Filed to story: Mated and Hated by My Brother’s Best Friend Book PDF Free by Anna Campbell
Not violently. Not suddenly. But with certainty.
Like two flames recognizing one another across a great distance.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. My heart pounded in my ears, drowning out even Eva’s hiss of breath or Bastain’s muttered oath.
And then-
The child blinked.
And Ethan lifted his head just enough to meet her eyes.
Neither of them spoke.
But something passed between them. Not words. Not memory. But knowing.
8:59 Thu, Sep 18 d..
An understanding that settled like ash on my skin.
My throat tightened as the child’s hand opened and closed, fingers flexing once like she was tasting the magic in the air.
She wasn’t afraid.
Not of Ethan.
Not of whatever had brought him to his knees.
Because she knew.
She knew something I didn’t.
I looked between them-my daughter and the boy who’d once laughed beside me, now reduced to a vessel. Or maybe something more. Something not yet written.
And I felt the shift again.
This wasn’t over.
This was only the beginning.
Because whatever tether had pulled Ethan back to us… wasn’t done.
And whatever force had found its way through him-through blood, through ash, through fire-was watching.
Waiting.
And now, it had seen her.
Now, it knew where the flame breathed.
*Jiselle* rs
I woke to cold stone pressing against my cheek. My shoulder ached, my breathing felt too loud in my ears, and when I blinked open my eyes, the room was dim and twisting. The torchlight flickered against broken walls patched with wards and ash. I should’ve felt relief. I should’ve felt safety.
But I felt hollow.
Someone was beside me, a gentle weight rocking back and forth, a soft murmur against the cloth. I tried to lift my arm, but the world grayed, pain splintered through ribs, and I forced it down again.
“Shh… don’t move too quick,” Nate whispered.
I heard tears. Quiet ones. And the baby’s small cry, so soft it almost wasn’t there.
“Nate?” My voice hoarse, I turned my head enough to see him. His shoulders were hunched; he sat by a low cot, cradling her. The baby was wrapped in woven ash-fine, charcoal threads that glowed faintly at the edges, shimmering violet in the pales of torchlight. She was no bigger than my forearm but already possessed a presence old as the hollow silence that lingered after war.
He looked at her with a kind of wonder, tears tracking down his cheeks, catching light. I watched his chest rise, then fall with a sob he tried to swallow.
“She looked at me,” he said after a beat, voice rough. “I swear she knew me.”
I blinked. The baby didn’t move. Eyes open-grey-gold, flickering like flame trapped behind glass. And in that moment I believed him. Believed she knew him. Believed she knew me.
I tried to focus, to remember how I got here. Everything was heavy. My limbs weighed like lead, my heart thrummed like a beast with broken ribs. But underneath it all was the spark: she was alive.
“She’s alive,” I whispered.
He nodded, but grief still hung in his eyes. “For now,” he said.
The cot creaked as he adjusted, lifting her closer, wrapping my skirts around me so I could see her better. I reached out a trembling hand, but pulled back-pain radiated across my belly, as if the scars of what had been fractured so recently were still fresh.
Eva appeared then, stepping quietly through the doorway. Her face was pale, paler than I remembered. There was something changed about her-not only exhaustion, though she wore it like armor now-but something behind her eyes. Something guarded, something afraid. Her gown was smudged, sleeves torn, and the wards she carried hung loose around her neck as if she’d forgotten to clutch them when she fled or fought.
“Thank the stars,” she said, voice soft, almost relieved. She came to the edge of my bed, knelt. Her hands hovered. The child’s eyes followed her movement, tracking.
“How are you feeling?” Eva asked, but I didn’t answer. My throat was dry; words felt heavy and brittle.
“She’s watching.” Nate said, not looking at me, looking at the baby. “Not just looking. Watching us.” He smiled, though tears still glistened. One of those smiles that cracked wide not because of happiness, but because everything else had fallen away and this one thing-this fragile, tiny flame-stood between ruin and something I could hardly name: hope.
I held my breath, tried to shut out everything else. Tried to rest in the knowledge that she was here. That the chaos had paused around us. That maybe, finally, we could build instead of fight.
