Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
Not like something planted.
Like something born.
The leaves shimmered at the edges-not green, but gold. Not a metallic shine, either. Just… light. Soft. Flickering like flame but not burning. They shook again, a twitch of motion I didn’t understand, and I followed the curve of the trunk with my eyes until I reached it.
The mark.
Not just one.
A full line of runes, glowing low and slow like coals under ash. Etched into the trunk just above eye level. As if someone had burned them there with care, precision-almost reverence.
My breath caught.
I knew the shape.
The curves.
The power humming beneath the strokes.
It wasn’t random.
It was a name.
Aedric.
The moment I read it, it pulsed-once, steady and deep.
Then again.
Like a second heartbeat layered under my own.
I took a step back, my heels catching on uneven stone. The room seemed to tilt. The walls bowed inward, shadows crawling toward the tree like they recognized it. Like they belonged to it.
And then everything stopped.
The pulse ceased.
The leaves went still.
Silence settled like a weight over my shoulders, crushing and total.
I turned, throat tight, and stumbled away, barely making it to the center of the room before my legs gave. My knees hit the stone hard, and I didn’t care. I looked around frantically, expecting to see someone, anyone.
But the bed was untouched.
No door had opened. No scent lingered. No footsteps echoed.
No one had entered.
This had happened while I slept.
While I dreamt of flame and names and thrones I didn’t want.
I stared at the tree, at the runes still faintly pulsing, and something inside me split.
It wasn’t just a tree.
It was a message.
A warning.
Planted not in the earth, but in me.
Because this wasn’t just magic reacting to the leyline. It wasn’t residual energy from the Triad or the lingering echoes of Serina’s gifts.
This… this was personal.
It had grown from something inside me.
Something listening.
Watching.
Choosing.
And I knew, deep in the pit of my chest where fear had stopped being sharp and started feeling familiar, that this hadn’t been summoned by the veil.
It hadn’t even been summoned by me.
It had either come from the child…
Or through the child.
Because when I looked at those runes-at the name carved like a promise-I didn’t feel like one of the edges of the Triad anymore. Not like a bearer or a vessel or a piece in something larger.
I felt like the center.
And the target.
Because the name wasn’t just burned into bark.
It was mine.
Not written to me.
Written from me.
Etched with my flame.
Or the flame of whatever still stirred beneath my skin, curled in the shadow of my ribs, waiting.
Waiting for a door.
Waiting for its name to be spoken aloud.
And now that it had… something had answered.
Jiselle*
I dreamed of mirrors.
Not the kind that reflected-but the kind that showed things you were never meant to see.
In the dream, Eva stood barefoot in the infirmary hall. The walls were cracked, the sconces flickering, and every step she took echoed like it was beneath the earth. She reached out to a tall mirror leaning against the wall-dusty, old, the kind I remembered from the Academy’s archives.
Her reflection looked back.
But it wasn’t her.
It was me.
Not just me as I was-but me with eyes darker than they’d ever been, veins threaded with something silver and wrong. I was smiling in the mirror. Smiling like I knew something I shouldn’t,
Eva touched the glass.
The reflection blinked-and cracks spiderwebbed across the surface, slicing through my face.
She gasped.
And then I woke.
Not in my bed.
But on the floor.
Covered in sweat, breath rasping out of me like I’d run. The room was dim, shadows flickering from a low-burning candle. The tree was still in the corner-smaller now, like it had folded in on itself. But the bark still glowed faintly with that name.
Aedric.
The air tasted like ash.
When I sat up, my stomach twisted-not from nausea, but from something deeper. Like the child inside me had shifted. Like something in me had tilted, just a little, off balance.
The knock came seconds later,
Eva.
She didn’t say anything when she stepped inside. Just shut the door behind her and sat on the edge of the bed, her hands. shaking slightly.
“You saw it too,” I said softly.
She nodded. “Not a vision. Not one of my usual dreams. This was… something else.”
I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. “What did you see?”
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“A mirror,” she whispered. “And you. But not you. Your reflection didn’t follow me-it moved first. It looked right at me.”
We sat in silence.
Something deep and hollow settled between us. Not fear exactly-but the kind of dread that coils when you realize you’re being watched by something ancient. Something without form. Something that knows your name.
Before I could respond, Ethan slammed into the room, his hair tousled, his eyes wide. His clothes were soaked with sweat and splattered with ash.
“There’s been an attack,” he said, breathless.
“What?” Eva and I both stood.
“A village to the west-one of the old settlements. Just outside the leyline bend.”
I froze. “How bad?”
“Half burned. The others… I don’t even know how to explain it.” He rubbed at his face. “They said the wolves didn’t speak. Didn’t growl. They just screamed.”
“Screamed?” Eva repeated, her voice a whisper, but it felt like it echoed too loud in the stillness around us.
Ethan nodded. His jaw clenched, his shoulders tense like he was bracing for something worse than the words themselves. “Didn’t shift. Didn’t growl. Didn’t speak. Just screamed.”
Something inside me curled in on itself. My throat went dry, and I didn’t know if it was fear or recognition. But I knew.
Not in theory.
Not in warning.
In my gut.
It had something to do with the name burned into the tree in my room. The one that pulsed like a heartbeat beneath bark.
Aedric.
I pressed a hand to my stomach without thinking. The gesture wasn’t for comfort-it was instinct. Protective. Terrified. Because if that name could call wolves into madness… what could it do to something half-formed and still learning what it meant to be alive?
The conversation moved on around me, but I drifted from it. The moment frayed at the edges, and by the time the group began preparing for the journey west, I couldn’t bring myself to follow. began preparing for the journey west,
Nate didn’t come that morning.
Not when we gathered supplies.
