Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 341: The Pain Stopped

Chapter 341: The Pain Stopped

**Triggers continued from the previous Chapter... no cliffhanger**

No... this wasn’t possible. This had to be a dream. There was no way Rip would ever die. No, I refused to believe it. There was no way Alpha was strong enough to kill him, no matter how many healers he had consumed.

Besides, I saw Liu Hao Yu’s death and felt the warnings of the different attacks. I would have seen it; I had to have. There would have been numerous warnings, visions, ants on my arms, and everything else that my powers did to tell me that one of my men had died.

But yet, they were strangely silent. Ever since I had ignored their warnings about Alpha following us, they had been silent. Oh, sure, it had only been a day or so, but this was something that I should have seen.

I never would have agreed to come here if it meant Rip’s death.

I don’t know when tears started to fall from my eyes or when I started screaming.

By the time I had realized it, my throat was already raw, and I could no longer see Rip’s body underneath me.

"No!!!" I continued to scream, no longer caring about the pain I was sure I should be feeling. My body was shutting down, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

"No," I said much quieter, my strength completely gone. "You can’t leave me, Rip. I need you," I whimpered, trying to reach him through the bars.

"Oh, did you want this?" asked Alpha, holding up Rip’s head. "I was going to burn it, but if it means that much to you, you can have it."

Pushing my arms as far out as I could, I grabbed Rip’s head from the monster and brought it close to my bars. It wouldn’t fit in, but that was fine. I wrapped both of my arms around it and brought it to my chest, not caring about the bars or the blood.

My tears continued to fall as I stared into Rip’s open eyes. "I love you," I said. "And if you are dead, there isn’t much point in me continuing to live."

"Sure there is," laughed Alpha as he kicked Rip’s dead body on the ground. "Don’t you still have another six men? Surely there is at least one that you love as much as you loved Rip."

"I don’t measure how much I love them," I sneered at the creature. The second he let me down from here, I was killing him. I didn’t care how I was going to do it. But I would see that monster as a human swine before I finally granted him the peace of death.

"I love each of them in a different way; they each fill a part of me, and without all of them, it would not be a life worth living," I continued.

Now that I was staring death in the face, I had so many regrets that I never had before.

I wish that every morning that I woke up, I had told them that I loved them, that every night I said the same thing. I wish that I had also shown them how much I loved them in both the big ways and the little ways.

I wish that I had been whole enough to sleep with them; I had so many fantasies that I wish I had acted on so much sooner.

I wished I had stopped postponing my wedding with Bai Long Qiang.

I wished that I had told him about my feelings for the guys long before he found out.

But if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

Clearing my throat, I turned my head to look at the Alpha. "If I ever get out of here, or if you slip up just once, I will make your life a living hell."

"So noted," laughed the Alpha, shaking his head. "But that is exactly why you will be hanging from that ceiling for the rest of your life."

I nodded my head before turning my attention back to Rip. His eyes were no longer filled with life, but that was okay; at least I could see them.

The door opened wide, and before I could utter another word, Alpha clapped his hands together in merriment. "Ah, good, the rest have arrived."

He raced through the crowd of my men, arms, legs, and heads flying in every direction. Not even Wang Chang Ming was spared from the blood bath. I wanted to scream, to warn them, but the Alpha didn’t give any warning. And I was too wrung out to speak.

"Ah, this is fantastic," smiled Alpha, taking a chunk out of a tattooed covered arm. "I can actually feel their powers enter me. Why didn’t I notice that before? Fuck eating zombies; powerful humans are the way to go."

The door opened a third time, and Bai Long Qiang entered by himself, his entire body encased in a bright red flame.

"You’re alive," said my last man standing. I guess there was something poetic about it. He was the first of my men that I had met in this life, and he would be the last one I saw.

"I am, but you are not," nodded Alpha.

"I assumed as much," agreed Bai Long Qiang, staring death in the face but refusing to back down. "But shouldn’t I be able to say goodbye to my girl before I die, tell her that I am sorry for what I said, tell her that I loved her from the first second that I saw her, almost buried under exam papers?"

"Why would I do something like that?" shrugged Alpha right before he punched Bai Long Qiang in the chest. Pulling his bloody arm back, I saw my man’s heart in his hand, and Bai Long Qiang dropped to his knees and collapsed on the floor.

His blood mingled with the others, and Alpha approached my cage again. Bloody shoe prints followed his movement.

That was it, he won.

"Do you want it?" he asked, holding up the heart to me.

"No," I replied, shaking my head. "It’s always been mine. You can keep it."

As soon as I spoke those words, I started banging my head against the bars under me over and over again. Ignoring the pain, I continued until my vision turned red.

I could hear Alpha screaming at me to stop, but I refused to. They were dead, my family was dead, and I wasn’t living one more minute in this world without them.

Darkness came soon enough, and all the pain stopped.

-----

Gasping for breath, I bolted upright in bed.

"Is everything okay?" asked a deep voice in my ear.

"Rip?"