Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
I obeyed
Bastain didn’t move. Neither did Carrow. And I realized, with a strange jolt, that they were waiting for her to speak. “There’s been a development,” Solara said evenly. “A council faction has moved forward with something unsanctioned.” I tensed. “What do you mean?”
She turned slightly and lifted a scroll from the d
And there it was
A list
Ten names.
Ten students th a flick of her wrist
Successfully unlocked!
At the top-my name.
I stared at it. “What is this?”
“The council calls it a ‘precautionary register,” Bastain said bitterly. “They’re pretending it’s a surveillance log. What it really is… is a list of targets.”
Carrow’s voice was cold. “All ten are marked. Or suspected to be. And if you’re on that list, you’re at risk of being ‘removed’ before Solstice.”
Removed.
What a neat, terrible word.
I tried to breathe-but the air felt heavier now. Like the scroll was radiating heat.
“I understand why I’m on it,” I said slowly. “But… Nate’s name is there too.”
Bastain nodded.
I felt something inside me fracture.
“He’s survived two Solstices,” I said, voice rising. “Why would they list him now?”
“You know why,” Carrow said quietly.
I did.
Because of me.
Because he’d mated with me. Protected me. Because he’d bled for me and stood in front of council fire and didn’t flinch. He was guilty by association. Marked by proximity.
And I had put him there.
I swallowed the guilt like broken glass.
“Are they planning to act?” I asked.
“They already have,” Solara said. “You There will be more.”
I clutched my sides, suddenly dizzy. attacker in the dueling yard? That wasn’t rogue initiative. That was the first attempt.
“So what now?” I asked. “What do you want from me?”
Solara tilted her head. “Protection. Of a kind. Two watchers. Handpicked students. Older. Loyal only to me.”
“No,” I said immediately. “No strangers.”
Carrow sighed. “Jiselle-“
“I said no. I’ll just tell Nate and we’ll-“
“You can’t,” Carrow said, cutting me off. ‘The targets can’t know or they die immediately.”
I gaped at them. “What?”
Solara didn’t seem surprised. In fact, she smiled. “I expected that.”
I held the list with trembling fingers.
“No one has ever been able to stop it, and it updates much like how a computer would. Once a target is eliminated, it highlights the next target. But if you survive until Solstice, when the sun reaches its maximum declination, the magic in the scroll becomes redundant, and it stops picking the names off. They just have to accept that they were meant to live in the first place. So my advice, stay alive until then.”
This was sick. Just… sick.
Who makes a list of people to kill?
The scroll was warm in my hand. Alive.
“Why are you giving me this, then, if I can’t warn them?”
Solara stepped forward, her voice lower now. “You can survive the awakening. But you will not survive it alone. Choose wisely who you trust. Because they will bleed for you long before the council does.”
“Just not Nate?”
“He will need protection, too”
“But you only care if I live, don’t you? it was evident in her eyes. Bastain said it. I was ‘special.’ She didn’t want me dead. “So how am I not dead then? Since I’m on the list and I know about it.”
She smiled like I was a child she was explaining something to
“You already know you’re special, don’t you?”
It wasn’t an answer, but I realized it was as good as one that I could get. I was dismissed.
I left the chamber in silence.
I didn’t cry.
Not even when Bastain called my name softly as I left.
I just walked. The list clutched to my chest like a lifeline.
I didn’t stop until I was back in Nate’s room, door locked, curtains pulled.
I spread the roster out on the floor.
Names.
And one name in particular-faint, half-erased-circled in red ink.
Someone at the academy.
I was still staring at it when the door opened.
Nate stood in the threshold, his hair mussed, his eyes bloodshot. He looked at me, then at the way I shoved the scroll in my bag.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said quickly, zipping it up.
He paused.
He didn’t believe me.
But he didn’t ask again.
Instead, he crossed the room, sat beside me on the floor, and pulled me gently into his side.
And for the first time in days, I let myself lean into him.
Just a little.
*Jiselle*
Two days until the Solstice.
Two days until whatever this nightmare was reached its peak.
And four people from the list were already dead.
The academy was tense. Stiffer than usual. Or maybe it was just me.
Even the wind that usually curled through the courtyards with lazy ease felt like it cut this morning-sharp and cold. I noticed it as soon as I stepped outside. How quiet everything was. The usual bursts of laughter, the thuds of early sparring. even the whispers-gone.
The silence was full of knowing.
If I were a regular first-year, I wouldn’t have noticed that the tenseness was only from the older years. Almost every first year was buzzing with excitement for the solstice, as it was revealed yesterday that something ‘special and out of this world or our understanding’ would happen to each of us.
By now, quite a few first years had started to figure out that there was more at play at ATA, but the killing for knowing too early’ stopped about a month ago, and the only way someone died was from a challenge.
But these two deaths weren’t from knowing anything. It was just pure malice. And Nate and I were next.
I tightened the cloak around me and walked faster, each step pushing my thoughts back to the parchment hidden in my drawer. The one Solara gave me. The one with the circled name.
Kael
A final-year duelist. Bom from council blood. Rumored to have been trained by one of the council members themselves. And the only other name on the list Bastain hadn’t already warned me about.
He was found this morning. in his dorm.
Collapsed.
No signs of struggle. No wounds. But the brand across his chest had burned black. The mark that tethered us for the Solstice trials-snuffed out.
He wasn’t even involved in the trials as a final year. So why was he dead?
The one before him was the same too. A girl in second year, rumoured to be related to a powerful wolf.
I was sensing a pattern. Anyone who seemed like direct threats to the council was on the list.
I made it halfway across the courtyard before I saw Nate.
He stood at the top of the stone stairwell, hands braced on the railing, his expression unreadable but locked on me the second I emerged from the archway. I could tell from the distance between us that he was waiting. And that he wasn’t happy
I took my time reaching him, even though my heartbeat picked up with every step
“Is it true?” I asked quietly as I neared.
He nodded once. “Kael”
I swallowed. “How?”
“No one knows. Or they’re pretending not to.”
We stood in silence for a long moment, the wind tugging at our clothes like it wanted us to move. To do something.
“He was strong, Nate finally said. “More than strong. He wasn’t supposed to go out like that.”
I looked up at him, searching the curve of his jaw, the lines of his face. “You knew him,”
“Well enough” He didn’t look at me. “We sparred together sometimes, since he was one of the only people who could give me a real challenge apart from Laker. He had control Precision. He wasn’t reckless.”
Mehed that look on his face again-of grief jus Successfully unlocked! really knew him, didn’t he? And I felt even worse for keeping this from him it was wrong. a on it too.
It terrified me. I should have told him. I had to tell him. I had to tell him about the message on the mirror too. It was all too much. But what if he died because of me telling him?
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