Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
It hissed.
Recognized me.
And unlocked.
Lines of text flickered across the screen. Subject logs. Transfer dates. Project names,
Project HOLLOW.
My chest tightened.
I scrolled down-past the failed bonds, the rogue pairings, the list of wolves whose minds had snapped under pressure.
Then I saw her name.
Jiselle Vareen.
Marked as flagged. Monitored. Tagged for transition.
Next to it: Ethereal variant – uncontrolled.
Uncontrolled.
I swore violently, slamming my fist into the wall.
They’d had plans for her long before the trials. Before the Academy made her a symbol. Before she ever knew what she was. And l-idiot that I was-had thought I could protect her by playing their game.
She wasn’t meant to survive the Academy.
She was meant to be converted.
And Kael-Kael was the hand meant to deliver her.
The realization was a blade through my chest. Not because she was gone. But because she might not even know she was falling.
If he twisted her-if he made her believe they were her salvation-
No. I couldn’t let that happen.
I grabbed everything I could-notes, drives, shards of old rune disks-and bolted into the night. The storm had started, wind and rain slashing through the trees like claws.
I didn’t feel it.
I barely felt anything.
Except the knowledge that Jiselle wasn’t just in danger.
She was being shaped.
And if I didn’t get to her first, I might not recognize the girl I once knew when I finally found her.
The Council had tried to tame her.
Kael might succeed.
And that thought haunted me more than anything else.
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* Jiselle*
The first dream didn’t feel like a dream at all.
Fire licked the edges of my vision, not warm and inviting but violent, alive. It wasn’t the kind of flame that destroyed by accident. It was the kind that hunted. The kind that devoured. My feet moved through ash as though drawn forward by something unseen, something ancient. Shadows twisted around the trees, and above me, the moon was swollen and bleeding silver. A howl echoed in the distance-long, mournful, and raw.
Then I saw her.
The white wolf.
Larger than any I’d ever seen, her fur like moonlight woven with flame. She stood at the crest of a ridge, eyes burning-not red, not gold, but silver-white, piercing straight through me. She didn’t speak, but her gaze roared louder than words ever could.
And then she ran.
I followed.
Through fire. Through shadow. Through something that felt older than death. Until the dream cracked like glass, and I was gasping awake, heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out.
The chamber was quiet, lit by a single torch burning low in the bracket by the door. The same stone walls. The same runes faintly pulsing beneath the cuffs still chained to my wrists. But something was different. Inside me, something had shifted. A low hum buzzed through my veins, slow and rhythmic-like the pulse of an unseen tide.
My power.
Not fully returned. Not wild and bright like before. But flickering. Lingering. A pulse instead of a flame.
I sat up slowly, the cool air dragging across sweat-damp skin. The dreams weren’t just echoes. They were something more. Visions. Memories that weren’t mine. Or maybe ones I hadn’t yet lived.
The door opened with a soft creak, and Kael stepped in without preamble, his eyes sharper than I remembered. He didn’t speak at first, only studied me as if reading a new language.
“You saw her, didn’t you?” he said at last.
I didn’t ask how he knew. I didn’t waste breath denying it.
“The white wolf,” I murmured.
He nodded once. “She comes to us when the shift begins.”
“What shift?”
“The change in blood. The breaking of the leash.”
I frowned, the words too vague to make sense of, too weighty not to matter. “What is she?”
Kael crossed the room, sitting across from me without touching the torchlight. He always moved like that-fluid, controlled, but never without gravity.
“She’s not what,” he said. “She’s who. The Ethereal. The first gifted. Some say the goddess’s avatar. Others say she was the goddess herself, before wolves forgot how to listen.”
“And you think she’s trying to speak to me now?”
“I don’t think,” he said. “I know. Because she’s spoken to me, too.”
That made me sit straighter.
His gaze held mine, unwavering. “I saw her in my sixth year, when they first marked me. When they first forced the runes into my skin. I thought I was hallucinating. But the same dream came again and again-always the white wolf, always the fire. She didn’t speak, but she showed me things. Buried things. What the Council did. What they would do.”
