Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
It wasn’t a threat.
It was a plea.
*Nathaniel
She didn’t stir when I kissed her forehead.
?? 00%
Jiselle lay curled on her side in the bedroll, her breathing slow, face still flushed from the fire-memory. Bastain had insisted she rest after what happened in the chamber. Her body hadn’t stopped trembling for over an hour, and even now, her fingers twitched against the blanket like she was still lost in whatever the Gate had shown her. I knelt there longer than I should have, watching her chest rise and fall, brushing a strand of sweat-damp hair from her cheek. The mark on her wrist still pulsed faintly. Like the Gate was dreaming through her.
I couldn’t sleep. Not with that vision still clinging to her skin. Not with that voice still echoing in my head.
Fuse before he burns.
I wasn’t going to let that happen. Not to her. Not to us.
So I did the only thing I could.
I left her in Eva’s care, whispering strict instructions to wake me the second she stirred. I didn’t tell Eva where I was going. I didn’t want anyone trying to talk me out of it. This was something I had to do-alone.
The Trial Circle was older than the Academy, older than the Gatekeeper texts. Bastain had told me once it was used to test Sovereigns-not just their strength, but their devotion, their purpose. It had been hidden until recently, when the chamber revealed itself beneath the spiral, and even now it was cloaked in an illusion only the Veilborn could break. My blood allowed me to enter. Not because I was special. Because I was desperate. and the rock gave way with a sigh, The entrance was a narrow crack behind the obsidian dais. I pressed my palm against the runes carved into the revealing a stairwell lit by blue flame. It wasn’t like the heat of normal fire. It burned colder, older-like something waiting to be remembered. My heart pounded as I stepped through.
No turning back.
The moment I crossed the threshold, the world tilted.
The stairwell vanished.
I stood in an open plain of scorched stone, a circle carved into the ground with sigils I’d only seen in Serina’s journal. The Trial Circle. Flames danced around the edge in spirals, their tips reaching toward the skyless void above us. There was no sound. No wind. Just silence-and then a whisper.
Choose.
I braced myself, expecting pain, maybe fire. Instead, she appeared.
Jiselle. But not.
This version of her stood tall and cold, her hair silver-white, eyes burning with contempt. Her arms were crossed, her expression one I’d seen only once before-after the first time I’d tried to pull her back from the brink and she’d looked at me like I was a stranger. Like she couldn’t afford to need me.
“Why do you keep choosing me?” she asked. Her voice was sharp, clipped. “Haven’t I made you bleed enough?”
“I don’t care about the bleeding,” I said, stepping into the circle. The flames flared but didn’t burn. “I care about you.”
She laughed without smiling. “You care about an ideal. A girl you think you know. But I’m more than that now. Worse than that.”
“I know who you are,” I said. “And I know what you’re not. You’re not this.”
She vanished.
Another took her place.
This Jiselle was cloaked in flame, her eyes entirely gold, her skin marked with runes that pulsed with magic. Her voice shook the stones beneath me.
“I will open the Gate,” she declared. “I will burn the world clean. You can’t sto me.”
I swallowed hard, but kept my stance. “Then I’ll burn with you. But I’m not leaving.”
She raised her hand. Fire rushed toward me.
I didn’t dodge. I didn’t block. I stepped through it.
Pain sliced across every nerve, but I didn’t fall. I kept walking, one step at a time, until I reached her and touched her arm.
“You’re still in there,” I whispered. “Even if the world forgets you, I won’t.”
She faded like ash.
The circle trembled.
A third version rose from the flame.
This one was the worst.
??8
She was small. Younger. Curled on the ground, sobbing into her knees. The scent of blood filled the air-hers, mine, Max’s. All of it. She looked up, eyes hollow, her voice barely a whisper.
“I destroy everything I touch.”
I knelt in front of her slowly. Reached out, but didn’t touch her yet.
“You didn’t destroy me,” I said. “You saved me. Again and again. You’re the only thing in this world that’s ever made me feel alive.”
She lifted her eyes to mine.
“You’ll die if you stay.”
“I’ll die if I don’t.”
I held her then.
And the fire stopped.
Light cracked through the circle like lightning splitting stone. The sigils ignited-not in flame, but in light, pure and blinding. My chest seared, a symbol burning into my skin. The same one from the wall. The same one I saw in the vision where I burned.
