Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
It was a beginning neither of us had the words for.
The kiss was long, slow, aching-not the kind that begged for fire. The kind that held a storm at bay.
I ran my thumb along her cheekbone when we pulled apart.
She closed her eyes. “You make it hard to believe in endings.”
“Maybe we don’t need to believe in endings,” I murmured. “Just in us.”
We stayed like that for a while, letting the leyline hum beneath our feet, letting the wind carry whatever it needed to carry. There was peace in fecu humming peace. Not the kind that lasted, but the kind you clung to before the next storm rolled in. The stars overhead blinked, silent witnesses to everything we were too afraid to say aloud. I could feel her shoulder pressed into mine. I could feel the bond, the warmth, the memory of her breath against my skin. And still, in the back of my mind, something scratched.
The stillness.
It had a sharp edge..
Then-
A rush of wings.
A snap of air.
The sharp rustle of feathers slicing through the night.”
We both turned at the same time.
A shape descended fast, cutting across the sky like a blade. The hawk landed hard at our feet, talons digging into the cracked stone. It didn’t wait for acknowledgment. Its wings flared once-agitated, unsettled-then folded tight against its flanks. The bird’s chest heaved. Its eyes-bright, almost too bright-locked on mine.
There was a scroll strapped to its leg.
Not the kind of scroll sent for diplomatic warning.
The kind sent for war.
I crouched slowly, hand steady as I reached for the parchment. The wax seal cracked as I peeled it away, revealing what I feared before I even unrolled the message.
Two sigils stared back at me.
One carved into memory-the mark of the Gatekeepers, etched in harsh, angular lines like a crown made of bone and ash.
The other-sleeker, cleaner, threaded in elegant arcs.
The Academy.
But they weren’t side by side.
They weren’t separate.
They were burned into the parchment as one.
Fused.
Branded together in a single flame-forged crest.
An abomination.
Jiselle knelt beside me, her breath catching in her throat the moment her eyes landed on the seal. “No,” she whispered.
Her hand trembled near mine.
“They’ve joined forces,” I said, though the words tasted wrong on my tongue. It wasn’t partnership. It was conquest.
Or worse.
Someone had fused them.
Or something.
The scroll was brief.
Just five words.
Come home, Sovereign. Or watch it burn.
That was it.
No signature.
No threats.
No plea.
Just certainty.
A command.
A warning.
And a promise of ash.
My stomach twisted. I felt Jiselle’s pulse jump beneath her skin, as if the bond itself flinched. She stared at the scroll like it might catch fire in her hands.
“The Academy,” she said, her voice hollow. “They know. About the Gate. About me.”
I swallowed hard. “It’s not a message,” I said. “It’s a summons.”
“They know where we are.”
“They’re waiting for your answer.”
Silence stretched between us, taut and fragile. The hawk remained, unmoving, as if expecting a reply we didn’t know how to give.
Jiselle’s eyes never left the scroll. “This changes everything.”
“No,” I said quietly. “This starts everything.”
She looked at me then. And I saw it-flame in her pupils, fear in her breath, but something else, too.
Resolve.
The kind forged not by fate.
But by fire.
And all around us, the night held still-like the valley itself was listening.
Because now, the path was no longer winding.
It was opening.
Bleeding.
And somewhere in the distance, the first embers of war had already been lit.
Jiselle
The scroll was still clutched in Nate’s hand when we reached the others.
I didn’t need to say anything-Bastain saw our faces and knew.
He stood slowly, eyes sharpening behind a half-unrolled map of the eastern ridgelines. “What happened?”
Nate handed him the scroll. No words. Just movement. Bastain unsealed it with a careful hand and unfolded the parchment.
The moment he saw the sigils, he stopped breathing.
His fingers traced the edges-slow, reverent. One emblem glowed faintly in the firelight: the Gatekeepers’ empty circle, once a symbol of balance. The other was sharper, meaner, carved like a wound-the Academy’s High Council seal, iron-branded over the first.
But what mattered wasn’t the symbols.
It was the fact that they weren’t side by side.
They were fused.
Burned together like some unholy crest.
Max shifted beside me, the torchlight catching on the fading
Scar above his collarbone. “That’s not a warning,” he said, voice grim. “It’s a claim.”
Bastain nodded slowly. “This isn’t a call to negotiate. The Academy… it’s already fallen.”
A strange hollowness opened in my chest.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Like some part of me had always known it would end this way.
Eva stepped forward, brushing her fingertips across the parchment. Her breath caught. “They’ve rethreaded the leyline.”
Everyone turned to her.
“What does that mean?” Ethan asked.
Eva’s eyes stayed locked on the scroll, but her voice was steady. “The leyline hasn’t broken. It’s been bent-rerouted to pulse through the Academy’s foundations. They’ve made it the center.”
Max cursed softly. “And we’re still standing out here like it’s not already begun.”
Nate’s jaw flexed, but his voice was calm. “So we go”
“No,” I said. Not loudly. Just enough to make the world pause.
They turned to me.
I met every eye. One by one.
“We don’t march down the main pass. We’ll be spotted, flanked, slaughtered before we breach the outer wards, If they’ve taken the leyline, they’ve taken the lookout points.”
Bastain raised an eyebrow. “You have another way?”
“Yes.” 1 exhaled. “The Ashroot tunnels.”
Silence.
Eva blinked. “You mean the evacuation routes beneath the cliffs?”
“They weren’t just evacuation tunnels,” I said. “They were Sovereign-built. Designed as hidden arteries for when power had to move undetected. The Academy never officially closed them.”
“You think they’re still passable?” Nate asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s our only chance.”
Bastain rolled the map tighter. “Then we go. At dawn.”
“No.” My voice didn’t shake. “We go now.”
Another beat of silence. Then a nod. No arguments.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?