Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
“No.”
I yanked against the chains, pain sparking through my wrists. “Then what the hell do you want?”
He crouched in front of me, lowering himself to eye level without a hint of threat. “I want you to understand who you are. What you are. The Council wanted to chain you. The Academy wanted to mold you. I offer something else. Truth. Power. 4 Freedom.”
“I’ve heard this speech before.”
“Not from me.”
His gaze was unblinking. “You think the bond with Nathaniel defines you? That your gift is simply light and spark? What you carry inside you is older than the Council. Older than the packs. Do you know why they branded your kind as dangerous?”
I didn’t respond.
“Because they feared you.”
A low, shuddering breath escaped me. “Why?”
“Because your power doesn’t obey.”
I searched his face, trying to decipher the truth behind his words. Manipulation? Or something else? His expression held no mockery. No obvious deceit. Only conviction.
Kael stood again, slow and deliberate. “You’ve barely scratched the surface of your gift. The Council feared what would happen if you broke free. I intend to help you do exactly that.”
“And if I don’t want your help?”
He didn’t flinch. “Then I’ll unchain you, give you your magic back, and let you go.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want obedience, Jiselle.” He leaned closer again, and for the first time, I saw the flicker of something in his eyes-something raw, almost reverent. “I want your truth. Your choice.”
The door behind him opened without warning, and a young woman with silver tattoos curling down her arms stepped inside. She looked at me once-sharp and assessing-then nodded to Kael.
“They’re ready,” she said.
Kael nodded once. “Good.”
The woman vanished.
Kael turned back to me. “Rest. We’ll begin tomorrow. You’ll need your strength.”
“For what?”
He smiled-a cold, unreadable thing. “To reclaim what they stole from you.”
And then he was gone.
Leaving me chained, powerless, and with more questions than answers.
But one truth echoed through the silence like a vow:
I had been taken. But I would not remain broken.
*Nathaniel*
Smoke hung in the air like a second sky-dense, choking, laced with the bitter tang of magic and scorched stone. I stood in the middle of the ruins, surrounded by the aftermath of a war we hadn’t been ready for.
The once-imposing walls of the Academy lay in broken heaps, pillars split and scorched black, banners torn to ribbons. Moonlight filtered weakly through the dust, casting pale streaks across blood-slicked ground. Wolves limped or crawled, some cradling wounds, others carrying the dead. But I saw none of it.
All I saw was the place she’d vanished.
Jiselle.
Every second since that portal had closed felt like a blade pressed against my throat, constant and unforgiving. I’d searched the river tunnels for hours, chasing whispers of her scent, flickers of magic, anything that might lead me to her. But the trail had gone cold. Cold and wrong.
I clenched my fists at my sides, my claws half-shifted, refusing to retract. My wolf paced inside me, feral and grieving. He had no direction. No target. Just a void where she should be.
Bastain’s voice cut through the ringing in my head. “You need to stop.”
I turned, slow and sharp, my body stiff with barely leashed violence. Bastain stood a few feet away, leaning heavily on a broken staff. Blood stained his tunic, his face drawn and exhausted.
“I need to find her,” I said, my voice raw.
“I know.” He exhaled slowly, glancing over his shoulder toward the makeshift infirmary the survivors had assembled in the eastern courtyard. “But running yourself into the ground won’t help her.”
I looked past him, toward the flickering torchlight beyond the rubble. I could just make out Ethan’s silhouette, sitting beside Eva’s unconscious form. She lay on a pile of blankets, her skin pale, her side wrapped in layers of blood-soaked cloth.
“How bad?” I asked quietly.
“Bad,” Bastain admitted. “But she’ll live. Thanks to Ethan-and Max.”
I ground my teeth at the mention of his name.
Bastain noticed. “Whatever you’re feeling, put it away. We’ve already lost too much.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Instead, I walked to what was left of the portal site. The ground still hummed faintly beneath my boots, a low throb of residual power. I knelt and pressed my palm flat against the stone. It was warm. Not from fire-but from the afterglow of magic. Suppression magic. The same kind they’d used on her. The kind that cut through gifts like a blade.
I swallowed hard, forcing the memories back.
The way she screamed. The way our bond had snapped like brittle glass.
I had failed her.
