Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
But his voice came softer now.
“You are not the weapon they forged. You are the memory they buried. And when the gate calls… it will not ask. It will choose.”
I looked up.
Breath ragged. Power lashing beneath my skin.
“And what will it choose?”
He stepped back, the fire parting for him.
“I don’t know.”
Then he vanished.
Like smoke..
Like dream.
The veil-fire dimmed.
And behind me-
The scar on my back pulsed again.
Harder.
Brighter.
Then split-like something beneath it had begun to wake.
And my knees buckled.
Because whatever was coming… wasn’t just reaching for me.
It was in me.
And it had just turned over.
Like something stretching after a long, long sleep.
Jiselle
The woods thinned long before the silence did.
Even the air felt strange-hollow, expectant. Each step closer to the Gatekeeper camp left a deeper imprint on the soil, as if the land itself wanted to remember I had come. My fingers twitched, flame held tightly beneath my skin, coiled like a warning I hadn’t yet spoken aloud. Not for them for meas
Eva had offered to come. So had Ethan, and Max, and of course, Nate. But I’d said no.
This wasn’t a battle.
Not yet.
This was an introduction.
The veil-fire had burned for hours before they sent word. And when the messenger returned, he came with a single line:
“He waits where the ash doesn’t fall.”
Whatever that meant, Bastain translated quickly. “It’s old code. It means a place untouched by death. Sacred ground.”
Sacred. Right.
That word didn’t sit well in my mouth anymore.
The camp was set in a crescent basin of stone, ringed by jagged cliffs and cut clean down the middle by a stream that pulsed faintly with leyline magic. Not the kind I controlled. Not even the kind I’d learned to listen for. This was deeper. Thicker. It pressed on my ribs as I descended, like I was being tested with every breath I took.
And then I saw them.
Gatekeepers.
Dozens.
All draped in veiled robes, identical in color and cut. Pale gray like faded ash, the hem and sleeves etched with thin, curling runes. No two faces showed, only silhouettes and movement. They lined the path like statues, standing at silent attention. Their masks were bone-white. Blank. Almost too smooth. No mouths. No eyes. Just void.
Every eye turned to me.
Or maybe they always had been.
I kept walking.
Each step sounded louder than it should have. No one breathed. No one moved.
At the end of the path, a fire burned-not flame, not smoke. Veil-fire. Violet light curled in soft, spiraling tendrils around a stone dais. And there-atop it- stood a single figure.
He did not speak.
He simply watched.
Then-he knelt.
– Hot out of reverence,
Not out of weakness.
Out of certainty.
You are the threshold,” he said, his voice layered-echoes folded into the syllables like shadows folding into dusk. “What stands behind you must fue claimed… or consumed.”
The words landed like weight.
Something inside my bones stirred. My scar pulsed once. The key-still etched into the flesh of my back-felt hot, alive.
“I didn’t come to be claimed,” I answered.
He rose. Slowly. The veil over his face shifted like smoke, but did not part. His height was only slightly more than mine, but the presence… that towered.
“You misunderstand,” he said softly. “Claiming is not possession. It is responsibility. We come when the Veil no longer holds. We come when something tries to step through that shouldn’t. Or something that already has.”
My mouth dried. “You think that’s me?”
“I know that’s you.”
Silence folded around us again.
Then he stepped aside.
“Speak to her.”
The others shifted for the first time since I’d arrived. A single figure moved from the line. Smaller. Lighter. Veiled like the rest.
She walked with precision.
Not grace.
Memory.
My breath snagged.
Something in my gut twisted.
The fire behind the mask was too familiar.
And then-she lifted her hood.
I didn’t breathe.
Couldn’t.
It was her.
Serina.
But not.
Not quite.
The eyes were too steady. The jawline too sharp. The skin unlined by fear or fire. But it was her face. The same one I’d seen in visions. In memories. In the rine-marked room beneath the sanctuary,
The same face that had looked back at me through flame as she died sealing the Gate.
My voice cracked, “Serina?”
She didn’t answer at first,
Just studied me.
Then she tilted her head and smiled faintly. “That’s not my name anymore.”
My knees nearly gave.
Behind her, the Gatekeeper watched without comment.
“You died,” I whispered.
“I did,” she said. “But dying and leaving are not always the same.”
I took a step forward. My body buzzed with heat. My skin prickled with disbelief.
“You’re a memory.”
She shook her head. “I’m a consequence.”
A chill bled into my bones.
“I saw you,” I said. “I saw your death. I saw the cliff. The flames. I felt it.”
“I know.”
“Then how are you here?”
She didn’t answer directly. Instead, she reached into her sleeve and drew out a rune-carved disc, holding it flat in her palm. As soon as the light from the veil-fire touched it, the disc pulsed.
Not red.
Not gold.
Violet.
“You’re like me,” I breathed.
“No,” she said. “You’re like me. But more. Stronger. Wiser. Chosen not by prophecy-but by pattern.”
The Gatekeeper stepped forward again. “When the Veil breaks, it sends warnings. Patterns. Fractures of the last guardian. Serina’s death wasn’t an end. It was a transfer.”
“A transfer to what?”
“To you.” of this.”
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?