And then I realized-
Bastain was gone.
The room smelled of dust and ash and something like guilt. His chair was empty, the warding chalk at his desk crumbled. His maps torn. The relics scattered. No sign of his boots, no mark of his passing except absence.
“Where’s Bastain?” I asked, voice small. “He should-“
Nate’s hand tightened around mine. He shook his head. “He left. He said he needed to… prepare something.”
Eva closed her eyes. When she opened them her gaze was sharper, colder. “He went out to make sure the wards around the stronghold are intact. He said if they fall, everything we fought for dies.”
“You think he’ll come back?” I asked softly.
Eva didn’t answer that. She knelt beside Nate and the baby, laid a hand gently on the child’s chest through the ash wrap. “He’d better,” she whispered.
The baby stared at me then-with eyes like knowing embers. Not fear. Not confusion. Something deeper. Recognition. Like she remembered me, remembered home, remembered warmth I had almost forgotten.
I whispered, “Do you see her, Nate? Do you feel-“
He nodded, voice shaky. “Yes.”
My vision swam with tears and relief and something like dread I couldn’t name. Relief because she was alive. Dread because she looked like she belonged here already-as if she’d lived lifetimes before this night.
“My flame,” I said, voice so soft I barely heard its echo.
She twitched, small fingers curling around mine. Her mouth opened, lips parted in a silent cry that didn’t make sound.
In that silence, her eyes closed just slightly, then settled.
Eva rose from her knees and began moving toward the door.
I followed her eyes.
Through the doorway: dark corridor, wards flickering. The smell of rot and blood.
The attack is not over.
Among the smell, I caught something else. A note of unnatural: a pressure, a pulse that throbbed in walls, stone, hearth.
Something shifted in the air-as if the world had leaned in to listen.
Nightmares I thought had faded flickered behind my eyelids. The echo of that raven’s voice: He knows the name.
I squeezed the baby closer.
She shivered-or maybe it was me. It was hard to tell.
But her eyes fluttered open again, glowing in the dim light.
And then-
She spoke.
Not cry. Not shout.
A whisper.
So soft I thought I imagined it.
“Aedric is watching.”
Silence exploded.
Nate knelt, arms tightening around me and the baby both. Eva stepped back, face-white, choking on her own breath. The fire on the walls flickered, wards sputtered, and for a moment, we all held our breath.
Because the thing she had said was not wrong.
And because now, nothing would ever be the same.
*Jiselle*
“You’re not watching her close enough.”
E56 vouchers
Eva’s voice was calm, but I could hear the tension beneath it as she bent over the crib, her fingers hovering just above the baby’s glowing form. Moonlight filtered through the half-boarded window, touching the child’s cheeks like it, too, was unsure whether it had permission. She looked serene, as if she hadn’t been born in fire just two nights ago. As if she hadn’t screamed the world back into motion with a breath that shattered the Hollow-born.
I stood at the edge of the room, feeling like I didn’t belong to it. My own body still hadn’t recovered from the birth. I bled in pulses now-random, unsteady. My head spun when I stood too fast. My limbs trembled when I walked. But it wasn’t weakness that kept me still.
It was dread.
Because even now, the child hadn’t cried again. Not once.
And yet every time she blinked-just a slow, careful movement of those violet-gold eyes-I swore I felt something shift inside the world. Or maybe just inside me.
“She’s… sleeping,” I said, but the words felt foolish as soon as I said them.
“No,” Eva murmured. “She’s listening.”
The silence deepened. Eva didn’t move. Neither did the baby.
And then-she did.
Her small chest rose-not quickly, not sharply. But lifted in that strange, precise rhythm that didn’t quite feel natural.
A soft crack sounded from the corner of the room.
We both turned toward it.
At first I thought it was a trick of the firelight, the way shadows bent against stone. But then I saw it.
Her.
She was levitating.
Not high. Only an inch or two. The swaddle of woven ash that Nate had wrapped around her glowed where it touched her skin, humming with faint heat. Her limbs didn’t twitch. Her mouth didn’t open. She just… hovered.
Eva took a step back.
7:34 Fri, Sep 19
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?