Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
I flipped the page.
The script changed. Older now. Written in what looked like burned ink, curled across the parchment like smoke trapped in words.
Veilborns are not born of blood, but of breach. They rise when the leyline ruptures, when shadow and flame touch in equal measure. They do not age. They do not fade. But their power cannot anchor itself alone.
They require the flame.
I read it again. Slower this time.
They require the flame.
Kael.
And me.
I wasn’t just the flame.
I was the anchor.
Or worse-the fuel.
My mouth went dry. I kept turning pages, frantic now. Diagrams followed-old drawings of wolves bound in rings of fire, their shadows split behind them like echoes. Runes etched into their chests. Their eyes lit not with color, but with something void-like. One looked eerily like Kael. Another-a younger version of Nayor Max Or both.
The final page bore no writing.
Just a symbol.
The same rune from my Trial. The one that had pulsed across my skin when the three versions of me had stood waiting in the flame.
I snapped the book shut.
And I ran.
I didn’t know how long it took me to reach Kael’s chamber, only that the doors were already open when I arrived, as if he’d known I would come. He stood at the center of the room, not surprised. Not even curious.
Prepared.
“You knew,” I said.
He didn’t flinch. “I know many things.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“I could have.”
“You didn’t.”
“No.”
I stepped forward, fists clenched. “Why?”
Kael’s gaze didn’t shift. “Because you weren’t ready.”
“Ready?” My voice cracked. “To find out I’m not the chosen one, I’m the battery?”
He didn’t answer.
“So it’s true,” I whispered. “You, Nate, Maximus… you’re Veilborn. And I’m the flame you use to stay alive.”
He exhaled slowly. “It’s not as simple as that.”
“Isn’t it?” I asked. “You’re powerful. You’re ageless. I’ve seen it. You don’t sleep. You don’t tire. And the others… they’re starting to fracture. Nate’s scar is pulsing like it’s trying to regrow. Maximus has stopped talking about the future like it exists.”
Kael’s silence was confirmation.
I kept going.
“So is that why you brought me here?” My voice dropped. “Was this ever about me? Or just about what I could give you?”
Finally, something shifted in his face. Not guilt. Not regret.
Something older.
“Once, I burned alone,” he said. “The world could not hold me. I watched centuries fall around me like leaves. But then the first flame came-and she made it bearable. Not safe. Not gentle. But anchored.”
I stared. “You loved her.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re trying again.”
He didn’t deny it.
But he didn’t nod either.
“You want me to be her,” I said.
“No,” he whispered. “I want you to be more.”
The fire flickered in the hearth behind him, casting long shadows across the stone.
“And what happens,” I asked, “when I stop fueling you? When I choose someone else?”
Kael looked at me, finally. Really looked.
And in his eyes, I saw it-not fear.
But hunger.
He stepped forward once.
“You’ll always come back to the flame.”
I stepped back.
“No,” I said. “You come from it. I am it.”
He didn’t move again.
I turned and left the chamber, the weight of the journal still in my hand, the truth heavier than any crown Kael had ever offered.
That night, I stood in my room and stared at the cracked stone floor.
I let the book fall open beside the flame.
I reached for the heat-and for the first time in days, it didn’t pull back.
It curled around me.
Gentle.
Waiting.
As if asking me:
Now that you know, what will you burn next?
*Nathaniel*
The path to the Shrine wasn’t marked.
No signs. No carved runes. No whispers in the stone like the leylines that had guided me for weeks. Just silence. Not the dead kind, either-but the ancient kind. The kind that made the forest hush and the wind fold in on itself. The kind that said, go back even as the air pulled you forward.
We went anyway.
The four of us moved as one-Ethan at my side, silent but sharp-eyed. Eva just behind, her fingers occasionally brushing the edges of the pack that held Bastain’s scrolls. And Maximus Laker… somewhere to my left, close enough to be a shadow, far enough that I never forgot the distance we’d earned between us.
No one spoke as we crossed the final ridge and saw it.
The Shrine of the White Wolf.
A ruin, technically-but even time hadn’t dared to bring it to its knees. The stones were cracked but upright, stacked in tight, ritualistic arcs that formed a wide half-moon shape around a central pedestal. Moss crawled along the seams like old scars, and the air buzzed faintly with latent magic. Something had happened here. Something huge. Something sacred. We approached slowly, reverently. The stones didn’t shimmer or whisper, but I felt the weight of them settle into my spine the closer we got.
“This is it,” Eva whispered. “The place from my vision.”
Maximus crouched beside the pedestal. His fingers traced a set of grooves carved deep into the base. They were worn nearly smooth, but not enough to erase their meaning.
“A blade was driven here,” he murmured. “Again and again.”
“Ritual sacrifice,” Ethan said. “Old magic.”
I moved toward the center.
There was a symbol etched into the stone floor-faint, half-buried beneath moss and time, but still burning with memory.
A circle of fire.
Inside it, two names written in blood-script.
One erased. The other glowing faintly, like the name itself refused to be forgotten.
“Do you see that?” I asked.
Eva stepped beside me. “Yes. It’s… it’s a signature.”
She squinted, then gasped. “It’s her. The first Ethereal. The flame-bearer from the myth.”
The symbol pulsed underfoot.
I dropped to one knee and brushed aside the moss covering the final line of the inscription. It wasn’t a name.
It was a promise.
I burn, and he breaks. That the realms remain sealed.
I stared at it, reading the line again, slower this time.
I burn, and he breaks…
“Bastain was right,” I muttered. “There was a pact.”
Maximus stood and crossed to the opposite arch. “She didn’t just sacrifice power. She sacrificed her mate”
“Willingly?” Ethan asked.
Maximus’s voice was low. “Does it matter?”
The wind stirred around us.
I stood slowly, the air thick now, heavy with the pressure of something long buried, something no longer content to sleep. “She did it to protect the veil between realms,” Eva said. “To stop something worse from coming through.”
“No,” I said. “To stop herself from becoming the thing that destroyed it.”
Everyone fell silent.
I didn’t want to say what I was thinking. I didn’t want to feel the truth forming in the pit of my chest like a second heartbeat. But it was already there.
This prophecy-it had never really been about Kaed using Jiselle
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?