Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
Not when Eva and Ethan left to track the leyline fractures near the site of the attack.
Not even when Bastain came by to check on me, quietly asking if I’d had any more visions. He didn’t push when I said no. He just gave me a look-one of those unreadable ones like he already knew I was lying-and left a few herbs and a scroll on the table.
I stayed behind. Alone.
The common room was quiet, lit only by the flicker of a single violet candle that refused to burn evenly. Its flame sputtered now and then, throwing light in warped, jittering shapes across the stone walls. I stared at it until my eyes ached.
Still, no sign of Nate.
He was pulling away again.
Not obviously. Not cruelly. But I didn’t need him to say it. I felt it through the bond-the distance, the wall he’d built not out of hate, but out of fear. Not broken. Just buried.
He thought he was protecting me. Or maybe he didn’t know what else to do. The truth was, neither did I.
But I didn’t want a shield. I didn’t want silence masquerading as safety.
I needed his voice in the dark. His fire in my cold. His hands to remind me I wasn’t going through this alone.
Instead, I had shadows.
Instead, I had that name burning in the back of my mind and a bond that felt like it was dimming by the hour.
So I left the common room and walked the narrow hall to the southern chamber Bastain had carved into the base of the cliff. It was the place meant for stillness. Meant for listening. He’d made it himself after the Academy fell-a meditation circle directly above the leyline, where the energy of the land ran strongest. Where the old magics still hummed.
The floor was smooth stone, carved in gentle spirals, the center marked by a sigil too old to name. I stepped barefoot onto it and lowered myself to the floor, crossing my legs, placing my palms against the center of the spiral.
The warmth met me instantly. Gentle. Steady. Like a heartbeat beneath my hands.
I closed my eyes. in.
Out.
Just breathe, I told myself.
Don’t think of the third rune.
Don’t think of the tree.
Don’t think of screaming wolves.
Don’t think of a child who might not belong to just you.
Think of the pulse.
The one that meant you were still here. imagined the baby inside me-not fire, not veil, not Sovereign or Gatekeeper or Hollow-born. Just a soul. Small.
Unformed. Soft.
But even as I tried to hold that image, I could feel it shifting beneath the surface of my skin. Something was changing. Not just around me-but inside me.
The bond was no longer just a thread between me and Nate.
It wasn’t even a tether to the child anymore.
It was a network now. A circuit. A hum through my bones that stretched out toward the leyline, toward the runes, toward the hollow places in the world that had been sleeping until now.
It scared me.
Because it meant this wasn’t just magic anymore.
This was invitation.
And I didn’t remember sending it.
I sat like that for what could’ve been an hour. Maybe two. My mind floating somewhere between memory and fear. Between hope and dread.
Until-
A voice.
Not outside.
Not in the corridor.
Not in any language I knew.
But in me.
Not a whisper.
Not a scream.
Just… truth,
“Your flame is not your own.”
My eyes snapped open.
And everything was wrong.
The soft leyline blue beneath my palms had shifted. Not like it had dimmed-but like something new had taken its place.
The color was deeper now. Not crimson. Not blood.
Violet.
Edged in gold.
The same shade that glowed from the tree in my room.
The same shade that marked the third rune burned into Ethan’s skin.
I scrambled back from the center of the spiral, my heart hammering like a war drum, breath caught in my throat.
The stone where my hands had been shimmered like water held still too long. It rippled once. Then again. Then something began to emerge.
A shape. A mark.
Not a rune.
Not something I’d seen before.
Not even something I felt I was meant to understand.
It flickered like fire, but it wasn’t burning the floor. It was becoming the floor. Woven in. Etched like a scar waiting to reopen.
I reached for my chest, my hand clenching over my heart.
“Your flame is not your own.”
Then whose?
Then whose?
But the silence gave no answer.
Just stillness.
And then, in the distance, so faint I almost missed it-a sound.
A crack of thunder.
Not from the sky.
From beneath the mountain.
A warning.
Not of something waiting to be born.
But something demanding to be let in.
And I…
I didn’t know how to stop it.
Or worse-if I even could.
*Jiselle*
I didn’t remember walking to the ridge.
I didn’t remember waking at all.
But the sun was already high when I blinked, my fingers stained red, my chest heaving with uneven breaths. The smell of ash clung to my skin. I stared down at my hands, heart thudding, trying to piece together why the copper tang in the air was too familiar- why my nails were crusted with blood.
Not dried.
Not old.
Fresh.
It wasn’t mine.
I turned them over slowly, every heartbeat thudding in my ears like thunder behind glass. There were claw marks in the dirt. A gash on the tree stump beside me. Scorched grass.
What the hell had I done?
I stood too fast, the world tilting sideways. Heat rolled off my skin in waves, my palms twitching like they were ready to ignite again. I reached out to steady myself, but even the bark recoiled from my touch. Or maybe I imagined that, Lately, I wasn’t sure.
I’d been losing time again.
Hours. Minutes. Whole pieces of conversation slipping away like water through a sieve. And it wasn’t like before-not like the visions or the dreams. This was different.
Like I was slipping into someone else entirely.
Or something else was slipping into me.
I pressed a shaking hand to my stomach, seeking something familiar.
And then I felt it.
?????/p>
A flutter. A stretch.
Not pain. Not fear.
Just motion.
Then again.
The baby kicked.
My breath caught in my throat. For a second, everything froze-the blood, the heat, the confusion-and all that remained was that small, undeniable movement.
Sept
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