Page 10 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

Reaper

White light burned through my eyelids.

I couldn’t move. Leather straps bit into my wrists and ankles. The metal table beneath me leached heat from my body like a corpse drawer. Every muscle strained against the restraints until my tendons threatened to snap.

A mechanical whir came from above. Something descended from the ceiling. I forced my eyes open against the harsh light, blinking away involuntary tears that had nothing to do with emotion.

Masked figures in white coats watched from behind glass. Observing. Evaluating. Their faces were blank—clinical. Like I was a specimen under a microscope. Not human. Never human.

“Subject 27 demonstrates remarkable resilience to standard memory suppression techniques,” a voice announced. It scraped against my mind, familiar yet unknown. “Proceeding to Protocol Prima.”

I pulled against the restraints until blood slicked my wrists. My strength—the power I rely on to kill—had abandoned me .

A woman approached, her face hidden behind a surgical mask. Electrodes dangled from her gloved hands. “This will reset the neural pathways that access episodic memory.” She spoke to someone outside my field of vision. “The pain response helps encode the new programming.”

Cold metal pressed against my temples. I braced myself, but nothing could prepare me for what followed.

Electricity tore through my skull. My back arched off the table, vertebrae cracking. A scream ripped from my throat—raw, animal, unrecognizable. The scent of burning hair filled my nostrils.

“The asset will comply,” a monotone voice repeated through overhead speakers. “The asset exists to complete the mission.”

The current stopped. I collapsed against the table, gasping, the metallic taste of blood flooding my mouth where I’d bitten through my tongue.

In the brief reprieve, images flickered behind my eyes like damaged film.

Green felt on a poker table in Monaco. Chips stack before me. I was laughing with people whose faces blurred when I tried to focus. A red poker chip rolled between my fingers, a habit, a token, a reminder of...

The memory fragmented.

Another flash.

A woman with red hair stood close, raindrops catching in her eyelashes. Her lips pressed against mine, warm in the cold downpour. She whispered a name—my name—but the sound dissolved before I could grasp it .

The electrodes activated again. White-hot agony shattered the images. My jaw locked so tight I tasted blood.

A needle plunged into my neck. Fire spread through my veins, a chemical cocktail designed to break me. The ceiling tiles above multiplied, contracted, and swam in and out of focus.

“Remarkable,” someone murmured. “He’s still fighting the suppression protocols.”

“Increase the dosage.” A different voice, sharper with authority. “We need complete cognitive compliance.”

My heartbeat thundered in my ears. The pain became so absolute that I could no longer distinguish where it ended and I began. The room distorted.

Through the haze, a figure approached. Brock. My handler. He watched with cold satisfaction as my body betrayed me, convulsing against the restraints.

His lean frame moved with measured steps.

Impeccably tailored suit, not a wrinkle to be found.

Short gray-templed hair perfectly styled.

Those pale blue eyes studied me like I was a specimen under glass.

Something tugged at the edges of my consciousness.

I’d seen those eyes before, somewhere beyond these walls, beyond these missions.

A fragment of memory scratched at the back of my skull, desperate to break through, but the pain drove it back into darkness.

“Your name is Reaper,” he said, leaning close enough that I smelled his expensive cologne. “You exist to complete the mission. Nothing more. You are mine. ”

I tried to ask who I was before. My mouth moved, but no words came.

Brock straightened, readjusting his cufflinks. “Start again,” he ordered the technicians. “Wipe everything.”

Darkness crept in from the edges of my vision. I felt myself being erased, piece by piece. The man I was—whoever he might have been—disappeared beneath waves of calculated agony.

The last thing I saw was Brock’s smile as he watched me disintegrate.

I gasped awake, a silent scream locked in my throat, body already in combat stance before conscious thought returned. My hand shot toward the pillow—for the blade that should be there.

Nothing.

The room spun. Target acquisition impossible. Three rapid heartbeats pounded against my ribcage while my brain scrambled to identify threats, exits, and weapons.

Not a standard operational glitch. Not a mission parameter failure.

The nightmare clung like blood under fingernails. Too vivid. Too textured. The cold metal table. The electrodes. The smell of burning. Brock watching me break apart under calculated voltage.

