Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
But when sleep finally took me, it wasn’t fire that came.
It was a forest.
Mist-heavy. Moonlit.
And there he was.
Nate.
He stood at the edge of the trees, half in shadow, his eyes hollow but familiar. He didn’t call my name. He didn’t move. He just stood there-watching me.
Not like a mate.
Like a mirror.
Like the only thing tethering me to whatever part of myself hadn’t been rewritten yet.
My legs moved before my mind caught up. I walked toward him, the forest shuddering with every step. The flame inside me responded-not in violence, but in sorrow. It didn’t rage. It wept.
I reached out.
And just before I could touch him, the ground split.
I woke with a gasp, my hands clenched, my skin slick with sweat.
And the walls were glowing.
Not from torches.
From me.
My breath hitched as the stone beneath the bed cracked-thin spidering lines radiating outward, pulsing with silver fire. The cuffs that no longer held me twitched where they lay on the nearby table. The window rattled. The ceiling groaned.
And deep in the foundation of the sanctuary, something responded.
I pressed my palms to the ground, fighting for control, for silence. The power didn’t want silence. It wanted release. But I was stronger now.
Not because I had mastered it.
Because I had learned when to hold on.
And when to let go.
I drew in a breath. Focused.
And slowly, the glow receded.
The cracks stopped growing.
The walls stilled.
But they didn’t mend.
I sat there until dawn, staring at the fissures I’d made.
Not in fear.
In understanding.
I wasn’t Kael’s flame.
I wasn’t the prophecy’s puppet.
And I wasn’t Nate’s mate.
I was something in between-burning, breaking, rebuilding.
And if I was going to crack the world open…
…I’d do it on my terms.
*Nathaniel
The leyline wasn’t visible to the human eye-but I could feel it pulsing beneath the forest floor like a buried artery, a steady rhythm that thrummed against the soles of my boots and clawed through the soles of my feet. It hummed louder the deeper I walked, tugging like it had teeth and purpose. Like it knew where it wanted to take me,
I hadn’t felt her magic in weeks.
Not properly. Not cleanly.
There had been echoes, yes. Whispers caught in half-sleep, the occasional sting along the tether that once bound us. But those were memories. Phantoms.
This was different.
This was alive.
The leyline curled through the valley like a forgotten vein, etched into the earth by forces older than war. I tracked it with Bastain’s map in one hand and my heartbeat in the other, following it past the ridges and broken stones of what had once been the Council’s southern watchposts.
They were gone now. Just ruins and ivy.
Like everything else they’d built.
The air changed around me the farther I followed the current-thicker, charged. The kind of pressure that made your bones itch and your instincts scream. Magic lived here. Raw and coiled and untamed. It was the kind of magic that didn’t obey unless it chose to.
And somehow, I knew… she was here.
Not physically.
Not yet.
But her magic-Jiselle’s flame-had touched this leyline. Bled into it. Branded it.
The mate bond was gone, broken weeks ago in the split-second she’d vanished through the portal. But the scar was still there. A tether not of fate, but of memory. A burn across the soul that hadn’t healed.
I stopped at the edge of a clearing that hummed with residual power. My breath caught.
The trees surrounding it were blackened at the roots. Not from wildfire. From intention. As if someone had drawn a circle of restraint in fire and dared the forest to move.
I stepped into the center.
And the world shifted.
The wind dropped. The forest stilled. And for a moment, I wasn’t in the glade anymore.
I was inside the fire.
Flames curled around me, not hot, not scalding-just present. A heat that reached inside instead of burning outside. It wrapped around my ribs and slipped beneath my skin.
And then-her voice.
Soft. Fractured. Distant.
But hers.
“Nathaniel…”
I spun, but she wasn’t there.
Not in body.
Just in flame.
I saw her face in the flickering sparks-gold and silver light woven into the shape of her, her hair caught in an invisible wind, her eyes glowing with a sadness so deep it cracked something inside me.
She raised a hand toward me.
And I raised mine.
We didn’t touch.
We couldn’t.
But I felt it anyway.
The spark. The anchor.
The proof that not all of her had been consumed.
And then she spoke again-clearer this time,
“Don’t forget me”
The fire surged.
And the vision broke.
I was on my knees in the clearing, the trees whispering again around me, my breath ragged.
Bastain’s voice crackled in through the rune-link we’d kept activated for emergencies.
“Nate. Report. Are you alright?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
I touched the center of my chest, where the tether had once been, expecting to find the void I’d grown used to.
But something pulsed there now.
Faint.
Flickering.
But real.
“I found her,” I said into the link.
“You saw her?”
“No. Not her body. Her magic. Her voice.”
Static filled the channel for a moment. Then, quietly, “You’re sure?”
“She hasn’t been lost,” I said. “Not all the way.”
Another pause.
Then Bastain’s voice, careful now. “And if she doesn’t want to be found?”
I stood slowly, staring out over the glade.
The fire had left no ash. No sign it had ever burned.
But I still felt the heat in my bones.
“She does,” I said. “Somewhere in there, she’s still reaching for me.”
Bastain didn’t argue. He knew better.
I turned away from the center of the clearing, the wind colder now. The leyline stretched ahead, curling toward the mountains.
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?