Page 2 of Marked to Be Mine (Erased #1)

Her eyes assessed me, moving from my face to my hands to potential weapons. She swallowed hard, but her gaze didn’t waver. I had to give credit where it was due—she was brave, even when cornered like this.

“Are you my contact?” she asked suddenly, catching me off guard.

I didn’t answer. Questions wasted time.

I silenced her with proximity, moving into her space. Personal. Intimate. My hand found her throat, fingers positioning over carotid pressure points. Not crushing. Controlling.

But her words registered as unexpected. Contact? She expected someone. Just not me.

Her eyes changed, resignation replacing fear. “You are one of them, aren’t you?” Not a question. A statement.

Her hand flew toward my face, colliding with the rough contour of my cheek. I barely felt the impact, but it was enough to give her a moment of distraction to use in her favor. She lunged sideways, attempting to create distance. Pointless. I moved faster, re-establishing the choke hold.

When I locked eyes with her, something unexpected happened.

An impulse fired through me—foreign and unwelcome—the urge to slide my hand from her throat to her jaw. It wasn’t tactical. It wasn’t part of any protocol. My thumb brushed against her pulse point, feeling the rapid fluttering beneath warm skin, like a bird’s wings.

The freckle below her jawline. The defiant set of her mouth. The gold flecks in her dark eyes.

Her shallow breathing drew my attention to her lips. For one disorienting moment, I wondered about their texture. The thought was so alien, so unlike anything I had ever felt before, that it left me momentarily stunned.

I hesitated.

The realization stunned me. I never hesitated.

“One of whom?” The question escaped before I could stop it. Why did I ask? Why wasn’t she dead yet ?

Her eyes widened. Not just fear now. Something else. Recognition. Her pulse hammered against my palm.

“The people who took you,” she whispered. “Who broke you apart and put you back together wrong.”

The words made no sense. She should have been begging, threatening, bargaining. Not this… whatever this was.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice sounded strange. Uncertain. My grip loosened some more. This had never happened before.

“I know you don’t.” A small whisper left her lips.

I thought she was playing tricks with me…

trying to mess with my mind, but as I stared into her eyes, I saw nothing but conviction.

She was certain she knew who I was. And how could she, when I didn’t even know it myself?

“That’s the fucking tragedy of it. You don’t even know who you were before they got hold of you. ”

The question struck like a physical blow.

Something shifted behind my eyes, pupils dilating, straining as if trying to read invisible text.

My vision blurred, fragmented. Images flashed—white rooms, restraints, voices saying, “Again.” Pain beyond description.

Someone screaming. I didn’t sleep much, but sometimes, when I did, I’d see distant nightmares of moments like these.

They would move in a blur, just out of reach, like fragmented clutter of my tortured mind.

Considering my job, it was no surprise. This, however, was the first time something like this had happened.

“What’s your name?” she asked, voice gentler now despite the tears.

“Reaper.” The response was automatic. Programmed .

Her face softened, despite the fear in her eyes. “No, not your code name. Your real name.” More silence followed. I didn’t fully understand the question. “You don’t remember, do you? Not a single thing from before.”

My grip tightened instinctively, then loosened. Wrong response. Inefficient. What was happening? System malfunction. Operational error.

“How do you...” I started, my voice unfamiliar to my own ears. Rough. Uncertain. Wrong.

Her hand moved slowly toward her coat pocket. I should have stopped her. I should have completed the mission. Instead, I watched, caught in the undertow of something I couldn’t name.

“I was investigating them,” she said, a little louder now, like she was gathering the courage to speak up in front of the predator himself. “Human experimentation. I found evidence of their program. Found you.”

“Impossible.” But even as I said it, something fractured behind my eyes.

Pain exploded behind my eyes. White-hot, blinding.

A drop of warmth slid down my upper lip.

Blood. I let out a loud groan, feeling the urge to let go of her and yank on my hair to feel some release.

Everything around me blurred, but somehow, I kept my grip tight.

