Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
And I saw him.
Kael.
Not as the prisoner we’d left behind, but free-alone in the ruined corridor of the Academy, his coat torn, blood smeared across his hands and mouth. The walls around him glowed with residual energy, flickering with forgotten enchantments.
He drew a circle on the cracked floor. Not chalk. Fire.
One slow, deliberate arc at a time, whispering my name.
Jiselle.
Jiselle.
Jiselle.
Each syllable carved like a curse.
I reached for him in the vision-instinctively-but he didn’t see me. Couldn’t. He wasn’t here.
He was somewhere else. Somewhere close. Somewhere real.
Then he looked up.
And carved the rune.
Into his chest.
OU
Just below his collarbone, the tip of the blade digging in like he’d done it before.
The shape was sharp, familiar.
A mirror of the mark that glowed across my spine.
My knees buckled.
The vision shattered.
I fell against Bastain, who steadied me with both arms and cursed beneath his breath.
Eva appeared from behind a tree, running toward us, already reaching for the charm she kept around her neck. Nate was just a breath behind her, is hand instinctively going to the hilt of the dagger strapped to his thigh.
“I’m okay,” I gasped, holding up a palm.
“You don’t look okay,” Eva muttered.
“I saw him,” I said. “Kael. He’s still inside the Academy. He’s carving the same rune-my rune-into himself.”
Nate’s jaw tightened. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but my heart was already answering for me.
Because he wants to open the Gate.
Without me.
Bastain’s voice was quiet, grim. “He’s building a triad.”
“What does that mean?” Eva asked.
“If he finishes the third point-” Bastain started.
“He opens the Gate,” Serina’s voice came from behind us, clear and calm. “Without her.”
We all turned.
She stood with her hands folded, her dark cloak stirring around her ankles. She wasn’t breathless. She wasn’t angry. Just watchful, the way thunderclouds watch the land before they strike.
“What do you mean?” I asked her, stepping forward, the stone still warm in my hand.
“There are three points,” Serina said. “Three sigils, One on the Gate. One on the Ethereal. And one on the Threshold.”
“What’s the Threshold?” Nate asked.
“Not what,” she corrected. “Who.”
Her eyes flicked to me,
“To open the Veil fully, all three must be aligned. The Gate is old and fixed. The Ethereal carries the living sigil. But the Threshold…”
She looked toward the valley.
“…can shift.”
“Kael thinks he’s the Threshold,” I said.
“He’s trying to become it,” she confirmed. “If he succeeds-“
“You mean if he completes the triad,” I whispered, “he doesn’t need me.”
“No,” Serina said. “But he’ll still use you. Because he can’t survive the cost alone.”
I stepped back, breath quickening. “So he opens it… and J become the payment.”
Serina didn’t answer.
She didn’t need to.
The tension was a vice now. The silence between us thick, swollen with what we didn’t know how to say.
Nate moved toward me, his hand finding mine. He didn’t squeeze, didn’t press.
Just anchored.
I leaned into him, and it helped.
For a breath.
“Can we stop him?” Eva asked, voice sharp now.
“I don’t know,” Bastain said. “But we need to try.”
***
Later, I found myself near the veilfire gorge again.
The sky above it had darkened, even though the sun had not yet set. A gray hush hung in the air, thick with the scent of charred earth and old power. The ground remembered fire. I could feel it in every step I took toward the rim-the soil still warm in places, the stones etched with lingering sigils that hadn’t fully faded.
I stood at the edge, where the wind whipped my hair across my face and the leyline pulsed below like a second heartbeat trying to sync with mine.
Nate was already there.
Silent.
Still.
Like a monument carved from shadow and breath, watching the place where I had lit the veilfire just days before. Where I’d become something new and still didn’t know what it meant.
“I don’t know who I’m becoming,” I said quietly, unsure if I meant it as a confession or a curse.
He didn’t turn right away. Just stared ahead, the muscles in his jaw tight. Then-softly, as if he’d been waiting for me to say it-he replied, “You don’t have to know. Just be.”
I looked at him.
At the way his profile caught the fading ?ght. At the stillness he wore like armor. At the scars on his neck that hadn’t faded, and the way his hand twitched slightly when I took a step closer.
But most of all, I looked into his eyes when he finally met my gaze.
He didn’t flinch.
Didn’t demand.
He just… stood there. Open. Steady. Offering something wordless and unwavering
A promise.
“I’m scared,” I whispered, because it was the only truth I could trust anymore.
“I’m not,” he said.
His voice cracked something open inside me.
“Not of you,” he added. “Never of you.”
A shaky breath escaped me, one I hadn’t realized I’d been holding for hours. Days. Maybe longer,
“I can feel it again,” I said. “The bond. It’s stronger. Hungrier.”
His eyes flickered.
“I know.”
“You do?” I asked, more startled than I meant to sound.
He nodded. “It’s… leaking.”
That word stopped me.
“Leaking?”
“Into Ethan,” he said slowly. “Into the leyline. Into the wind, the fire, the earth-everything you touch. It’s like your scar is bleeding magic, rewriting itself through all of us. Like the tether can’t hold it anymore.”
My stomach turned. “And you’re okay with that?”
He finally turned fully toward me.
His expression didn’t shift. But the weight in his voice made everything inside me still.
“I’m okay with anything that keeps you here.”
Those words.
That voice.
That truth-
They unraveled me.
Something cracked-not with pain, but with love so fierce it made my throat ache. So wide it left no room for air. It was raw, aching, and honest in a way nothing else had been since the day I became something more than human.
I stepped into him.
His arms opened before I asked.
And when they wrapped around me, everything else disappeared.
BUSI
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