as I was dragged into the portal-
The bond.
I swallowed hard. I couldn’t feel it anymore.
“Where am I?” I rasped, surprised I could speak at all.
He tilted his head slightly, almost curious. “Somewhere safe. For now.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
He stepped forward, and the torchlight caught on the silver clasp at his shoulder. A wolf emblem-carved with runes I didn’ t recognize. He wore leathers, dark and worn, but his bearing was anything but savage. He moved like someone who commanded armies. Who was used to silence when he spoke. Alpha. But not like any Alpha I had ever met.
“I assume you have questions,” he said.
I forced myself to sit up despite the chains digging into my wrists and the dull, aching weight behind my eyes. “Who the hell are you?”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth-not amused, exactly. Impressed.
“You can call me Kael.”
Kael. The name rang hollow, unfamiliar. Not Council. Not from the Academy. But the power in it resonated somewhere deeper, as if my wolf-wherever she was-recognized the echo. er 88
“What do you want with me?”
His eyes didn’t leave mine. “I want to show you the truth.”
I laughed then-a bitter, cracked sound. “That’s original. Should I thank you for kidnapping me?”
“I didn’t kidnap you,” he said, voice still maddeningly calm. “I saved you.”
My lips curled. “From what? The Council?”
Kael nodded once. “From them. And from yourself.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“That’s what you think now.”
Something inside me recoiled from his certainty. But a deeper part-the part that remembered how easily the Council lied, how they’d tried to collar me like a weapon-trembled..
I glared at him. “Release me.”
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?