Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
I nodded once-barely-and then the guards shoved me forward, forcing me to keep walking.
The corridor bent sharply, narrowing into a darker tunnel I hadn’t seen before. The walls changed from stone to polished obsidian, and as I passed under the first arch, a pulse of ancient magic rippled over my skin. It wasn’t welcoming. It wasn’t protective.
It was a cage.
The walls around me buzzed with old magic, and the hallway ahead twisted like a mouth closing in.
At the end of it-where the shadows thickened-two guards waited. Silent. Unmoving.
I slowed instinctively, heart hammering. Something felt wrong. Too easy. Too clean.
And then a whizz of metal split the air.
Two sharp, silver flashes, too fast to fully track.
The guards walking with me jerked forward, choked sounds ripping from their throats. Both crumpled in near perfect sync, their bodies slumping against the walls before sliding down into a heap of tangled limbs and shattered runes.
I froze. Stunned.
What in the world…
From behind one of the thicker pillars stepped a figure cloaked in dark grey. Not a council assassin. Not a rogue.
Instructor Carrow.
Her hood was down, silver hair catching the low light of the torches, her expression severe.
“Hurry,” she barked, glancing sharply down the hall as she shoved the twin daggers back into the sheaths hidden beneath her cloak. “We don’t have much time before Veran realizes her guards are taking too long to deliver you.”
My whole body locked tight.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Because standing there, framed by the soft, flickering menace of the corridor, Carrow didn’t look like the polished, indifferent instructor anymore.
She looked like something older. Harder.
Someone with her own game.
Someone who had been playing it for far longer than I realized.
– -lank whicnering like ghosts over the stone.
I stayed rooted in place, blood thrumming through my wors
She tilted her head, studying me like a curious specimen. “You don’t have to die here, Jise You don’t have to deat I’m not dying today I said fightly
She smiled wider “No but if you stay, if you continue down this path, you will. The council hes stready decided your tate They’re preparing the containment nunes now-tunic cheens for your wrists and throst One slice of the Vader you power will be tested Forever”
My mouth went dry
“???n
Carrow moved closer, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. “I can get you out. Pught now. A carriage was beyond the mountain road Ho guards No bloodshed Just you. Free?
I shook my head slowly, disbelieving “Leave everyone behind?”
“Yes,” she said fummly “Before it’s too late. Before they chain you to an oath you can’t escape or kill you. Before they no apert everything you are for their own purposes”
Anger swelled in my chest. “You mean leave Eva. Leave Ethan. Leave Hate”
Carrow’s jew tightened. “They aren’t Ethereal. They will live. You-,”
“No” I said, voice shaking. “We live together or we die together”
Her smile vanished.
Fury flickered across her face like a crack in the surface.
“Don’t be foolish, child, she snapped. “You are the Ethereal! The first in a thousand years! You are meant to survive! Not die in the mud with wolves too stubborn to see the bigger picture.”
The torches flickered wildly. The corridor trembled,
“You think you’re the first?” Carrow hissed. “You’re not. You’re just the first one we had a chance to save. I will not let you be wasted”
“le Bastain agreeing to this?”
Her jaw licked, “That honorable fool is trying to sway the council when he knows that wont work. I am actually interested in keeping you alive. How let’s go. I’ll save you, I’ve been working for months to save you after seeing what you did with Emari Nightshade on your first challenge.”
So someone did see. She knew all this time.
Something inside me chilled. “Save?”
And then it clicked.
Was everything connected to her?
The book. The one I found, crumbling in the ancient wing with my name, scrawled in the margins,
I had thought it was fate. Destiny. It wasn’t.
Il was Carrow Wasn’t I?
She had known all along. Known before I even knew. She had marked me as hers.
“You,” I breathed, horror threading my voice. “It was you. You wrote my name.”
Carrow didn’t deny it. “I’ve been watching you since you arrived. Guiding you Protecting you when I could.”
My heart twisted violently. “Poisoning me?”
“No,” she said sharply “That was never me. That was one of the council’s pets. I sent the warning after The ash message. The notes.”
My knees almost buckled. Another truth twisted until it broke apart.
Carrow stepped closer, and I saw the blade in her hand.
Small Blackened steel. Runes etched down the blade in harsh, angular slashes blood runes
Iknew enough now to recognize them. I had one too that Bastain gave me to buy time when I needed to shift.
One cut from that dagger would suppress my gifts. Lock me down Knock me out cold.
“You’re not saving me if I can’t choose!” I snapped.
“Stop being stubborn, child!” She lunged.
Fast-unnaturally fast.
I twisted instinctively, throwing up my arm, but the blade caught my sleeve, slicing the fabric. A hair’s breadth from my skin.
The air cracked with raw magic.
I staggered back, heart hammering against my ribs.
Carrow straightened, face twisting into something darker. “Don’t make me force you, Jiselle.”
“I won’t go,” I gasped. “I won’t leave them.”
Her eyes gleamed, wild and furious. “Then you’ll die here, like all the others.”
The dagger lifted again.
I raised my arms to block, power sparking beneath my skin, my wolf rising in protest.
But then there was a growl.
Low and ferocious.
It tore through the corridor like a physical force.
Both Carrow and I turned.
From the shadows behind her, a figure emerged.
Fuming.
Shirtless.
Covered in blood and ash.
Golden eyes glowing like molten metal. Eyes that I knew too well. Eyes that I was once in love with.
PN
He moved forward slowly, power coiled around him like a living thing. His body was tense, wound tight with the effort of holding himself back.
Carrow hissed. “This wasn’t the plan.”
“You don’t touch her,” he growled, his voice vibrating the very air around us. “No harm was supposed to come to Jiselle.”
I stared at him.
Stunned. Horrified. Disbelieving
“Max?” I choked out.
??/p>
*Jiselle*
“Max?”
The name barely left my mouth before everything tilted sideways.
He stood in the corridor’s half-light, shadow bleeding from his skin like a living second layer. His hair was wild, damp with sweat, his body tense-ready. But it was his face that undid me. The raw emotion there. Regret Pain. Hope
Carrow cursed under her breath and lunged again.
But Max was faster.
Faster than anything I had ever seen.
He blurred into the darkness, reappearing behind her like a nightmare. His arm shot out, striking the pressure point at the base of her neck with brutal precision. Carrow crumpled instantly, dropping the rune-carved dagger with a hollow clatter
I stumbled back, heart hammering.
Max stepped in front of me, shielding me with his body as he watched Carrow collapse against the stone. He didn’t move for a long moment, chest heaving, golden eyes still flashing with leftover rage.
“Is she-” I started, but my throat tightened.
“No,” Max said flatly. “She’s not dead. Just unconscious. She’ll wake up knowing better than to try and hurt you again, even if she thinks it’s for your own good.”
I swallowed hard, my hands trembling at my sides. The dagger lay just a few feet away, its runes still pulsing faintly with suppressed magic. A single cut would’ve been enough to wipe me out-to lock me in silence and weakness.
I turned away from Carrow’s crumpled form and fixed my gaze on Max. “Isn’t that what you did?” I asked quietly. “When you tried to mark me? Wasn’t that your version of protecting me too?”
He flinched.
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?