Page 6 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part Two

It took an age to end, and when it finally did, I was both breathless and smoking. It was morbidly fascinating, but thehaze of pain made it hard to appreciate the phenomenon of my body rapidly healing after such a strong shock.

As for the masked goons in lab coats around me, they simply observed what was happening and casually wrote it down, like torturing me was the most boring, academic thing in the world. Honestly, it was a bit insulting. Was I not putting on a good enough show for them? Was torturing me not entertaining enough for them?

Bastards.

My inner wolf howled to get out, throwing itself at the edges of my mind, but it was locked so tightly inside of me that I knew without a shadow of a doubt it wasn’t getting out. It wasn’t me keeping it in, though. There was something else within me that was stopping it from coming out. If I had to guess, these fuckers had probably dosed me with wolfsbane. That was one of the oldest tricks in the books when it came to us wolf shifters.

“Subject’s heart rate has returned to the appropriate range,” one of the scientists said, and, God, it made me wanna rip his throat out, even with my blunted teeth.

“Hmm, so far, it appears that being conscious hasn’t decreased or increased the body’s repair rate.”

The body!Ihad a fucking name. Granted, I didn’t want these people to know my name considering who their bosses were, but still. It was like I wasn’t even a living, sentient being to them. I was just an experiment. Something to observe, but never empathize with.

I held on to that anger as they shocked me again and again. After that, things grew too hazy, and I couldn’t keep track of what was going on. It was all torrential surges of pain followed by a slow slide toward normalcy, but never quite getting there before the next wave rolled in.

When my mind finally cleared enough for me to actually observe what was happening around me, I saw that the electricpaddles were gone, and they were hooking me up to an IV bag. I had no idea what was in there, but I was sure it wasn’t good. Considering their warm-up had been trying to fry my brain, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing what round two would look like.

Not that I had a choice.

Once more, I fought against the silver restraints locking me down, and once more, that did absolutely nothing but bruise my wrists. I didn’t need the scientists’ input to know it was taking me longer to heal.

Fuck.

On top of torturing me, which I wasn’t really a fan of, they were getting all sorts of vital information on my species that probably would not go into good hands. I hated the idea of the brothers being more knowledgeable on how to exploit my kind.

The concern in my mind was quickly obliterated as burning pain consumed my entire body. I tried to resist it at first, but it overrode every single one of my senses. All I heard was my own ragged screaming. My vision was blurry and red, like I was too low on health in a video game. I could taste my own blood on my tongue and smell a strange chemical concoction wafting from my skin. As for feeling… It was pure, undiluted agony, unlike anything I’d ever felt before, and I hadn’t exactly had an easy life.

With no way to fight it, the only thing I could do was retreat from it. I buried myself in my mind, trying to dissociate into happier, warmer memories.

I thought of the first time I lost a tooth, and Ricky explained the concept of the tooth fairy to me. I didn’t have parents at the time to place a quarter under my pillow, yet one had been there when I woke up. Now, I had no doubt it was my best friend or his mother taking on a role they never should have had to.

I thought of when my father came home from a long trip to recover part of our territory from an encroaching pack to findme having burnt some toast in an effort to make him something to eat. A strange smile had crossed his features and then he’d hugged me. Back then I’d thought he was laughing at my silly mistake, but my adult perspective told me he’d been crying.

I wished I’d had more time with him. I wished he hadn’t been killed by another power-hungry alpha who wanted to forcibly subjugate our pack.

But I couldn’t delve into that memory now. No, now was time for happiness. For all those warm little moments that made life worth living. The times in between. The smiles, the jokes between friends, the good meals shared in warm kitchens, the soft touches. All of it.

Of course, thinking of good and soft things brought up so many memories of Ven. In the grand scheme of things, we hadn’t spent that much time together, but it didn’t surprise me how many of my happy recollections had her as the lead actress. The way the sun shone through the windows of her greenhouse onto her hair while she worked. The smell of the soil as the two of us spent time together in her garden, creating food in a way I’d never had before. Sure, I’d hunted many times throughout my life, but that was always taking a life. Vanessa? Shemadelife, which dazzled me right down to my core.

So, I let her protect me. I let her be my haven away from the torture. I let myself get lost in the memory of her smile, find comfort in the recollection of her scent, to relax into the ghost of her touch as if it was happening at that very moment.

It didn’t completely block out the pain, but it made it survivable, and that was all I needed. Because these wizards or whatever they were could do whatever they wanted to me, but eventually, I would find a way to get back to my pack. I was their alpha, after all, and I had a mission. One way or another, I would find a way out.

Back to my pack.

Back to Ven.

It was with her on my mind that I allowed myself to fall into the blissful nothingness. Because unlike so many other times in my life, I wasn’t truly alone.

How long hadI been held in the strange prison I’d ended up in?

I didn’t know.

Part of me thought it could only be days, yet another part felt like it could be years.

I was so darn hungry it felt like my stomach was eating itself, yet it felt like I was constantly nauseated to the point of losing whatever I had last eaten. They didn’t feed us, at least as far as I could tell, just kept us attached to those cursed IV bags. It didn’t always hurt, which suggested that some were for experimentation, and some were for sustenance, but I was still wary of them.

Not that it really mattered.

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