The episode passed after several seconds.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

I almost laughed. For what? The pathetic knife attack? The inevitable failure of her escape? But the laugh didn’t come because her knee drove upward, connecting perfectly between my legs .

Pain exploded through my body. Unexpected. Effective.

My stance wavered—another operational failure—and I staggered back half a step. Not debilitating, but… disruptive. My body hadn’t registered pain like this in… I couldn’t remember. Did I feel pain during missions? The question itself was disturbing. Of course, I felt pain. I was human.

Wasn’t I?

She didn’t waste the opening. “I’m really sorry,” she said again, then bolted past me toward the exit ramp. I should have pursued her immediately. The protocol dictated zero tolerance for mission compromise. My muscles twitched to respond, but I remained still, processing what had just happened.

The injury itself was inconsequential. My response to it was not. The questions forming in my mind were not.

Her footsteps faded. In the distance, I heard the metallic thunk of an emergency exit door. Then silence.

I straightened, touching my temple where pressure built. Something had ruptured inside my skull. Not physically. Something worse.

What if she was right?

I’d eliminated targets across thirty-seven countries. Never questioned my purpose. Never failed. I recalled each face with perfect clarity. Yet I couldn’t conjure a single memory before my first mission. Before Reaper.

Why her? What made Maeve Durham different? And what was she talking about ?

The name triggered another spike of pain, bringing with it a flash—glass observation walls, men in lab coats, my own reflection showing vacant eyes.

I scanned my memory for mission briefing details. Target classification: moderate. Security risk: minimal. Reason for termination: classified.

Classified.

My handlers rarely shared information unless required for operational efficiency.

Yet with Maeve Durham, the file contained nothing beyond description and location. Minimal. Almost as if…

Almost as if they didn’t want me to know why she needed to be eliminated.

Pain spiked behind my eyes, sharp enough to make me grunt. My left hand trembled before I forced it still. I wiped the blood from my nose, staring at the red smear on my fingertips as if it belonged to someone else.

The protocol dictated an immediate mission status report. Target escaped. Pursuit initiated. Yet I remained motionless, tasting blood, feeling fracture lines spreading through certainty.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Not my activation. From them. Incoming secure transmission. Checking in. Already suspicious of the delay.

Three seconds to accept before automated alert protocols engaged.

Two seconds.

One .

My finger hovered over the accept button. For the first time in memory, I considered not answering.

She said she knew about me.

If she was lying, I lost nothing.

If she was telling the truth…

I accepted the call.

“Status report.” My handler’s voice was emotionless as usual. A mirror of what mine should be.

“Mission compromised.” The words felt strange in my mouth.

Silence stretched for exactly 2.4 seconds. I counted them without effort.

“Explain,” Brock said. A single word that carried an implicit threat.

“Unknown operative intercepted the target.” The lie formed with unexpected ease. “Black sedan, hidden plates. Target was extracted before I could make contact.” Another lie, flowing from the first.

Silence again. Longer this time. 5.7 seconds.

“Interesting.” Brock’s voice carried a note of uncertainty. “Maintain surveillance. Identify who she’s working with. When you confirm their identities, eliminate all parties.”

“Understood.” My response was immediate, mechanical. Perfect. But something shifted beneath the surface.

“Do not engage until you have a visual of all the players and the information gathered. This changes things.”

“Acknowledged.”

“And, Reaper...” A pause. “Report any… anomalies in your operational capacity. ”

The call ended. I knew what he meant. The headaches. The flashes of memory. The nosebleed. All the symptoms that I was supposed to disclose. The protocol dictated that I report these immediately as system malfunctions requiring maintenance. Yet I said nothing.

I pocketed the phone and moved toward the exit, steps automatically adjusting to maintain stealth.

Operational efficiency was uncompromised on the surface.

But beneath, something had fundamentally changed.

A name that wasn’t Reaper waited just beyond recall.

And somewhere in the city, a certain Maeve Durham had answers.

For the first time in my operational memory, I had two missions. The one they gave me.

And my own.