Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
Her breath came in short, shallow gasps, her chest rising and falling like she’d just been dragged from drowning.
“Shhh,” I whispered, rocking her instinctively, the way you might rock a blade you couldn’t pull out. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, flame.””
Her eyes met mine, and something inside me cracked wide open.
She looked at me like she was falling.
Not into danger.
Into me.
And I felt it all-raw, unspeakable love. Terror that she wouldn’t come back the same. Faith that somehow, we’d survive this anyway.
“I’m not ready,” she whispered, so softly I almost didn’t hear it.
“I am,” I said, even though it was a lie. “And you don’t have to be. Just let me hold you.”
Her arms curled around my ribs like she was trying to disappear inside me, and t held her back just as fiercely, like if I kept her close enough, nothing could touch her. Not the Gate. Not the flame. Not fate.
Jun We
We stayed like that for a long time.
Long enough for the light beneath her skin to dim from fire to ember. Long enough for her breath to slow. Long enough for her fear to finally yield to exhaustion.
Eventually, her head rested against my bare chest again. Her lashes fluttered closed, her hands still curled into my side. Her breathing evened out. And the rune-the traitorous, beautiful, terrible rune-still pulsed against my skin.
I didn’t sleep.
Couldn’t.
Because I knew what this was.
This wasn’t peace.
It wasn’t healing.
It was the calm before a storm so old even the stars had forgotten its name.
Not an end.
A warning,
We had hours.
Maybe less.
And the Gate wasn’t waiting anymore.
It was watching.
*Jiselle’
The morning felt wrong.
Too quiet, too clear. The air was sharp with that unnatural stillness that comes just before something breaks-like the world itself was holding its breath.
I wrapped my arms around myself, pacing the worn edges of the veilfire gorge, the scar on my back pulsing steadily like a second heartbeat. The rune, hadn’t stopped glowing since the night before. It shimmered beneath my skin in faint flashes, whispering a language I didn’t know but somehow understood.
And I could feel it.
Kael.
Not in the bond-he had no part of me that way. But in the leyline. In the pulse of the world.
He was moving.
And somehow, even before Serina appeared again, I knew she would come.
She stepped into the clearing like a shadow rising from light, her steps soundless, her presence folding around the edges of mine. She didn’t greet me.
She didn’t smile.
She looked tired.
More tired than the last time.
More haunted.
“Serina,” I said, turning to her, heart thudding in my throat.
“You felt it,” she said quietly. “The shift.”
I nodded.
“It’s accelerating.”
“What is?” My voice was hoarse. “The Gate?”
Serina turned her gaze to the horizon, where the mountain spine split like a cracked tooth. “No,” she said. “The world. The balance. The cycle.”
I didn’t understand-but I didn’t stop her.
“Every era has its fulcrum,” she said. “Moments that tip the scale too far. Fire grows, or shadow spreads. Death thickens, or magic thins. When it tilts something awakens. Something that was never meant to be seen.”
I swallowed. “The Gate?”
She nodded once. “But it’s not just a door, Jiselle/That’s what we got wrong. It’s a cycle. A wound that never fully heals. It chooses a vessel. A body. A mind. And when it’s done with them, it moves on.”
I stared at her. “You were its vessel once.”
Her eyes dimmed. “Yes, And I failed it. I tried to close it before I was ready. I wasn’t strong enough. So it burned through me and sealed itself… until you.
I stepped back. “You think it’s choosing again?”
“No,” Serina said, and this time her voice held a weight I didn’t recognize.
“I think it already chose.”
I opened my mouth-but no words came. Because deep down, I already knew what she was saying. I had known since the first time the flame answered Bebefore I called.
I had been born into this.
Bred from fire and silence and prophecy half erased.
“How do I stop it?” I asked.
She looked at me, truly looked at me, and her voice cracked with something more human than magic. “Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s not the point.
My breath hitched. “Then what is?”
“To choose what kind of vessel you’ll be. Passive or purposeful. Destruction or bridge.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. My thoughts raced-Nate’s voice in the night, Ethan’s hands bloody from trying to hold the world together, Eva watching me with both hope and heartbreak, Max pretending not to took, but always looking. The weight of all of them burned against my ribs.
“What about Kael?” I whispered.
Serina’s face darkened. “He’s not trying to open the Gate. He’s trying to become it. Fuse with it. Take it into himself and rewrite the balance.”
“But why?”
“Because he thinks the world will destroy itself if someone doesn’t bind the flame to will. And maybe he’s right. But he’s not the one meant to hold it.”
“Then who is?” I asked.
“You already know.”
We stood in silence.
The air grew heavier.
And then she turned without a word, walking toward the cliff edge behind the gorge. I followed her down the winding trail, the wind sharpening with every step.
She led me to a flame ring I’d never seen before.
Old.
Blackened.
Lined with runes 1 didn’t recognize-except for one, at the center, half-erased and burned into the ground: mine.
It was shaped not like a name, but a warning.
“This is where it began,” Serina said softly. “The first time the Gate chose.”
I stepped closer, my boots brushing against soot and blood. The ground still stank of something ancient. Not rot. Not decay.
Sacrifice.
The circle had been drawn in blood.
Fresh blood.
My skin tingled. My flame flared once in recognition.
“He was here,” I whispered.
Serina didn’t answer.
I stepped fully into the ring.
And everything shifted.
The world collapsed inward.
Not like falling.
Like sinking.
.Sinking into memory not my own-into something carved in bone and fire and shadow.
I blinked.
And I was somewhere else.
Not truly, but in spirit.
A place burning.
A dome of ash and fire and magic held together by willpower alone. A circle surrounded me, glowing embers spiraling around a center flame-and in that center, twisting in a storm of scarlet and violet-
Kael.
Or what was left of him.
He floated in midair, limbs unbound, head tilted back, eyes white-hot with power.
Flame curled up his arms like tattoos, licking at the edges of his jaw, his throat, his chest. And around him-twelve runes burned into the floor. Only one glowed.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
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