Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
Because the Gate wasn’t finished with her.
The ground beneath us trembled, not like stone giving way-but like something breathing through it.
The canyon walls roared with wind, flame licking every surface, light pouring from cracks that hadn’t been there moments ago.
A rhythm pounded beneath my boots.
Jiselle screamed.
But not in pain.
This wasn’t a cry of surrender.
It was a battle cry.
“No!” she shouted, and I felt her soul rise.
“I am not yours!”
The fire recoiled. For the first time, it hesitated.
Wavered.
Twisted.
“You don’t get to choose me,” she snarled, her voice thunder in the bones of the world. “I choose!”
The rune on her back-still burning against my hands-began to change, I watched as its lines split, curved, rewrote themselves across her skin like prophecy bleeding into truth.
Like a story changing in real time.
Still, the Gate pulsed.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Three heartbeats now.
One hers.
One Kael’s.
One… something else.
The stars dimmed overhead. The air thickened with ash and power.
The leyline sang beneath us, a wild, ancient song that had no words-just need. Just demand.
I felt the change before I saw it. Like the world had stopped rotating and everything in it was holding its breath.
She turned to me again.
And in her eyes, I saw it.
Terror.
Faith.
Resolve.
“I don’t think I can stop it,” she whispered.
Her voice was a fracture lined with fire.
And even though every instinct in me screamed to protect her, to pull her away from this place and bury her in a world untouched by gods and gates-l didn’t. touched her cheek, fingers soft even as the heat blistered the air around us.
“I don’t want you to,” I said.
She blinked. Disbelieving. “What?”
I leaned in until our lips hovered again.
“Then I’ll burn with you.”
She gasped-and this time it wasn’t from fear It was something softer. Something that had no place here, in this storm of endings and beginnings.
Love.
Real, Fierce. Consuming.
(0965 EN 13 JOM DI O
And the second the vow left my mouth-
The canyon lit up like the sun had detonated inside it.
Light poured in every direction. Not gold. Not white. Not red.
Violet.
Holy.
Impossible.
The air folded around us like a fist of wind. The fire screamed.
World tilted-and then reassembled.
Time lost meaning.
Gravity lost hold.
And we were in it.
Wrapped in one another.
Wrapped in fate.
And as the light peeled away the old world, trying to shape something new in its place, I knew one thing:
We were burning.
But we were not breaking.
Because this wasn’t destruction.
It was transformation.
And we had chosen it.
Together.
‘Jiselle*
I woke to the scent of scorched earth and the steady rhythm of Nathaniel’s heartbeat against my spine. The explosion that had torn through the canyon still echoed in my bones, but the fire no longer raged. It pulsed now-slow, deep, ancient.
Inside me, the flame had changed.
It wasn’t the violent hunger that had once lashed out through my veins. It didn’t scream or claw or threaten to consume. It breathed. Heavy. Patient. Waiting.
But I didn’t feel alone in it.
The bond hummed softly against my skin, like it had coiled itself along every edge of me, quiet but present. Nate’s arm curled tighter around my waist, anchoring me. His breath warmed the curve of my shoulder.
“You’re awake,” he murmured without opening his eyes.
“I am.”
“How do you feel?”
I rolled slowly to face him. “Like something chose me… and I haven’t figured out whether it’s a blessing or a curse.”
He opened his eyes, and there was no fear in them. Just devotion. A steady, unwavering thing that made my throat ache.
“We’ll figure it out together.”
I nodded. But part of me wasn’t ready to speak yet. Not about the Gate. Not about what I’d seen-what I’d felt in those final moments before the light took us.
So I slid out from under the covers, wrapping a blanket around myself, and slipped outside.
The camp was quieter than usual. No sparring. No murmured strategy. Just firelight and wind, rustling through tents like a whisper of warning.
I found Max near the edge of the perimeter, sharpening a blade against a flat piece of obsidian. He didn’t look up when I approached. Didn’t stop.
But he spoke.
“I thought you’d be with him.”
“I was,” I said. “Now I’m here.”
He nodded. Another slow scrape against the blade.
“I didn’t expect you to come.”
“I didn’t expect you to stay.”
That made him glance up. His eyes were tired. Hollow in a way that no amount of sleep would ever fix.
“Where else would I go?”
I sat across from him, cross-legged. We didn’t say anything for a moment. Just breathed the same smoke-laced air.
“I’m not angry anymore,” I said softly.
His hand stilled.
“I thought I would be, for the rest of my life. But after everything with the Gates.. with Kael… the flame inside me…” I trailed off. “There’s no room left for holding onto things that heavy.”
Max exhaled, long and low. “I never wanted forgiveness.”
“Then why are you still here?”
He looked up, meeting my gaze with something raw and painfully human.
“Because I still love you.”
I didn’t flinch. Didn’t cry. I just let him say it.
“I don’t expect anything,” he added quickly. “Not your love. Not your time. Hell, not even your trust. But when that Gate opens, and it will open… I want to be in front of you. I want to be the one it touches first.”
“That’s not what love is, Max.”
“I know. But it’s what mine is.”
He lowered the blade into his lap.
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