Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
“He never would,” I snapped. “That’s the point.”
The fire in her hand flared. “And that’s the problem.”
My body lurched forward. I reached through the mirror, but my hand struck solid glass.
A boundary.
A wall.
A choice.
“I want him back.”
“You want everything back,” the flame-ghost said. “Your wolf. Your life. Your brother. Your mate. But you’re still pretending those things survived you.”
“I survived,” I said, trembling. “That has to count for something.”
Her voice softened. “It does. That’s why I’m still here.”
She turned toward the mirror and gestured again.
The image inside warped.
Eira now stood in the throne, full form, hair a blaze of silver-white, eyes blank and bottomless. One hand hovered above Nathaniel’s heart.
He twitched.
Only once.
But it was enough.
I slammed my fists against the mirror. “Stop it!”
Nothing changed.
I could feel him.
The bond was still there, but weaker now. Dimmed. His heartbeat-normally the drumbeat beneath mine-was slower. Fainter. And worse than that… I could feel myself inside him. The parts of me I never meant to leave behind were now burning him alive.
“I never asked for this,” I whispered.
The flame-ghost didn’t look at me. “No one ever asks. We become.”
“Then I’m choosing something else.”
She finally turned. “Then choose. But understand what that means.”
I met her gaze, defiant.
“I won’t let you take him.”
The mirror flared once. A pulse of heat.
“I won’t let you become me,” I added.
She stared at me for a long time, the flames in her eyes dimming just enough that I saw my own fear reflected in her.
And then she said, “That’s not how this ends.”
Before I could ask what she meant, the mirror shattered.
A blast of light threw me backward, across the floor of the constructed room. I hit the ground hard. The walls dissolved. The soft bed and familiar bookshelves vanished. The last things I saw were the mirror-girls fading, their faces blank.
And the flame-ghost-her smile twisting into something tragic as she whispered:
You’re already me.
Meanwhile, in the waking world
Eva knelt at my side.
My body still hadn’t moved, but the flame around my hands had changed. Instead of flickering wildly, it pulsed-slow, methodical.
Like a heartbeat.
Ethan, bandaged and pale, stood opposite her, watching with thinly veiled worry. “She’s stabilizing?” he asked, voice raspy.
Eva didn’t answer right away. She pressed her palm to the edge of my aura, feeling the rhythm that had just started.
And her eyes widened.
“She’s syncing,” she whispered.
Ethan blinked. “What do you mean?”
“The flame-it’s matching Nate’s heartbeat. They’re still connected.”
“But he’s unconscious.”
“Exactly,” Eva said. “And he’s fading.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened as he crouched beside Eva, his hands balled into fists despite the pain that clearly still radiated from his burns. His voice was low, raw at the edges.
“Then what happens if-“
Eva didn’t let him finish.
“If she goes too deep,” she said quietly, her eyes locked on Jiselle’s unmoving form, ” and can’t find her way back…”
She didn’t need to say the rest.
The flame curled gently along Jiselle’s fingers-no longer lashing out, no longer wild. It pulsed once, sharp and deliberate, like it had a mind of its own. The grass around her body trembled from the force of it, leaves shivering as if the earth itself sensed a choice being made.
Eva’s expression softened as she leaned in closer, brushing the sweat-dampened strands of hair from Jiselle’s face with the tenderness of a sister.
“Come on,” she whispered, barely more than breath. “Come on, Jiselle. You’re stronger than this. You have to be.”
And inside me-
Everything reset.
No mirror.
No throne.
No versions of myself waiting in judgment.
Just the dark.
It spread endlessly, a weightless, voiceless void where nothing had shape but everything had meaning. And somewhere deep inside that black-
My name echoed.
Jiselle…
Nate’s voice again, faint but reaching.
It sparked like a match in the dark.
And I screamed his name in return, the sound scraping out of my throat like it had claws.
“Nathaniel!”
The silence that followed felt too heavy to hold.
No answer.
No bond tug.
No warmth.
Only cold. And-
Footsteps.
Slow. Even.
Eira emerged from the shadows like she’d never left, her form fully realized now. Not a ghost. Not a fragment.
A woman.
Powerful.
Complete.
Her hair drifted in waves of silver fire, flickering like a dying star. Her eyes were hollow -not with grief or hatred, but with something worse.
Resignation.
She looked at me-not angry.
Not victorious.
Just certain.
And then she spoke.
“You’re already me.”
*Nathaniel*
Waking up inside someone else’s mind was nothing like I expected.
There was no gentle easing into awareness, no sudden flash of memory or light. It felt like falling through water that never wanted to let you surface. Slow. Cold. Weighted. When I finally blinked into consciousness, my body didn’t respond the way it should have. It wasn’t pain I felt-it was absence. Like I’d been hollowed out from the inside and stitched back together wrong.
The first thing I registered was fire.
Not hot. Not burning. Just everywhere.
Not flames exactly, but a dull red glow that pulsed in the cracks beneath the stone floor like veins of lava under skin. The air was thick-dense with magic, old and trembling. It felt like breathing inside a wound.
I was still in her mind.
Or whatever was left of it.
The throne room had changed since the last time I saw it. The silver had blackened. The floor fractured in jagged lines that spiderwebbed outward like something had detonated from the center. Above me, there was no ceiling-just an endless void where stars should’ve been, and instead, there was nothing but swirling smoke.
And silence.
I pulled myself upright, groaning as the weight of her subconscious pressed down on my shoulders like grief made solid. My boots scraped across scorched stone. The last thing I remembered was Eira grabbing me-her fingers ice and heat and memory all at once. I didn’t know what part of me was real anymore.
But I could still feel her.
Jiselle.
The bond between us-what remained of it-flickered faintly in my chest, like the last breath of a dying ember. I followed it. Because it was all I had. All I’d ever really had.
The throne stood empty now. Burnt. Broken. Splintered down the middle like someone had tried to slice it in half with a blade made of light. I walked past it without looking too closely. It was a symbol, once. Of her power. Of her fall. Of what Eira wanted her to become. And what she might still be.
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?