“She fought them,” Bastain said behind me. “Even when her magic was failing. I saw it. She wasn’t taken easily.”
I nodded once, but the words offered no comfort.
“How did they do it?” I asked. “That suppression disc. The rune net. The portal. Where the hell did rogues get access to something like that?”
Bastain crouched beside me, his gaze fixed on the cracked runes scorched into the stone. “They didn’t.”
I turned to him sharply. “What do you mean?”
“These aren’t rogue sigils,” he said, tracing one with his fingertip. “They’re older. Sharper. Layered in a way that only one faction ever used.”
I didn’t breathe.
“The Council,” he said. “This is their work.”
The fury that surged through me nearly broke my control. I stood abruptly, pacing, my hands flexing at my sides. “They did this? They built those damn tools to suppress gifts-and now the rogues are using them?” Bastain didn’t rise. “No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying this was Council tech from the start. Ancient, forgotten, hidden in vaults even the High Alphas didn’t know about. My guess is someone dug it up-or never stopped using it.”
“But why use it on her?” I demanded.
“Because she’s the key,” Bastain said simply. “They were never going to let her awaken fully. The prophecy. The book. The name carved in the margins. They were afraid.”
“So they tried to control her.”
“Or break her.”
I felt sick.
All of this-the trials, the visions, the bond-we’d been playing on someone else’s gameboard, with rules we didn’t even know existed.
I looked toward the tunnel mouth again, teeth clenched so tightly my jaw ached. “We need to find her. Now.”
Bastain stood slowly, wincing as his knees cracked. “I’ve already sent scouts to follow the ley lines. That portal left residue -rune threads. Faint, but traceable. And there’s one more thing.”
He pulled a sliver of crystal from his pouch and held it up to the moonlight. It pulsed faintly, silver at the core.
“What is that?”
“A tracker,” he said. “One she wore in her earring. Fused with her energy signature. I enchanted it the day before the trials, just in case.”
My heart skipped. “You think it still works?”
“It’s dim, but alive. She’s alive.”
Those words hit harder than I expected.
Alive.
That single confirmation pushed air back into my lungs.
“She’s north,” Bastain added. “Far. Somewhere in the Wildlands. Beyond Council borders.”
“The rogues’ territory.”
“Maybe. Or what we thought was theirs.”
I looked back toward the others. Max was talking to Ethan now, his face pale, one arm bandaged. Eva hadn’t moved.
“I can’t wait,” I said.
Bastain didn’t argue. “Take a team. Two at most. Move quietly. This wasn’t just a kidnapping. It was a declaration.”
I nodded.
He gripped my shoulder. “You’re not just her mate anymore, Nathaniel. You’re the last person she trusted. That makes you dangerous to whoever took her.”
“I intend to be.”
I gathered what little I had left. A torn satchel. A pair of blades. A small rune reader. I paused once beside Eva, brushing her hair back gently. Ethan looked up at me, eyes hollow.
“Bring her home,” he said.
“I will.”
Max didn’t speak as I passed. He only nodded once.
The air was colder beyond the ruins, laced with mist and old pine. I followed the silver pulse in the crystal, letting it guide me deeper into the unknown.
And as I slipped into the shadowed woods, one thought burned brighter than all the rest:
You’re not gone.
Not yet.
I will find you, Jiselle.
Even if I have to tear the earth apart to do it.
*Jiselle*
The morning-or what passed for it in this place-crept in without fanfare. There were no windows to mark the sun’s arrival, only a soft change in the torchlight that filtered through the cracks above, casting fractured gold over the cold stone floor. I hadn’t slept, not really. Between the biting pressure of the chains and the hollow ache left in the wake of my severed magic, my body had shut down but my mind hadn’t followed.
I sat up slowly, arms sore and trembling as the memory of Kael’s visit lingered like smoke in my lungs. His words wouldn’t leave me.
I didn’t want obedience. I wanted your truth.
Truth. A pretty word for a man with so many secrets. Yet something in his voice-quiet, unshakable-felt more real than anything I’d heard in weeks. More honest than the lies I’d lived beneath at the Academy. More dangerous, too.
I was still caught in that thought when the door creaked open and two wolves entered-not in fur, but in human form. Both were young, maybe near my age, though the girl held herself with sharp-edged wariness and the boy with that taut grace you only got from years of survival.
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