Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
Sacred.
Until-
The ground cracked beneath us.
Just a hairline fracture at first. Then another.
We both froze.
The earth pulsed.
The leyline beneath the cliff shimmered and twisted.
And then-a heartbeat.
Not mine.
Not Nate’s.
Something beneath us.
Something impossible.
Nate pulled me behind him instinctively, hand at the ready, his eyes scanning the gorge.
But there was no enemy.
Just the hum of magic.
The pulse again.
A slow, deliberate thump through the stones at our feet.
My skin lit up with it-every nerve alight.
“Nate,” I whispered, “do you feel that?”
He nodded, jaw tight. “Yeah.”
The heartbeat came again.
Then the flame inside me responded-pulling forward like a tide drawn to moonlight.
I staggered.
Nate caught me.
“Easy,” he said. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, breathless. “But it’s alive.”
He looked down, the gorge glowing softly beneath our feet.
“The gate?” he asked.
“No.”
I met his eyes.
Wider now.
-Shaken.
“It’s not the gate.”
I pressed a hand to the stone.
And the next time it pulsed-
I felt it.
Her.
The thing Serina warned me about.
The thing Kael was trying to awaken.
Not the gate.
Not death.
Something older.
And it had just started to breathe.
Nathaniel
The leyline had gone quiet.
Too quiet.
I stood at the cliff’s edge above camp, the wind tugging at the hem of my coat as I stared into the distance. The horizon was stitched in stormclouds, black and bruised, as if the sky itself had been punched and left to swell. But it wasn’t just the air that felt wrong. It was everything. The ground beneath my boots didn’t quake with fear or fault-it pulsed. It breathed.
Slow.
Measured.
Expectant.
Something old was waking.
And it knew her name.
Behind me, I heard the flap of canvas part and Bastain’s footsteps crunch the earth. When I turned, he looked pale-more scholar than soldier, more bone than man-with an ancient scroll clutched in his hands like it might dissolve if gripped too tightly.
“It’s not a door,” he muttered, not to me, but to the wind. “The Gate… it’s a womb. A tomb. A threshold for rebirth and ruin.”
I stepped back from the ledge and faced him fully, the storm at my back now, tension gathering in the soles of my feet like I was meant to run-but didn’t know where.
“What are you talking about?”
Bastain lifted his head slowly, the weight of years shadowing his eyes. “There was a prophecy,” he said, voice barely more than a rasp. “Not one you’d find in the clean pages of the Academy’s records. It was fragmented. Burned from history long ago. But I found a margin note on one of the scrolls we salvaged. Emari wrote a name beside it.”
A chill licked up my spine. “Whose name?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Jiselle’s.”
The breath left my lungs like I’d been hit.
Bastain gently unrolled the brittle parchment, the edges fraying like nerves. “It says: When the veil breaks, the threshold must choose-to close it… or become it.”
My throat went dry.
“Become it?” I repeated. “What the hell does that mean?”
He met my gaze. “It means this wasn’t about sealing something behind the Gate. It was about deciding whether to house it.”
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
Because even as the words left his mouth, the scar on my chest-the one I thought had healed into a tether with Jiselle-flared again. Not painfully. Not like a wound. But like an echo. A second heartbeat lodged beneath my ribs.
It hadn’t stopped since her back first glowed.
Hadn’t slowed since her flame changed.
And now it vibrated with something I didn’t understand-something that didn’t feel like her, but didn’t not feel like her either,
A new breath stirred the air.
Then the storm cracked.
Not thunder.
Not lightning.
Something else.
Something sharper. Deeper.
The sky split in a flash of violet so sudden, it painted the clouds in eerie silhouette. For one suspended breath, the world stood still. And then-
Hoofbeats.
Max came tearing into the clearing like the ground itself was chasing him. His armor was scorched, shoulder bleeding, strands of hair stuck to his face with soot and sweat.
“She’s gone!” he shouted before the horse even stopped moving. “Kael’s gone too! He’s already at the ruins.”
Bastain stepped forward. “What ruins?”
Max dismounted hard, boots hitting the ground like stone on steel. “The original flame ring,” he said, panting. “The first Gate.”
My blood turned to ice.
No one spoke. For a heartbeat-just one-the world inhaled.
Then I said, “He’s forcing it.”
Max nodded grimly. “And you have hours. Maybe less.”
Bastain looked like he was going to be sick. “If he completes the triad…”
“The Gate won’t need Jiselle anymore,” Max finished. “It’ll just take her.”
My fists clenched, and I fought the urge to sprint toward the valley. Because running blind wouldn’t save her. Not this time. And gods help me, I wasn’t ready to lose her again-not to prophecy, not to Kael, not to whatever thing was humming beneath our feet like it had already decided her fate.
“I need to see it,” I said.
Max and Bastain turned toward me.
I didn’t wait.
I walked to the center of the clearing, past the scorched stones and old sigils where Jiselle had once lit the veil-fire. The leyline beneath us had always been subtle-a current, a whisper. But now it pressed against the soles of my feet like a live wire. And deeper still, I felt it-her. Not just her power, not just the tether. Her essence.
Every step buzzed with pressure. Not resistance. Invitation.
The ground pulsed once.
Then again.
And then-cracked.
A thin fracture opened beneath me, no wider than a dagger’s blade, but deep. So deep it felt bottomless.
I knelt.
Violet light pulsed from below.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
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