Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 336: Too Good At My Job

Chapter 336: Too Good At My Job

I was lying on my right side, the metal bars of the dog cage digging into my side as I shifted just enough to be able to put my arm under my head.

However, even that motion was enough to cause the cage to rock back and forth, which sent up a wave of protest from my stomach.

This was one of the reasons why I never did roller coasters or amusement park rides: my stomach just wasn’t cut out for them.

"How did you--?" I started, not sure how to finish that sentence.

"How do I look this good? How did I find you? How did I manage to capture you? There are a lot of sentences that start with those three words," smirked Alpha as he stood several feet under me. Even if I stretched my arm through the bars as far as I could, there was no way for me to touch him.

I was cut off from my gift, my power, and cut off from my guys.

"Might as well start with the first one then," I sighed, not sure what I was going to do but ’hang around,’ all puns intended.

"Did you know that an Alpha is connected with their horde?" he asked, pulling out a folded chair from somewhere and, after straightening it out, he sat down on it.

Startled, I looked around. We were inside of an empty room with padding on the floor and walls. I had no idea what it would have been used for before, but as far as prisons went, I had been in worse. At least this one wasn’t subjected to the elements.

"Are you even paying attention to me? I’m not going to waste my breath if you aren’t listening," sighed the Alpha like I was an errant child.

"Of course, you said that you were connected to your horde," I nodded, turning my attention back to him.

"Every last Reaver," he corrected me, crossing his legs and becoming more comfortable. "Which means that while I might not have noticed Reavers dying, I definitely felt it. Every. Last. One."

A cold sweat broke out on my face, and I tried not to tremble. I didn’t want to let him know that I was terrified, and I didn’t want the cage to swing any more than it currently did.

The Reaver Alpha took in a deep breath and smiled at me. "How I missed that smell. Until this moment, I didn’t know that you had anything to do with it. I had just assumed that either Rip was getting cranky or someone was hunting us down. But now that I think about it, you would have had no problems killing them off without leaving any evidence."

I didn’t bother to correct him. He already knew everything, so there wasn’t much point.

"Anyways, I was worried that I was going to be next, so I found one of the horde to take my place and be the face of Camp Hell. Who would have thought that a few months later, he would meet such a gruesome death."

"I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t awake for that," I assured him. I didn’t know if I was inadvertently pleading my case that I had nothing to do with it or if I was trying to throw someone else under the bus. Then again, at the end of the day, they were the same thing.

"Oh, I know. I was watching from the woods. He should have seen it coming. Who would really bring their woman to Camp Hell without some sort of backup plan?" chuckled the Alpha as he brushed off an invisible piece of lint from his suit pants. "Wait, where was I?"

"You said that because I was killing off Reavers, you went into hiding and watched your substitute die," I supplied helpfully.

Have you ever had that feeling of déjà vu? Where you would have sworn that you had already experienced a moment before? That was how I was feeling.

But maybe instead of it being déjà vu, maybe none of this ever happened. Maybe he caught me as soon as I left my bunker, and everything else has just been a dream. Were the guys even alive? Could I really trust any of this?

It was like a Mandela effect... things were just slightly off.

"Right. So after that, I followed you." The Reaver shrugged his shoulders like it wasn’t that big of a deal, but my heart dropped down into my stomach at that revelation. How could I not know that he was following us for so long?

"I made a little stop in City J. I had heard rumors of a healer there, and I thought that trying to get my hands on you a second time might not be worth the effort. No offense."

"None taken," I assured him. I could practically hear the devil on my shoulder sighing that it was too bad he couldn’t be happy with my replacement.

"But she couldn’t do half of what you could. She could even fully heal someone! What crap was that? I was trying to rebuild Camp Hell, and I needed a healer," scoffed Alpha, his hands flexing with irritation.

I wanted to apologize for being too good at my job, but that didn’t make sense, so I remained quiet.

"One day, she pissed me off just a little too much, and I ended up killing her." Once again, Alpha sighed like it was the most inconvenient thing to ever happen to him. "I figured that I might as well eat her. I mean, she didn’t taste as good, but meat was meat, you know what I mean?"

I nodded my head, even as I felt nauseous. I didn’t know any healer from City J, but I did feel bad knowing her fate. No one deserved to be eaten, especially by the Alpha.

"That night, I fell asleep, my body feeling weird. I thought I just had indigestion from the healer, but when I woke up the next morning, I was... good. My brain was less chaotic, I could concentrate, my skin managed to heal, and I didn’t feel the need to mutilate it again. I was feeling more human than I had in a long, long time. Wasn’t that great? The healer, who was useless in life, managed to heal me in death."