All Chapters of MATED TO THE ENEMY: Chapter 61 - Chapter 63

I’d searched every gods-damned corner of Norsen, and she was nowhere.The training fields—empty, the mats still rolled from afternoon drills.The library—rows of silent shelves, dust motes dancing in the dying light, no sign of her curled in her favorite alcove.The gardens, the hidden rooftops where I’d seen her sneak off to think.Nothing.I had searched until my legs ached and my lungs burned. Every corner of the academy grounds mocked me with its emptiness.Courtyards I had passed a hundred times, lecture halls now dark and abandoned, dormitory wings where students laughed behind closed doors while the girl I was supposed to be bound to had vanished like she had never existed at all.The sky had already begun to dim by the time panic truly sank its claws into me. I stood at the edge of the eastern practice fields, hands braced on my knees, breathing hard as though I had been running from something rather than toward it.My chest felt tight, too tight, like my ribs were closing in

I carried her the entire way back to Norsen, her weight light in my arms and unbearably heavy in my chest. She barely stirred, her head tucked beneath my chin, her breath shallow and uneven against my throat.The forest gave way to stone paths and torchlight, but none of it registered properly. All I could focus on was how wrong it felt, like I was holding something already slipping away.Her skin was ice-cold, seeping through my shirt like frostbite, her shivers vibrating through me like aftershocks from an earthquake. I held her tighter, my steps careful but urgent, the moon filtering through the canopy in silver shards that lit her pale face.She looked so fragile, so breakable, and the thought that I might have been too late, that Valora’s jealousy had pushed her to this, twisted in my gut like a poisoned blade.Sius whined endlessly in my head, a constant loop of our mate getting hurt, of tearing the person who hurt our mate apart. I didn’t have the energy to shut him up but for