Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
It was a claim.
The stone wrote her name.
Not in the language of men. Not in alphabet or title.
In flame.
In essence.
In truth.
She wasn’t here. She wasn’t near. But it didn’t matter.
Because the Gate had already chosen her.
I felt my stomach twist, bile threatening to rise. The bond I shared with her-our twin-sense-rattled like a warning bell inside my bones. Every part of me screamed too soon, too fast, too much.
“She doesn’t know,” I said, the words barely leaving my throat.
Max shook his head, jaw locked. “Not fully. But I think she feels it.”
The third sigil glowed brighter, the courtyard vibrating with something old, something alive. I could hear it now-a low hum, like a forgotten lullaby being sung beneath the earth. And then, high above us, the sky cracked open with sound-not thunder, but something deeper.
Like the sky itself splintered,
The sigil pulsed.
Once.
Twice.
Then settled.
And there, clear as breath, unmistakable-
The last sigil.
No longer blank. No longer waiting.
Hers.
Jiselle.
The third piece. The final link. The gate’s answer.
Chosen.
My knees almost buckled. I clamped my jaw shut and turned away, unable to look at the light for a second longer.
Because this wasn’t just about Kael anymore. Wasn’t about revenge, or prophecy, or balance.
It was about her.
And what this Gate wanted to make of her.
I clenched my fists, knuckles burning. “We have to go back.”
Max didn’t answer right away. Just stood still, face shadowed by something I couldn’t name.
Then-quietly, bitterly-he said, “We should’ve burned this place when we had the chance.”
We turned together.
But even as we moved, I felt it.
The hum hadn’t stopped.
Because the sigil wasn’t just a marking.
It was a summoning.
And in the pit of my gut, something twisted again-tight, sharp, undeniable.
Jiselle wasn’t being offered a choice.
She was being called home.
And this time, the Gate wasn’t going to wait for her to knock.
Ethan
I should’ve known she would come here.
The Veilfire canyon stretched before us like a wound the land had never healed from. The rocks were scorched, the earth brittle, the air thinner than it had any right to be. And yet, she stood in the center of it all-still, blazing, terrifying in her calm.
Jiselle.
Her back was to me. Her silhouette drawn in harsh light against the swirling storm above. Clouds churned like the sky itself was tearing open, and her hair lifted in the wind like threads of shadow-glow. But it wasn’t the sky that pulled my attention.
It was her.
The rune on her back.
It was no longer pulsing.
It was burning.
Etched in full violet flame now, it stretched from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine, not carved-awakened. A living thing. And it moved. With each breath she took, the lines shimmered and shifted like a prophecy re-writing itself under her skin.
I wanted to call her name.
I wanted to run into the canyon, drag her out of it, hold her until she remembered who she was and why we’d come this far.
But I didn’t move.
Because deep down, I knew-this wasn’t something anyone could save her from.
She had to walk through it. Alone.
Nate stepped up beside me, face pale, jaw clenched. His fingers twitched at his sides like he didn’t trust himself not to run to her either.
“She’s too close to the Gate,” he said.
“She is the Gate,” I answered, before I could stop myself.
Neither of us looked away.
The storm cracked overhead. Not thunder. Something else. A ripple in the fabric of the realm. And then…
Kael appeared.
Not in flesh.
In flame.
He stepped through the fire as if molded from it/his eyes hollow with ember light, his skin marbled with scars and memories and magic too old to name. ‘He wasn’t entirely real-but he wasn’t a ghost either. A tethered soul, half-burned, half-beckoning.
And he smiled.
Not wicked.
Not cruel.
But like someone welcoming home what had always belonged to them.
Jiselle didn’t flinch.
I saw her spine stiffen. Her fingers curl slightly at her sides. But she didn’t turn. Didn’t run.
Didn’t scream.
The rune on her back pulsed again-then glowed brighter, casting strange symbols into the stormclouds above her.
Kael stopped several feet in front of her, just outside the veilfire ring, and lifted one hand.
“I never meant for it to be like this,” he said.
His voice echoed across the canyon like wind over stone.
Jiselle didn’t speak.`
“You think this is a war,” Kael continued. “You think this is about death. About conquest. But it’s not. It’s about becoming. It always was.”
Her head turned slightly, just enough for me to see her profile. Her jaw tightened.
“I became what they forced me to,” she said. “You chose this.”
“No,” Kael whispered. “I accepted it. And now so must you.”
The flames around him rose. Violet, red, white-twisting into a spiral of raw power, dancing in patterns I’d only seen on the old scrolls Bastain refused to let anyone else read.
He lifted his other hand, and from the center of the fire, something began to take shape.
Not a weapon.
Not a spell.
A doorway.
No-a tear.
The fire didn’t part so much as it peeled, like skin from an old wound, revealing something behind it that wasn’t meant to be seen. Not by mortals. Not by any living thing.
Not physical.
Not solid.
A breach in the world’s fabric, the veil stretched thin like wet silk and older than language. It shimmered like water in moonlight, folding inward, outward, and through itself. I could feel it-like breath on the back of my neck, like memory clawing up my spine.
And it reached.
For her.
“Join me,” Kael said, stepping into the space where flame bowed around him like reverence. “Fuse with me. Fuse with it. And we can remake the world- not through chains.” His voice was reverent now, eyes burning like open galaxies. “Through choice.”
A pause.
A breath.
Then-
“You were born from this, Jiselle,” he whispered. “You carry the key. And I carry the lock. We began this together.”
He stepped forward. Not fast. Not forceful.
Just close enough to matter.
“End it with me.”
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
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