Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
But I saw his hands.
They trembled.
Not with awe.
With fury.
I felt him reach for the spiral of power around me, trying to mold it again, to steer it back under his control.
It didn’t answer him.
It answered me.
And I collapsed.
The fire didn’t vanish. It hovered. It wrapped around my body like smoke still choosing whether to burn.
I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. My limbs were numb. My magic flickered violently under my skin like a broken storm. Everything inside me was too loud-too much.
But his name echoed again in my mind.
And I held onto it like a thread.
“Nathaniel…” I whispered.
The spiral around me went white.
Not red.
Not gold.
Not silver.
White.
The flames didn’t vanish.
They changed.
Shifted.
Accepted
And I passed out with that final thought burning beneath my skin:
Maybe I was never meant to be crowned.
Maybe I was meant to ignite.
Or maybe I was meant to be a warning.
Before the darkness took hold completely, I heard a sound I hadn’t heard since the bond broke-a heartbeat that wasn’t mine. Faint. Staggered. Familiar. It didn’t come from outside. It came from within me. Like a second pulse buried beneath the one Kael tried to forge. I couldn’t feel his power anymore. Not like before. Not laced through mine like thread through cloth.
But Nate’s?
It had never really left.
That heartbeat reverberated through the marrow of me-not soft or soothing, but steady. Not claiming. Just present.
There.
And with it came a memory not of flames or war or prophecy, but a voice I barely recognized as mine. A voice from the day he rejected me-when everything fell apart.
“I would’ve chosen you anyway.”
It echoed now-not as a wound.
As a tether.
Because he still called me by name.
Not Sovereign.
Not Ethereal.
Not Flame.
Just Jiselle.
And somehow, through the blaze and the brokenness and the unbearable light, I remembered that name mattered more than any crown.
My name.
His voice.
The spiral of fire that had held me like a ritual softened as if listening.
And in the last breath I could hold, before I lost the room and the world and Kael’s scowl and the wolves whispering things
I didn’t want to hear, I whispered one word again-not to summon, not to plead.
But to remember.
“Nathaniel…”
The flames didn’t rage.
They bowed.
??/p>
??/p>
Jiselle*
I woke to silence.
Not peace. Not calm. Just the kind of silence that feels like something had been scraped clean. The stone beneath me was still hot, still pulsing faintly, but the flames had died. No spiral, No chant. No power coiling through my limbs like a leash tightening with each breath.
Just me.
And the ash.
I pushed myself up slowly, my arms trembling under the weight of whatever had passed through me. My robes were scorched at the hem, and a halo of soot surrounded the spot where I’d fallen. The cracked floor beneath me glowed faintly in spiderwebs of white fire-residue from something too big to name and too dangerous to repeat.
The chamber was empty.
Kael was gone.
So were the wolves.
All except one.
Lira stood at the far edge of the circle, motionless. No weapons. No guards. Just her, and the silence.
“You’re awake,” she said. Her voice was unreadable.
I nodded, though my throat burned too much to speak.
“They think you ascended,” she added.
I blinked.
“They think you became the flame. That you rejected the crown because it was beneath you.”
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. “They’re wrong.”
She shrugged once. “They don’t care. They’re already building you a new title.”
My heart thudded hard in my chest. “What title?”
Her lips quirked, bitter. “The Ember Queen.”
I laughed once, sharp and humorless. “They didn’t see me collapse.”
“They saw the fire bow to you. That’s all they needed.”
I rose to my feet slowly, wincing at the sharp pull in my ribs. Every muscle ached, but I was whole. Somehow. I should’ve been destroyed. Broken apart by the leyline’s attempt to bind itself to me. But instead of fusion, there was rejection. The power pushed and I pushed back-until everything cracked.
Not cleanly.
Not safely.
But enough to sever whatever Kael had tried to create.
I limped past Lira, ignoring her steady gaze, and pushed through the heavy corridor doors. No guards blocked m acolytes flanked me. The halls were empty, but I felt them watching. Whispers trailed down the corridor ahead ote, distant voices pressed into the stones.
She burned the circle.
She saw the mate.
She chose something else.
I pressed a hand to my chest. The scar from the bond was still there-not in flesh, but deeper. Not dead, but dormant. And I didn’t know what that meant anymore.
My chambers were lit when I returned, though I didn’t remember lighting the lanterns. My reflection in the mirror stopped me-my eyes rimmed in soot, my cheeks flushed with heat, the white robe now grey at the edges, clinging to my shoulders like a shroud. I looked like something half-finished. Not sovereign. Not rebel. Just scorched.
A note resfed on the table. A single sentence scrawled in Kael’s hand:.
The crown waits when you are ready.
I tore it in half.
Then in quarters.
Then burned the pieces with a whisper of my power.
He still thought this was about choice. About ceremony.
But I was done pretending that any of this had been mine to choose.
I left the room within the hour and descended back into the forbidden library. This time, I didn’t sneak. I walked openly, shoulders square, magic flaring faintly at my fingertips-not threatening, just present.
The library opened around me like it had been waiting.
Deeper than the outer shelves. Past the sealed volumes. To a corridor where the fire glowed blue, and the stones beneath my feet bore the symbol I’d seen only once before-in the Trial of Flame.
The Sovereign Rune.
But here, it was cracked.
Like something had broken it on purpose.
I followed the path until it ended in a small alcove, stone bench carved into the wall, and a single volume placed reverently in the center of a flame-suspended pedestal. I didn’t hesitate.
The flame parted as I reached in.
The book was bound in hide-old, scaled, and tough as armor. No title. No sigil. Just a smear of dried red along the spine. I opened it.
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?