All Chapters of Marked for Betrayal: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

53 Chapters

Into the Hornet's Nest

POV: Mia (Zero)The air in the Broker’s compound smelled the same.Sterile metal. Bleached floors. Cold blood dried beneath rubber soles.As I stepped through the security checkpoint, I kept my eyes low and my shoulders slouched just enough to sell the story. A broken operative. A failed tool, crawling home with her head bowed and her mind hollowed. I could almost hear his voice in my skull, smug and waiting.Welcome back, Zero.The guards didn’t touch me. They didn’t need to. They recognized me by scent.One of them, a thick-jawed wolf with arms covered in ritual burn marks, sneered as I passed. “Thought you were dead.”I didn’t reply. Zero wouldn’t have.He smirked, satisfied with my silence, and opened the gate with a gesture.Beyond it, the hall stretched into the belly of the machine.Cameras hummed above.Every wall, every tile, every scent made my stomach twist. I had seen it all before. In fragments. In nightmares. Now it was all here, intact and unrepentant.The Broker hadn’t

Last Updated : 2025-06-26

Echo

POV: Mia (Zero)I didn’t sleep.The bed in my cell was nothing more than a slab of steel and foam, and the air stank of disinfectant and memories. But it wasn’t discomfort that kept me awake.It was her name.Echo.The girl my brother had seen. The one they were building now that I—Mia, Zero, whatever I was—had started slipping through their fingers. She wasn’t just another weapon. She was something worse.Something perfected.I replayed Chito’s words in my head over and over.> “She doesn’t talk. Doesn’t sleep. They wired her in from the beginning. She’s what they want all of you to become.”I remembered the cold way the Broker watched me from behind the glass earlier. Not with anger. Not even with disappointment.With detachment.I wasn’t a loss to him.I was a prototype.Obsolete.And Echo… Echo was the future.---They fed me the next morning. Cold meat, protein paste, and water infused with wolfsbane—a dampener, enough to keep my instincts dull without shutting them off entirely.

Last Updated : 2025-06-26

Firestarter

POV: Mia (Zero)The morning routine went unchanged.Lights up at 0700. Cold protein rations delivered through a slot in the wall. Guard rotation every two hours. I ate half my portion, chewed the rest and tucked it under my cot—out of sight. Everything had to look normal.Because if they suspected me, the Broker would lock me down.And I wouldn’t get another chance.By 1000 hours, the hallways quieted. The next system recycle wouldn’t hit until 1140. That gave me ninety minutes to plan.To move.To burn.---I found the vent panel again by pretending to clean up the water I’d “spilled.” My eyes tracked every camera. I knew how they worked. I used to study them on my first training runs, plotting angles and blind spots. Some things your body never forgets.I cracked the panel open. Slid inside.The tunnels welcomed me like old ghosts.At the second junction, I tapped the wall three times.A beat later, he answered.Three taps. One pause. Two taps.Our old code.I smiled.“Chito,” I whi

Last Updated : 2025-06-26

The Breaker's Teeth

POV: Mia (Zero)The emergency tunnel was colder than I remembered.Chito leaned heavily against my side, barely conscious, his breathing shallow and wet. The other children—four who could run, two that could barely walk—clustered behind us like shadows, their bare feet silent against the steel floor.And Echo followed last.Always last.Silent as a ghost.Every footstep toward the surface tasted like hope.But hope, I had learned, was often the bait before the trap.We reached the last bend, and I saw the door ahead.A reinforced steel lock with a palm scanner and a manual override.One more code.One more push.And we’d be free.I handed Chito off to the strongest of the older boys—Rylo, maybe fourteen, already developing the angular shoulders of a fighter—and stepped forward toward the panel.I was halfway there when I smelled it.Not blood. Not sulfur.Tea.Hot and herbal.And then he spoke.“You really thought I wouldn’t be here to say goodbye?”The Broker stepped out from the sha

Last Updated : 2025-06-26

Ashes of the Lab

POV: AlexMia didn’t speak for two days.After we brought her and the others back to Darkhaven, she barely left the infirmary. The kids were quarantined, evaluated, fed, and sedated—carefully, gently. Most of them had never spoken more than two sentences. They didn’t know how to accept kindness. Every meal placed in front of them was met with suspicion. Every soft touch made them flinch.They had survived the lab, yes.But they weren’t free of it.Not yet.And neither was Mia.She sat at Chito’s bedside, day and night, holding his hand. He was stable now—barely. A punctured lung, two cracked ribs, low blood oxygen. But he was alive. That was enough.She didn’t cry.She didn’t scream.But her silence said everything.And then, on the third morning, she stood up, walked into the council chamber, and said:“We burn it. All of it.”---POV: Mia (Zero)The room fell quiet.Kelly was at the head of the table. Hugo leaned against the back wall, arms crossed. Alex stood to my left.“They won’

