Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
The room led into a hall-one I had successfully unlocked! extended into darkness, the walls lined with fractured memories instead of stone. Scenes played across the surfaces like oil paintings half-smeared by a storm: her as a child, curled in a bed far too big for her; her in the Trial arena, blood drying beneath her fingernails; her on her knees before Kael, flame spilling from her wrists as she begged herself not to give in.
Every few steps, I felt something change.
The air thickened. The ground grew colder.
The bond inside me pulsed stronger.
But so did the ache.
Every foot forward was a choice. And every choice dragged a memory to the surface- except they weren’t mine. They were hers.
And they hurt.
The first struck before I realized what was happening.
I blinked, and suddenly, I was standing in the rain.
Not here. Not in the throne room. Somewhere else. Familiar.
The clearing outside the Academy.
Jiselle stood across from me-barefoot, bleeding, eyes shining with betrayal.
“I waited for you,” she whispered.
My heart seized.
“I know,” I whispered back. But she didn’t hear me.
Because this wasn’t real.
It was memory.
It played out around me like theater carved into time. I watched myself turn away from her. Watched the flinch in her shoulders when I said the wrong thing. Watched the exact moment she stopped believing I would fight for her.
And the guilt crawled deeper.
I stumbled forward.
The vision shattered.
Another rose in its place.
Kael, standing behind her. His hand on her shoulder. Her face unreadable, Masked. The girl I loved sealed behind a layer of survival so thick even her wolf couldn’t reach her.
“This is what you failed to protect.”
The voice slid from behind me-low, elegant, cruel.
I turned.
Eira.
She stepped from the shadow between memories, bare feet not quite touching the ground. Her presence distorted the air, bending it like heat over a flame.
“This is all that’s left,” she said, sweeping a hand across the ruined corridor of memory. “Fear. Rejection. A history of being chosen second.”
“She was never second to me,” I growled.
“No,” Eira said, voice softening. “She was first. That’s why it broke her.”
I didn’t answer.
Because part of me wondered if she was right.
Eira moved closer. “She trusted you. And still, she burned alone. You left. You doubted. You didn’t believe she’d survive.”
“I believed in her too much,” I said. “I thought she didn’t need saving.”
“Everyone needs saving.”
I stepped past her, unwilling to argue. I followed the bond again, the thread of gold and silver that still ran faint through the cracks of this ruined place. It led to a door-not a grand one, not dramatic. Just a small, old wooden door with the paint peeling.
I pushed it open.
And inside, I found her.
Or what was left.
She sat in the center of the room. Pale, still, spine too straight. Her hair unbound, falling over her shoulders like a curtain. The space around her glowed faintly white- light without source.
And her eyes-
Godddes.
Her eyes glowed with a blinding, steady white. Not like before, when power shimmered just beneath her irises, flecks of light swimming over violet or gold. This wasn’t that. This was complete. Unbroken. Consuming. Like her soul had been lit from the inside and every trace of color, of humanity, had been burned away.
No warmth.
No spark of recognition.
Just brilliance. Cold and hollow.
“Jiselle,” I said carefully, not moving too fast, not daring to break whatever fragile thread might still be anchoring her to this place. To me.
She didn’t move.
Not a twitch. Not a blink. Just… silence.
“Jis,” I tried again, voice softer, stepping closer despite the chill that suddenly filled the air between us. “It’s me.”
Still nothing.
No flicker in her expression. No change in her stance.
It was like talking to a reflection.
Then-she stood.
Slowly. Deliberately. Every movement calculated, unnatural in its smoothness, like she wasn’t using her body the way it was meant to move but puppeteering it from somewhere deep within.
Her head tilted, just slightly, just enough to make my chest clench.
She looked at me-not in fear, not in fury, but in blank curiosity. Like I was a puzzle with too many pieces. Like the shape of my face, the sound of my voice, meant something, but she couldn’t quite remember what.
Like she’d never seen me before in her life.
My heart sank.
I swallowed hard, breath shallow. “Jiselle… come back. Please.”
She blinked once. Slowly.
Then she opened her mouth.
And when she spoke, the voice that came out was hers.
But warped. Distant. Echoing with something far older.
“Who are you?”
The words dropped between us like stones into water, rippling through the ruined space of her mind.
The light behind her eyes flared brighter, burning without heat, burning with finality.
And I knew-
I was too late.
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*Jiselle*
I couldn’t tell where I ended and she began anymore.
My thoughts didn’t feel like mine-not entirely. They echoed through my head like distant voices in a room I no longer controlled. My memories unraveled as I tried to reach for them, slippery and unsteady, like wet ink bleeding across parchment. Whenever I grasped one, Eira’s voice would slip in, curling through it like smoke, tainting it with doubt.
I walked forward, though the space around me felt less like a corridor and more like a hallway carved from fractured time. Shadows pressed in from every side, forming walls that shimmered and breathed. Scenes rose up around me-some familiar, some wrong-but all of them mine. Or they used to be.
But they’d changed.
Everything was too quiet, like someone had pressed their hand over the mouth of the past. Too sharp, as if the edges of each memory could cut if I looked too closely. Too wrong.
The first memory pulsed forward like a heartbeat, humming faintly with soft gold light. I recognized it before it fully formed.
I was seven.
Ethan and I ran barefoot through the woods behind our house, mud streaked up our legs, our hands sticky with stolen berries. I remembered the way sunlight poured through the trees like honey, how he laughed when I slipped on a mossy stone and fell into the stream.
But here he didn’t laugh.
He shouted.
“Get up!” he snapped, his voice harsh, brittle. “Stop crying. You’re weak!”
And then he pushed me.
I stumbled backward, arms flailing, crashing into the shallow water as cold shocked my skin. I gasped and choked on the memory.
“No,” I said, my voice cracking. “That’s not what happened.”
But the scene continued anyway, as if I hadn’t spoken. As if this version of the past no longer needed my permission.
I backed away, heart racing, throat Successfully unlocked!
The walls rippled, warped, then shifted.
A new memory climbed into place-this one heavier.
The arena.
I knew this place in my bones. The stone floor stained with blood and dust, the scent of sweat, steel, and adrenaline thick in the air. It was the day of my Trial. The moment I’ d stood before my first opponent, heartbeat thrumming like a war drum in my chest. I’ d stood tall. Strong. I remembered that. I knew that.
But here, I didn’t stand.
I knelt.
Hands bound at the wrists. Head bowed. My wolf silent.
Kael stood over me, his presence dark and suffocating. He didn’t need chains. His voice did the binding.
“You were always meant for more,” he whispered, leaning close. “You just needed someone to shape you.”
I shook my head. “That’s not how it happened.”
But even as I said it, doubt splintered through me.
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