Memory or malfunction?

The ceiling above came into focus—water-stained concrete, not sterile white. The textile factory. My safehouse .

A red-hot poker drilled behind my eyes, worse than any operational headache I’d ever logged. Something cool and damp rested on my forehead—a cloth. I reached to remove it and froze as I registered the weight across my torso.

Maeve Durham. Target designation: Primary. Threat assessment: Undetermined.

She was sprawled partially over me, head on my chest, one arm draped across my ribs, breathing the deep rhythm of exhausted sleep. Her dark hair fanned across my shirt, her hand curled fractionally into the fabric.

My first instinct: complete the mission. Two seconds to position hands. Minimal pressure required for cervical displacement. Clean. Efficient. Final.

But I didn’t move.

Instead, I performed inventory. My weapons lie arranged on the floor—close enough to grab in an emergency but deliberately out of immediate reach.

Tactical assessment: someone with close-quarters combat knowledge positioned them.

The blanket covering us wasn’t here before.

Neither was the water bottle positioned nearby.

The mattress felt unchanged, but someone—Maeve—had placed what felt like a jacket beneath my head.

The arrangement suggested medical attention, not restraint. Unexpected.

A vibration against my thigh broke my assessment. My phone. With gentle movements that wouldn’t disturb the sleeping woman, I extracted it from my pocket.

Brock’s message illuminated the screen: Status update required .

Standard protocol demanded an immediate response. Any delay flagged me for extraction or termination, depending on assessed risk of intelligence compromise. In fourteen years, I had never failed to report status.

My thumb hovered over the screen. I could fabricate another report, claim surveillance requiring communication silence. Buy time.

Instead, I silenced the phone and returned it to my pocket.

The action should feel insignificant. A minor deviation. Yet my pulse accelerated, and the throb behind my eyes intensified as if my brain physically rebelled against this violation of protocol. First time. First deviation. First failure to comply.

Extraction protocols would activate within twenty-four hours. Possibly less.

Time was now a weapon aimed at my head.

My attention returned to the woman draped across me.

Maeve’s weight should feel restrictive. Instead, I registered something entirely different: warmth.

The press of her breast against my ribs with each breath.

The tickle of her hair against my neck. The curve of her hip under my inadvertently placed hand.

With detached surprise, I realized my body responded to her proximity. Heat pooled low in my abdomen, a tightening awareness both foreign and strangely familiar. My hand, operating on some buried instinct, moved slightly against the fabric covering her hip.

The sensation confused me. Physical desire had never factored into my operational awareness. During past missions requiring intimate contact, my body performed as directed without genuine arousal—mechanical execution of necessary steps toward an objective.

This was different. Uncontrolled. Unbidden.

Yet it felt… correct. As if some buried circuit has reactivated after long dormancy.

With clinical detachment, I cataloged the unfamiliar response: arousal without mission parameters requiring it. Desire without tactical function.

I studied her face in the dimness. The stubborn set of her jaw, softened in sleep.

Dark lashes against her cheeks. Lips slightly parted as she breathed.

Her skin showed fatigue—dark circles under her eyes, strain at the corners of her mouth—evidence of extended stress.

Protecting me after I collapsed must have drained her remaining reserves.

She shouldn’t have bothered. The asset didn’t require protection.

The asset.

The thought hit like ice water. Was that what I was? An asset? Property?

Your name is Reaper. You exist to complete the mission. Nothing more. You are mine.

My fingertips, obeying impulses I didn’t understand, brushed a strand of hair from her face. The gesture felt both transgressive and essential, crossing a boundary while returning to something fundamental.

The nightmare flashed again— Start again. Wipe everything —and a troubling thought surfaced. What if Maeve was right? What if everything I believed about myself was fabricated? What if the person I was before Reaper still existed somewhere beneath the programming?

The questions themselves felt dangerous, triggering another stab of pain.

But as Maeve shifted against me, her hand unconsciously clutching my shirt, one certainty crystallized: I needed answers more than I needed to complete this mission.

And the woman whose warmth seeped into my normally cold existence seemed to be the key to finding them.