Last Updated : 2025-06-26

Flesh and Code

POV: Mia (Zero)They kept her locked in the lower medical bay.Not in chains.Not in silver.But in soundproof walls, neural dampeners embedded into the floor, and three rotating guards who’d seen enough of the Broker’s tricks to hesitate before even breathing near her.She didn’t speak.She didn’t move.She just… existed.Zero 2.1.A copy of me. One not made of scars and choices and grief, but of precision. Of equations. Of bloodless obedience.But she hadn’t tried to escape.Hadn’t fought.Hadn’t asked a single question.And that was somehow worse.Alex stood beside me now, watching her through the reinforced glass. “Has she said anything?”“No,” I said. “Not even when the others brought in food.”“You don’t think she’s playing dead, waiting?”I shook my head. “She doesn’t need to wait. She knows we don’t plan to kill her.”He looked at me carefully. “Do we?”That question lodged in my chest.“I don’t know,” I said honestly.He didn’t press. He knew when to let silence answer.I wat

Last Updated : 2025-07-02

Project Mirror

POV: AlexWe left Darkhaven before sunrise.Kelly, Hugo, and the rest stayed behind to guard the pack and train the rescued children, while Mia and I went dark—no comms, no trackers, no scent trails. Only a burner vehicle and a name scraped off the Broker’s encrypted financial ledger.Project MIRROR.The coordinates led us to the unclaimed borderland between the Eastern Ridge Packs and human-controlled lands. A dead zone for jurisdiction. A breeding ground for shadows.The structure wasn’t what I expected.No steel compound. No underground facility.Just a mansion.Three stories. Black shutters. Stone steps leading up to a set of double oak doors. It looked like it belonged to an eccentric billionaire who read too many gothic novels. That, in itself, was the biggest warning sign.Because it wasn’t meant to intimidate.It was meant to hide.Mia stood beside me, wearing a dark hooded coat and synthetic lenses to dull the silver flash of her eyes. She held herself like a soldier—but insi

Last Updated : 2025-07-02

We are not Reflections

POV: Mia (Zero)They held the vote in the Stone Hall.The long table was polished with ritual oil, the Darkhaven crest emblazoned at its center, the walls lined with torches even though modern lighting ran beneath the floor. It wasn’t for effect.It was tradition.Every judgment that defined the fate of this pack happened here.And now it was my turn.I stood at the far end, hands behind my back, hair pulled tightly from my face. My body still carried the bruises from MIRROR. My ribs ached every time I took a deep breath, but pain was a gift. It meant I was alive.Across from me sat twelve elders, Beta-ranked or higher. Some I knew. Others I’d only seen from afar. All of them watched me like I was both legend and liability.At the center sat Kelly.Not my friend.Not anymore.She wore her rank with clarity now. Pack Second. Voice of the Council.“I’ll ask only once,” she said, voice clipped and cool. “Are you still bonded to the Broker or any part of his directive?”“No,” I said. “Tha

Last Updated : 2025-07-02

Nova

POV: Mia (Zero)I had never been someone who took comfort in empty spaces, but the silence after the vote, after the council, felt deafening. The weight of their judgment clung to the air, thick and suffocating, even though I had been cleared. I should have felt relief, but all I felt was the pressure of what came next, of the fact that the pack, Alex, depended on me, and I wasn’t sure I could give them what they needed.I couldn’t be the reflection of what they wanted me to be. I wasn’t sure I even knew who I was anymore.I stepped out of the infirmary, the evening air cool against my skin, and found Alex leaning against the stone wall of the compound, his eyes following me as I approached. There was no question in his gaze, no judgment, only a quiet understanding that made the storm inside me settle for just a moment."You made it," he said softly, as if he wasn’t sure it was real.“I didn’t kill anyone,” I replied, the corner of my mouth twitching, almost a smile. It was the first

Last Updated : 2025-07-02

Shadows we don't outrun

POV: AlexThe moon bled through the clouds like a slow wound, pale light carving silver lines into the edges of the courtyard where Mia stood, one hand wrapped tightly around mine, the other clenched so hard her knuckles had gone white. She wasn’t trembling, not visibly, but I knew her well enough to feel the storm she was holding back with nothing but bone and willpower.“They always come back,” she said at last, voice raw and sanded down. “Even when we burn them to ash, they find a way to crawl out of it.”Her eyes, lit by the torchlight and shadow, held no fear—just fatigue. The kind that builds when you've spent years outrunning ghosts only to find they've built homes in your spine.I wanted to lie. I wanted to say this time would be different. But my silence was already the answer she expected.Chito stepped forward, his limp more pronounced now, and handed me a folded scrap of paper. “Nova intercepted this from a supply runner moving through the western ridge,” he said. “Encrypt

Last Updated : 2025-07-02

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