Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
His jaw clenched. “Then we fight it.”
“With what? Love?” I laughed bitterly. “The same love you keep pulling away from every time I use my power? Every time I don’t act like the girl you remember?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” I said. “It’s honest.”
He stood. Paced once, twice. His hands flexed like he wanted to grab something and couldn’t.
“Look at me,” he said, voice lower now. “Look at what this is doing to you. You haven’t slept. You barely eat. You’re burning up from the inside, and now you want to plunge a dagger into your soul because Bastain thinks it might stop a prophecy.”
“It’s not just about prophecy.”
“No,” he said bitterly. “It’s about control. It always is.”
I flinched.
He stopped in front of me, eyes shadowed and uncertain. “I love you, Jiselle. That hasn’t changed. But you’re changing. Fast. And this dagger… this choice… it’s not you. It’s the flame.”
“Maybe I am the flame,” I said quietly.
He didn’t reply.
“I’m not asking for permission,” I said. “I’m asking for support.”
He turned away.
And that was my answer.
I found Ethan waiting by the old fountain in the southern garden, hands shoved in his coat pockets, eyes narrowed toward the leyline that shimmered faintly just beyond the trees.
“You talked to him?” he asked without looking at me.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I think I lost him.”
Ethan didn’t pretend to be surprised. “He’s scared.”
“I’m scared,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I get to run.”
He turned to face me then, the lines of his jaw sharp in the moonlight. “So you’re doing it?”
“I have to.”
He studied me for a long moment. Then, without a word, he reached out and took the dagger from my hand.
“Ethan-“
“If it fails,” he said, “let me take the pain.”
My heart stilled. “What?”
“I’m stronger than I look. You and Nate are already cracked from carrying too much. If one of us has to break… let it be me.”
Tears sprang to my eyes before I could stop them. “Don’t you dare martyr yourself.”
“I’m not.” He smiled faintly. “I’m just offering to hold the line. You shouldn’t have to carry everything.”
I looked at him then-really looked. The boy I grew up with. The man who had nearly died for me more than once. He didn’t shine like Nate did. He didn’t roar like the flame. But he was still here.
Still holding.
“I don’t deserve either of you,” I whispered.
“Too bad,” he said. “You’ve got us anyway.”
I took the dagger back.
And made my way to the chamber.
The ritual room was buried beneath the stronghold, carved into stone so old I could feel its age in my bones. The walls were lined with runes I couldn’t read. The air smelled of dust, salt, and something older than magic.
Bastain stood at the center of the circle, already barefoot, sleeves rolled to his elbows, chalk in hand. He was
And something ancient screamed awake in my blood.
I took a breath.
And plunged the dagger toward my heart.
…
*Jiselle*
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The world blurred the second the veilstone sliced open the plane. My fingers, wrapped tight around its hilt, burned like I’d dipped them in molten silver. Not hot. Not cold. Just… wrong. Like holding grief. Like pressing your palm to the place where a life had once been.
The realm didn’t crack open-it wilted. Petal by petal, color by color, until the world I stood in bled into something older. Something vast. I was no longer in the Academy, no longer surrounded by stone walls and whispered arguments. I was in flame.
Not fire. Flame.
It roared in silence, curled in waves of gold and red and violet too rich for any earthly inferno. It breathed like a beast, each rise of its heat pulling my hair back from my face and my soul forward from my spine. The sky above wasn’t black-but empty. A void threaded with veins of fire, pulsing like the heart of something half- dead and half-awake.
I wasn’t afraid. I should have been, but I wasn’t.
Because I wasn’t alone.
He emerged from the flicker.
Aedric.
As if the fire had worn a mask and decided to show me what lived beneath it. He was taller here, less bone and ash and more form-his form. Regal and ruined, like a monument built in reverence then shattered in rage.
“Jiselle,” he said.
And gods… my name sounded beautiful in his mouth. Wrong. But beautiful.
I didn’t speak. Not yet.
He stepped forward, the flames parting around him like he was them. “You’re braver than I expected.”
“I’m not here to impress you,” I said, voice steady despite the way my knees threatened to buckle under the pull of this place.
“No,” he agreed, gaze sweeping down my body and settling over my stomach. “You’re here to destroy yourself.”
The child inside me moved. Not a kick. A shiver.
I flinched, one hand pressing instinctively to my abdomen. “I’m here to end you.”
Aedric smiled. Not cruelly. Not kindly. Just… knowingly. “You still think this is about me?”
9:19 Mon, Sep 8 B…
“You tried to tear the realms apart,” I snapped. “You manipulated wolves like Serina. You’re twisting my child
“My child too,” he cut in.
The silence that followed was colder than any fire could warm.
“I didn’t ask to be born of you,” I said. “And neither will she.”
Something flickered in his expression then. Hurt? No. Possession.
“She is the product of flame and blood and power you’ve only just begun to taste. You think she’ll be yours, but she won’t be anyone’s. Not truly. Unless…”
“Unless I give her to you?”
“Unless you give her freedom.” He took another step closer. “Severing the tether will kill the child’s gift. You know that. Bastain told you.”
My grip on the veilstone dagger tightened.
“I’d rather have a daughter without power than one shackled to a monster.”
He laughed and it cracked the sky.
“You sound like Serina.”
Good.
He was close now. Too close. I could smell fire on his breath, and behind his eyes, a thousand screaming embers begging to be loosed.
“You could reign beside me,” he whispered. “Not as Queen. Not as Sovereign. As Flame. The world could bow to us-Veilborn and Ethereal, reborn in truth.”
“And Ethan?” I asked, voice lower now, threading around a pain I didn’t want to name.
He hesitated. “Your brother has always burned for something he doesn’t understand. He would be honored to fall for you.”
“And Nate?”
That one landed.
His jaw tensed. “He weakens you.”
“He loves me.”
“Then he will die.”
That was when I lunged.
9:19 Mon, Sep 8 G…
I didn’t think. The flame rose, and I met it.
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My feet pounded across the ashen floor of the spiritual plane. Fire curled around my heels, but the veilstone stayed steady in my hand, pulling me like a compass toward the heart of him.
Aedric didn’t move to stop me. He opened his arms.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he said softly, just as I reached him. “I want to wake you.”
But my blade was already rising-
And suddenly the world split.
Not from my strike-but from them.
Their voices cut through the smoke.
Jiselle.
Nate’s.