“And now she’s coming to me,” I said slowly.
He nodded. “Because your gift is waking.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “But I don’t feel like myself.” yuleaked!. truth.
“You’re not,” he said, and for once there was no sharpness fly yun!! “You’re more. That’s why she’s guiding you.”
I didn’t know how to hold that. How to breathe under the weight of it.
“I don’t want to be anyone’s weapon,” I said softly. “Not the Council’s. Not yours.”
Kael’s jaw tightened. “Then don’t be. Be something else. Rule yourself. Rule them.”
I stared at him. “Rule?”
He nodded slowly. “That’s what she wants. Not obedience. Balance. Power with purpose. And she chooses who carries that torch.”
I laughed bitterly. “And you think I’m next in line?”
“I don’t think,” he repeated, eyes glowing faintly in the dim. “I know.”
I rose to my feet, blood rushing hot through my limbs, the pulse of my magic crackling just under the surface. “Why me? Why now?”
“Because they tried to break you. And you survived. The others-they were strong. Gifted, Brave. But none of them broke the binding like you did. You fought the collar. You shattered the rune net. You survived the suppression disc. And now she s come to finish what she started.”
I didn’t want to believe him.
I couldn’t afford to.
But a whisper deep inside me-the place where the white wolf’s eyes still burned-said he was right.
“She chose you,” he said, rising as well. “Just like she chose me. And we can’t ignore her. Not anymore.”
I turned away, breath catching. My thoughts tumbled too fast to tame. Visions, fire, prophecy. And somewhere in the haze, Nate’s voice. His eyes. The bond we once shared, now severed and dangling like a thread frayed by storm.
“She said nothing,” I whispered. “In the dream. She didn’t speak.”
Kael stepped closer. “She doesn’t need to. Her fire does the talking.”
Silence stretched between us like wire. Taut. Sharp.
“I’m not your queen,” I said, voice tight. “I’m not anyone’s savior.”
“You are what you choose to become.”
He didn’t press further. He simply walked to the doorway and paused there.
“Rest again. There’s more coming. The next time she appears, don’t run. Walk through the fire.”
Then he left, his shadow stretching long across the floor.
I sank back down, staring at the flickering torchlight, the echo of the dream still burning behind my eyes.
Rule. Choose. Become.
I didn’t know what I was becoming.
But the fire had found me.
And part of me-gods help me-wanted to burn.
Nathaniel
The wind shifted as we crossed into rogue territory-sharper, colder, laced with the iron tang of old magic and war.
It moved through the trees like a whisper with teeth, brushing the back of my neck, making the hair rise along my arms even though I was already half-shifted. My senses were running wild, heightened not by adrenaline, but by something far more visceral. Something instinctual. Something wrong.
Jiselle’s scent no longer lingered on the earth. But I could feel her. Not in the way I used to, with the bond burning bright between us like a constant thread. That was gone-severed by the suppression rune that yanked her into the void. But sometimes, in the space just between waking and memory, she flickered. A pressure behind my ribs. A whisper under my skin. An ache in my spine that didn’t come from the long days of travel but from something deeper.
Something my wolf didn’t understand. And wouldn’t let go of.
“We’re close,” I muttered, even though Bastain didn’t ask. He said nothing, only tilted his head and pressed his palm against the next ley stone embedded in the forest floor. The stone pulsed faintly beneath his fingers, a soft shimmer of silver-blue. Another trace. Another echo.
“She passed through here,” he confirmed. “Maybe a day ago. Two, at most.”
I exhaled slowly, forcing my hands to unclench. My claws were halfway out again. I hadn’t meant to shift. Lately, my control came and went like a storm current. There was something off about the way my wolf reacted to her absence. He didn’t mourn her like a lost mate-he thrashed, roared, circled endlessly inside me like he was searching for something that wasn’ t quite dead.
Not grief.
Not yet.
We pressed deeper into the woods, and the air thickened. Not with fog, but tension. My pulse beat harder the closer we got to the heart of rogue territory, and my skin prickled with the sensation of being watched. Not by rogues. Not by enemies.
By something older.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
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