Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
I hadn’t asked wh?.
I didn’t need to.
Because I already knew.
The day had bloomed pale and cloudless, but inside me, a storm churned. Not the kind that threatened to consume. This one was quieter, steadier. A gathering of weight beneath my sternum, as though the gate inside me had grown another hinge. I could feel it now-the pull of the leylines all around, like threads stitching me to the world. Violet light curled beneath my skin, soft and patient, humming like a heartbeat I hadn’t yet acknowledged.
Nate’s scent reached me first. Earth. Smoke. Home.
He didn’t say anything as he stepped beside me, just let our shoulders brush, let our silences tangle.
“Eva told you?” I asked eventually.
He nodded. “She didn’t have to. I felt the shift in you.”
I exhaled slowly. “I don’t want either of you to burn.”
“Then don’t let us.”
“It might not be up to me,” I whispered. “The prophecy said…”
“The prophecy can go to hell.”
He turned fully then, and his hand found mine, grounding me. Steadying me like only he could.
“You’re not bound to the words of the dead,” he said. “You write your own fire now.”
I stared down at our joined fingers. His skin was warm. Alive. Real.
But the future-whatever waited on the other side of the Gatekeepers’ approach-was not.
The violet flame inside me stirred again, and this time it didn’t lash or rage. It whispered. Not like Eira. Not like Serina. Just… me. The voice I used to hush at night, the one I’d spent so long denying. It spoke now with clarity and calm.
I stepped back from the cliff and turned toward the encampment.
“I need to speak to Bastain,” I said.
Nate followed.
The book sat between us like it might bite.
Bastain’s expression was unreadable, the fingers of one hand tapping against the spine. Eva lingered by the flap of the tent, arms crossed tightly. Max stood just outside in the shadow of the entrance, his back turned, but I could feel his attention like a thread pulled taut.
“She saw you,” Bastain said eventually, tapping the cover. “Or someone who bore the same fire. She called her the End-Singer. The one who closes the realm to prevent the Fall.”
“And the men?” I asked.
He looked up. “It wasn’t clear. Only that they burned.”
“For me?”
“Because of you.”
My stomach twisted.
Eva stepped closer. “She described the flames as different. One wrapped in devotion. The other in sacrifice.”
I didn’t look at Nate.
I couldn’t.
Because whatever lived in this book, whatever ancient fate had whispered these words into a dying Veilborn’s hand… it had seen something we hadn’t,
“Does it say how?” I asked.
“No,” Bastain said. “Only that it happens before the gate seals. And only one person walks away.”
The tent fell into a hush.
Then Max stepped inside. “We need to move.”
“Why?” Nate asked.
“The Gatekeepers have doubled patrols,” he said. “They’re sweeping the outer ridges. And they’re leaving symbols.”
“What kind?” Bastain asked.
Max held up a piece of parchment, and my breath caught. The symbol was familiar. A ring. Violet ink shaped into a spiral of teeth.
“It’s a summoning rune,” I said.
Bastain’s brow furrowed. “Summoning what?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it feels… wrong. It hums the way a dying leyline does. Whatever they’re trying to call-it isn’t from here.”
Eva reached forward and traced the edge of the rune. “They’re calling something through the gate, aren’t they?”
“Or from it,” Nate said.
I shook my head. “If they’re tampering with the seal-if they’re trying to force it open-then they’re not here for balance. They’re here for power.”
“Then we face them before they finish whatever this is,” Max said. “And we finish it first,”
But no one spoke for a long moment.
Because we knew.
We weren’t just fighting men anymore.
We were fighting belief.
Night came fast. As it always did when you least wanted it. I stood by the fire while the others made preparations. Ethan hadn’t spoken since the last meeting, and Eva had taken up vigil nearby, her eyes darting between the flame and the mountains like she could predict what would come with dawn.
I sat alone by the logs, the sealed book open in my lap.
Sat 31 May
The last page was still blank. No ink moved. No more warnings appeared.
But the silence was louder than any sentence.
“Hey,” a voice murmured.
Hooked up. Nate crouched beside me, his brows drawn tight.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
My heart stumbled. “What is it?”
He hesitated. “Earlier today, when you collapsed… something happened to the bond.”
“What do you mean?”
“It didn’t break. It didn’t stretch. It… evolved. I could feel the leyline breathing through you. And for a second, I wasn’t sure where you ended and I began.”
My mouth went dry.
“That’s not just power, Jiselle. That’s fusion.”
I closed the book slowly.
“You think the bond is… feeding me?”
“I think it’s becoming something else. And I don’t know what that means. But I’m not afraid of it.”
I stood, the cold licking my spine. The wind carried a new scent now. Not fire.
Ash.
Not mine.
Theirs.
“They’re coming,” I said.
Nate stood beside me. “Then we meet them.”
I turned to the group as they gathered around the fire.
And for the first time, I didn’t speak as a girl who had been chosen. Or hunted. Or forged.
I spoke as myself.
As flame.
As future.
“They want an audience?” I said. “Then we give it to them.”
And behind me, in the dark beyond the ridge, a line of torches lit the horizon.
The Gatekeepers had arrived.
Nathaniel
The sun hadn’t quite broken through the clouds that morning, and maybe that was for the best. The sky hung low over the mountain ridge, heavy and gray, thick with the scent of damp stone and wildfire ash. The kind of morning that made you feel like the world was holding its breath waiting for something to crack.
I found her near the leyline basin. Again.
Jiselle sat cross-legged on the blackened stone, her back straight, eyes closed. Pale tendrils of violet magic coiled around her fingers, too soft to be fire, too alive to be light. They moved with her breath. They moved with the land.
Except-it wasn’t steady.
The pulses came in waves. A quiet tremor one second, a violent surge the next. The earth responded each time, subtle rumbles skimming under my boots like warning growls. I stepped closer.
She didn’t open her eyes.
“Jiselle,” I said softly.
“I can’t hold it,” she murmured. “It keeps slipping.”
I knelt in front of her, close enough that I could see the sweat beading at her hairline, the tightness in her jaw, the faint twitch in her fingers as if her entire body was bracing against itself.
“I’m trying to calm it,” she whispered, “but it doesn’t want calm. It wants… everything.”
The bond between us tugged sharply then. I felt her pulse-not just hear it or sense it. I felt it beneath my skin, thrumming against my ribs like it had a right to live there. I braced instinctively, planting a hand on the stone to steady myself.
“Let me help,” I said.
She opened her eyes then.
They were glowing again. Not wild like before. Not broken. But intense.
“It’s dangerous,” she said.
“So am I.”
She gave a half-smile-broken at the corners-and nodded once.
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