But I didn’t burn.
I chose her.
Again.
And I passed.
When I opened my eyes, I was back in the real world, kneeling at the center of the dais My arms were shaking but ray heart felt c days. The mark still throbbed on my chest, but it didn’t feel like a warning anymore. It felt like a promise.
I rose, breath catching in my throat, and ran.
Jun – 1
Back through the passage, up the stairs, back to where she should be.
But the bedroll was empty.
Eva stood nearby, eyes wild with panic. “Nate-I-I closed my eyes for one minute. I swear-
“Where is she?” I snapped, already scanning the room. No scent trail. No echo. Just absence.
And then a Gatekeeper scout emerged from the shadowed hall, his robes damp from rain, breath ragged like he’d run the entire way.
He didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“She went to Kael,” he said. “Alone.”
??/p>
*Jiselle’
The Gate was not a place. It was a heartbeat.
Each step I took through the spiraling ruin pulled me deeper into its rhythm, a pulsing thrum that wasn’t just sound-it was memory, song, and blood all at once. The walls around me were alive, carved from smoke and bone, endlessly shifting like breath inhaling and exhaling. I didn’t know how I got here. One moment I was staring into the sigil on the wall, the next, I was inside something ancient and waiting. It hadn’t dragged me. I came willingly. That was the danger.
The heart of the Gate didn’t open with force. It opened with recognition.
The corridor widened, firelight curling through the air like silk, warm and deceptive. My footsteps echoed, soft against the blackened floor, as if the world was holding its breath. And there he was.
Kael.
He stood at the center of a vast chamber of flame, beneath an arch that rippled like water, surrounded by golden runes that floated midair. His eyes were the same. Always the same. Pale gold, rimmed in sorrow and knowing. He turned before I could speak, a faint smile brushing his lips like he’d known was coming all along.
“You came alone,” he said.
I kept walking until I stood just beyond the arch of flame. “You knew I would.”
Kael didn’t look like a monster. That was the problem. He looked tired. Human. Beautiful in the way fire was beautiful-if you forgot it could consume. His hair had grown longer, streaked with embers. His clothing was simple now, more ceremonial than regal, etched with sigils I half-recognized from Serina’s memory.
He reached out a hand-not to pull, not to command, but to invite.
“Let me show you.”
I didn’t take it. Not yet. But I followed.
The flame didn’t burn me as I stepped under the arch. The chamber changed instantly. No longer ruin. No longer fire. But sky.
Endless sky.
And beneath it-a world reborn. Mountains blanketed in gold. Forests untouched by war. Cities humming with light, not darkness. Wolves running freely in every form. No chains. No sickness. No death. Kael walked beside me as if we were gods strolling through a garden of what could be.
In the distance, a structure shimmered. A tower shaped from crystal and root, rising into the clouds.
“Our home,” he said quietly. “A realm where the Gate is no longer a weapon. Where no one fears their power. Where you rule, n but because you are flame incarnate.”
“And you?” I asked, my voice barely above a breath.
“I would reign beside you. Not above. Never above.”
He turned to me then. His hand still extended.
“You could heal it all, Jiselle. We could build this world from the ashes. No more Council. No more war. Just peace. Purpose, Power.”
The vision trembled slightly, but I didn’t step back. ause you’re cursed,
“You mean we fuse.”
He nodded, almost reverently. “Two flames. One Sovereign.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full-of memory, longing, fear. A part of me wanted it. Not the power. But the quiet. The end of running The version of me who didn’t have to carry a blade everywhere she walked.
Kael’s hand was still there. Unmoving.
And for a second, just a second, I started to raise mine.
Then I heard him.
**Jiselle.**
Nate’s voice didn’t echo in the world around me. It bloomed inside me. Through the bond. Not magic. Not command. Just love. Undeniable. Anchoring His voice was ragged with panic, shaking with the edge of something breaking.
**Come back. Please. Come back to me.**
Kael’s eyes changed. Just slightly. Enough for me to see it.
The desperation. The hunger. The need to be chosen.
And in that moment, I understood.
This wasn’t peace.
It was illusion. Desire cloaked in prophecy. And I wasn’t a vessel to be filled or fused or claimed.
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