Reclaimed By My Alpha (Natalia and Andrei) novel Chapter 490

He Knows the Door to My Soul and Who Forgot to Novel 490

Chapter 490

“When you thought Natalia was dead,” she said after a long time, “what did you do?”

I closed my eyes. It was all such a blur. I just remembered Damon and Max and Jane. I remembered pain and exhaustion and misery. I remembered my brother’s blood, Max’s freezing form in the cold snow. I remembered nights without sleep.

“I focused on my family,” I said. “On my children. And my brother, who was injured.”

“Did that help?”

“For a while.”

“Do you always bury your emotions under your duty?”

I snapped my gaze toward her. She held my stare unflinchingly, and my throat bobbed. She was right, of

course.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I’ve been throwing myself into my work for months now. Ever since we came back, I’ve been distant from Natalia, always telling her that I have work to do. But really, I can’t bear to look at her or the children, even though I know I should be there, helping her with the baby.”

“Because of the dreams,” Dr. Kline pointed out. I nodded. “Do the dreams get worse when you’re close to them?” she asked, and I nodded again.

Dr. Kline wrote something else in her notebook. “That must be very frightening,” she said after a moment.

“I’m not frightened.”

“No?”

“No. I’m just… frustrated. This shouldn’t be happening. I should be able to control it.”

“PTSD isn’t something you can control through willpower alone, Andrei. It’s a physiological response to trauma. Your brain is trying to protect you from perceived threats, even when those threats are no longer present.”

I knew that. Intellectually, I knew that. But it still felt like a weakness. Like I was failing somehow. Failing myself, failing my family, failing my pack.

“When you

have these dreams,” Dr. Kline continued, “what do you sense? Can you describe a single sensation? Sight, sound, taste, touch?”

My throat tightened. I didn’t want to answer that question. Didn’t want to describe the images that haunted me. Natalia’s dead eyes. The twins on the floor. The blood on my hands. But the doctor was staring at me, waiting.

“I see the people I love dying,” I said quietly. “And I’m the one killing them. I have blood on my hands.”

Saying it out loud made me feel so exposed. Raw. Like I’d just ripped open the wounds on my knuckles.

Dr. Kline shut her notebook and set it aside, clasping her hands in her lap. “That sounds incredibly painful to experience.”

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Chapter 400

+25 BONUS

That was all she had to say? That everything sounded frightening? Painful? Stressful? Yeah, of fucking course it was.

“It’s not real,” I said, although I think I was saying it more to myself than to her.

“Sometimes, the fact that it isn’t real, that our minds can conjure up these images on her own, is even more terrifying than if it were real,” she said.

My jaw clenched. “I didn’t say I was terrified.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I need to go,” I said abruptly.

Dr. Kline blinked. “We still have thirty minutes left.”

“I don’t care. I need to leave.”

“Andrei, if I said something to offend you, I’m sorry.”

“No, you didn’t.” I was already heading for the door. “I just… I shouldn’t have come here. This was a mistake. Thanks, but I won’t be coming back.”

“It’s okay to be afraid,” she called after me.

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. “I already told you I’m not afraid.”

“Maybe you are, and you just don’t know what fear is supposed to feel like when you’re not in the middle of action.”

I looked back at her. She was watching me with those calm, knowing eyes. Like she could see right through me. Like she knew I was lying.

B

“I’ve never been afraid of anything,” I said coldly. “And I’m not afraid now.”

“If you say so.‘

”

With that, I yanked open the door and walked out. The receptionist called something after me about scheduling another appointment, but I ignored her, storming right through the lobby, and out into the chilly spring air.

+25 BONUS

Chapter 491