Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 368: Past Lives and Present Ones

Chapter 368: Past Lives and Present Ones

The woman froze, her arm stretched above her head as she reached for an apple. The wind blew through the orchard, causing leaves and branches to rustle. Shaking her head, she took the apple and brought it down.

There was no way she had heard what she thought she heard. He had made it perfectly clear that she was nothing to him and that he would never call her for help.

"Mother," came the voice in her mind. The prayer was like smoke, wrapping itself around her. "I need help."

Suddenly, the beautiful woman vanished, leaving a single apple to roll around amongst the lush grass.

----

Bin An Sha waited, wondering if he was going to be disappointed, just like every other time he had prayed for his mother to come and rescue him.

Six men stared at him as if he had all the answers in the world, and for the first time in a long time, he wanted to give them those answers. He wanted to reassure them that their woman was okay. He needed that reassurance as much as the others did.

"You called?" came the voice of a woman behind him. It was soft and lyrical, sounding much too young to belong to someone old enough to be his mother. But then again, she was a goddess.

"Demeter," grunted the man as he stood up from the couch he was sitting on to look at her. "Mother," he swallowed, the word once again sticking in his throat.

"Bin An Sha," she replied, a gentle smile on her face. However, her hands were clutched in front of her, her knuckles turning white as she fought to keep her hands to herself. A part of him appreciated that; he didn’t know if he could stand to be hugged by her at this moment. "How can I help?"

"Someone has taken our woman," interjected Rip while the other men stood there in shocked silence. Goddess or not, it didn’t matter to Rip. All that mattered was finding his Little Bird.

"What?" demanded Demeter, her tone changing as she turned to face the Reaver. She was no longer the gentle goddess she was before. Her face twisted, becoming harder, something much more fearsome. "Someone took Wang Tian Mu?"

Bin An Sha nodded his head, "Can you help us find her?" he asked.

"More than that," interjected Fan Teng Fei. "Can you bring us to her so that we can kill whoever stole her from us?"

"Consider it done," nodded Demeter. She closed her eyes and thought about her friend. It wasn’t always easy to do it this way. Hades had managed to evade her for thousands of years before she sent Wu Bai Hee to take care of things. But this was different. This was Hecate, someone who worked with both good and evil, living and dead.

Unlike Hades, part of Hecate was firmly planted in Demeter’s realm, so Demeter’s powers should be able to find the Goddess of Witchcraft. "Where are you, my old friend?"

Finding traces of her magic, Demeter smiled and snapped her fingers.

------

"It feels different," muttered Li Dai Lu as my magic entered her body. The twin flames separated, allowing me access to whatever I needed, and my magic lunged forward, trying to seek out the source of her pain and illness.

"It’s because we are outside," I muttered, not really paying attention to what was going on around me. "My powers are stronger out here. No idea why, but it is like I can call on the world around me to increase them. It’s also less draining on me."

Li Dai Lu nodded her head as if she understood what I was trying to say. "You always were a special one, way more powerful than anyone gave you credit for."

I paused as my powers came back to me, giving me their report. "Right," I said after a second. "You said that we were friends in a past life."

"More than friends," she assured me, causing me to blink. I really didn’t go that way, so I think we had different definitions of what ’more than friends’ meant. "We were closer than sisters. And it wasn’t just one past life; it was all of them since the beginning of time. You really don’t remember anything? Not even just hints here and there?"

"Nothing," I assured her as we kept walking. My magic assured me that she was only about three centimeters dilated; might as well keep walking for right now. "And I would like to keep it that way."

"Seriously?!" asked Li Dai Lu like it was the weirdest thing she had ever heard. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath as another contraction hit her. "You wouldn’t want to know if you were a goddess or something?"

I tilted my head back and laughed. There was no way that I could be a goddess or a queen or anything like that. I was just me, and that was enough.

"Nope," I assured her. "I think that you can’t live your life if you are always stuck in the past. If I remembered all of my past lives, wouldn’t I just be living in a circle, never able to move forward?"

I shuddered at that thought. The past was there for you to learn from and not repeat the same mistakes over and over again, but it was done. There was no way to go back and change it, nor would I want to. Even the hard times, like my parents dying, helped to mold me into the person I was today.

There was also a part of me that knew I might drive myself insane if I knew everything that I had lived through since time began. No, for me, it was better to concentrate on this life. That way, when I died, I wouldn’t have any regrets.

And if I was born again, then I hoped I would have no memories of this life. Knowing about my past life in Canada was already too hard on me. I didn’t want to remember the guys just in case I wasn’t able to find them in my next life.

Loving them as I do and knowing that I could find that again in future lives would be devastating to me. No. I was going to live my life like most humans did—concentrating on the here and now and not worrying about past lives or future ones either.

"You, Healer, are an exotic entity," muttered Li Dai Lu, shaking her head. Stepping forward, she continued our walk, reaching out to take my arm. "But I like it. And in a lot of ways, you might be on to something."

Smiling, I nodded my head. "Come on, let’s turn around and head back to the cabin."

Like a parade of ducks all following their mother, Li Dai Lu’s three men fell into line behind us, not saying a single word.

-----

"What are you doing here?" asked a small boy as he sat up in bed. His eyes narrowed at the intruder.

"Looking for something. Why are you the only one in the house?" asked Liu Wei as he stared down at the tiny human. To think, soon he was going to have two of his own. And there was no way he or his brothers would leave them alone in a house.

The child snorted. "Because they are looking for mommy and know that I will be perfectly safe here. They aren’t stupid. I am safer here than I am out there, and we all know it."

"Mommy?" asked Liu Wei, cocking his head to the side.

"Yeah, some jackass came and stole her from us while she was making me a snack. But that’s okay. My daddies will find her and beat up whoever did it," nodded the boy, pulling a teddy bear into his arms. "And you might want to disappear before Scary Daddy and Papa rip you apart for being here."

"I’ll keep that in mind," deadpanned Liu Wei, internally arguing about whether he should stay with the kid or bring him with him. Seriously, some people shouldn’t be parents.

Of course, he conveniently forgot that he was the reason why the little boy was left by himself. It never occurred to him that the Healer might have a child or that her men might go looking for her.

Deciding that the medical equipment wasn’t in this room, Liu Wei looked at the child. "Stay in bed, don’t do anything foolish, and eat your vegetables."

The child blinked at him a few times as if he thought Liu Wei was an idiot and then shrugged his shoulders. "Sure," replied the kid. "Now, can you leave? I am trying to get some sleep so that when mommy comes home, I have the energy to play with her."

Dismissing the man that should have been considered a threat, the child lifted up his sheets and laid down, putting his head on the pillow.

Liu Wei shook his head, unable to believe what he had seen. The kid wasn’t scared of him at all. Leaving the room, he closed the door behind him.