My Unwanted Wife Is A Top Assassin

A spike of pain, sharp and blinding, ripped through the darkness. It was the first thing she felt. The second was heat, a suffocating, damp heat that clung to her skin like a second layer of clothing.

Her eyelids felt glued shut. Forcing them open took a physical effort, a command sent from a brain that felt like it was submerged in syrup. The room was black, unfamiliar. The scent of expensive perfume and stale champagne hung in the air.

She tried to sit up, but her body refused to cooperate. It felt heavy, wrong. A wave of nausea rolled in her stomach. She reached a hand to her face, and her fingers met puffy cheeks, a constellation of bumps across her skin. Acne.

This wasn't her face.

Memory fragments slammed into her consciousness, a high-speed collision of two entirely different lives.

Eliza Solis. From the trailer park on the edge of town. Her brother, Ricky, told her to come to this party. He said it was a chance.

The memory was weak, hazy, like a poorly recorded home video.

Then another, colder and sharper than a shard of ice, sliced through the fog.

Nyx. Asset Nine. Hand-to-hand combat specialist. Expert in infiltration and data analysis. Target neutralized.

The two realities warred inside her skull. The pain intensified, a physical manifestation of a soul being torn in two. She was Eliza, a girl who weighed over 180 pounds and dreamed of escaping her life. She was Nyx, a weapon honed by a government that would deny her existence.

She was both, and it was breaking her.

The heat inside her body was building, a chemical fire spreading through her veins. It wasn't just confusion. It was a drug. Her training, the Nyx part of her, screamed the diagnosis. She'd been drugged.

A sound from across the room. The click of a door.

She froze, her body tensing with an instinct that the soft flesh of Eliza Solis had never known.

The bathroom door swung open, spilling a sliver of light into the room. A silhouette stood there, tall and broad-shouldered. He swayed slightly, one hand braced against the doorframe.

He was a soldier. The rigid posture, the economy of movement even when impaired-it was unmistakable.

"Who the hell are you?" His voice was a low growl, thick with the same drugged haze that clouded her own mind. "Get out."

He took a step forward. Julian Malone. The name surfaced from Eliza's murky memories. The golden boy. Son of a dynasty.

His eyes, even in the dim light, were unfocused, pupils blown wide. He was fighting the drug, she could see it. But he was losing. Just like she was.

The chemical fire inside her reached its peak. Logic, reason, the cold control of Nyx-it all melted away, leaving only a primal, desperate need. It wasn't about pleasure. It was about survival, about two drowning people clinging to each other in a storm.

It was a collision of bodies in the