The One He Saved

: Feeling Her Pain

Ezra

I step into the shower feeling so fucking useless. It’s been months since Margot has had a nightmare. It used to be almost every night that I’d hear her pleading in her sleep, and I’d rush to her bedroom, only to have her wake terrified, pushing me away, terrified of me and my touch.

I hate seeing that haunted look in her eyes. She works so hard to be strong, to maintain the persona of a woman who hasn’t suffered what she has. During the day, it works. But at night, when her conscious mind goes to sleep, her subconscious comes forward and forces her to deal with everything she’s trying to push away.

I knew taking her back to her previous pack would be difficult. However, it’s one thing to know it will be difficult and quite another to wake up with your mate wrapped in your arms, pleading for her first mate not to lock her into the room that is the focus of half her nightmares. I’m not sure which is worse, the nightmare about the room or the nightmare of him forcing himself on her. Both make me want to kill someone.

I scrub my face under the water, trying to get the pitiful sound of Margot’s pleading out of my head. She has worked so hard to make herself physically stronger, sometimes to the point that I have to force her to let her body rest. I’ve helped her as much as she’ll let me, sparring with her when she was weak, giving her pointers on how to be a better, stronger fighter. Now, she’s an incredible fighter. She can take on anyone in our pack and defeat them except me. But at night, when she can’t push away her past, the sound of her desperate pleas nearly breaks me.

And for me, it’s not just hearing her. I marked her. When she killed Joshua, the asshole who didn’t deserve her, she was ready to die. But I’d already told her that I couldn’t and wouldn’t lose another mate in my lifetime and I meant it. So, when she let go, ready to give herself to the Moon Goddess, I marked her. It saved her life, but it also created a one-way bond between us, one way from her to me.

So, when she has her nightmares, I have a front row seat to see exactly what happened to her. I not only hear her begging and pleading for Joshua to not put her in the hole, but through her eyes, I can see him dragging her. I can feel her terror. And when she has her nightmares about him forcing himself on her, I can feel her pain as sharply as she does.

I bend over in the shower and wretch as the emotions and images in my mind take over. I have no idea how Margot suffered through such torment. I have no idea how she suffered with that man forcing himself on her day after day, knowing that she made sure she’d never give him a pup. She willingly accepted his rough treatment of her, silently plotting against him, and then she suffered even more when she didn’t get pregnant by being thrown into the darkness.

If things hadn’t changed for her, I have no doubt that Margot would have eventually succumbed to the call of death, just like Diana, my first mate, did.

I tried. I tried so hard after I marked Diana to be the man and mate she wanted. But the damage was done. I followed the laws and because I did, my mate chose to kill herself and our unborn child, rather than be with me. I spent years suffering from her loss, years believing that I would never get another chance at love or to have an opportunity to have an heir for my pack.

Then, I’d watched Hunter, my mate’s brother, in a court hearing ask his mate to submit to him. He didn’t demand it, he didn’t force her, he asked, and I’d watched as she had willingly submitted to him right there in front of a room full of Alphas. I have no doubt that Diana would never have had that level of trust and faith in me.

In that moment, something twisted inside me. Would Diana still be alive if I had merely asked her to submit to me? I have no idea. Sometimes, I think that Diana sent Margot to me, like she gave me a second chance mate so I could find happiness. But in order to have it, I’d have to work harder than I’ve ever worked for anything in my life, so that I would never, ever take my mate bond for granted again. If so, then Diana knew me better than I ever knew myself.

I was an arrogant Alpha once upon a time. I wasn’t cruel. I didn’t look down on she-wolves and definitely not my mate. But I was arrogant. Now I know that arrogance has no place in the mate bond. Your mate is your equal, or you are not true mates.

I watch the bile wash down the drain, then I rinse my mouth out and bathe. Today is going to be a hard day. I’m not sure I would be strong enough to get through it if I were Margot. But she is. I meant it when I told her she’s the strongest person I know. She has suffered so much in her short life, but she’s still here. She’s still fighting to prove how strong she is. And she’s still winning. Joshua is dead and she’s here, ready to give his pack to someone more deserving than he ever was.

I get dressed in the bathroom, knowing that nakedness isn’t something that Margot is okay with. However, when I step into the bedroom, I realize she’s waiting for me to eat.

“Margot?” I ask.

“You need to eat too, Ezra,” she says. She holds my gaze and I realize that, while she was dealing with her own demons, she didn’t miss the fact that I was dealing with mine. It’s yet another reason why I love this woman with everything in me. It doesn’t matter how overwhelmed she is, she still sees more than most people.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,” I say, sitting down across from her.

“The last time I didn’t wait for you, I think you ate one whole piece of bacon,” she scolds.

I smile. It’s good to hear her being sarcastic. It means the nightmare isn’t keeping hold of her.

“I like bacon,” I say, grabbing a piece and eating it while I grin at her.

“One piece isn’t going to fill that cavernous void that Thorin has inside your stomach,” she says, referencing my wolf.

He growls happily at her acknowledgement and her unspoken desire to take care of us.

“There are many things that I would like to eat, but have yet to be offered to me,” he says before I can get control of him.

I watch her cheeks turn pink.

“Sorry, Margot. I didn’t pull Thorin in fast enough,” I say.

Rather than change the subject, Margot surprises me by focusing her gaze on me.

“Thorin, you are a very naughty wolf, and naughty wolves do not get rewards. You would do well to remember that,” she scolds.

Surprisingly, my wolf looks and acts properly disciplined.

“Sorry, Luna.”

She looks at me a moment longer, before returning to her breakfast.

My wolf may not agree, but I take this as a win.

: House of Horrors

Margot

I know Ezra well enough now to know that he hates it when I have a nightmare. I’m not sure how much our one-way bond allows him to see and feel, but I know it’s enough that it brings a haunted look to his face.

And he may have tried to hide his retching in the shower, but I still heard it, so I waited to eat with him, hoping that, together, we could both manage to get our food down. It worked, but I don’t think either of us is feeling very good as we leave Ezra’s pack lands and head to Joshua’s.

“Would it be easier for you if we stopped at your mother and father’s pack lands first, Margot?” he asks me.

Would it be easier for me to see my childhood room, the place where I was just as powerless as I was in Joshua’s packhouse? The place where I watched my father berate my mother daily, forcing her to submit to his rule regardless of how she felt about his decisions?

“No. Thank you, Ezra,” I say, not looking away from the landscape that is going by much too quickly outside the car.

He reaches over and takes my hand. “You’re not weak or alone anymore, Margot. You are a strong woman. You killed the man who tormented you for years. He is gone and you are here, surviving, ready to give his pack, his things, to someone of YOUR choice,” he says.

“Well, technically, it’s whoever wins the competition.”

“No, it was your choice to allow that. But if you decided that our omega, Ryan, was the one who deserved your old pack, you could give it to him. It’s your choice, Margot. Joshua has no say in it. He has no voice. You have all the control now.”

When he says it like that, it sounds like I should feel empowered, but I don’t. I don’t feel that strength. I only feel the pressure, the weight of going back. But I know it has to be done.

When we drive onto my old pack lands, the dread in my gut is like a dead weight, threatening to bring up everything I ate earlier this morning.

“You are NOT alone, Margot. You are not weak. You are not bound to that man. You are a strong, powerful woman. A woman who is in control of her own destiny and a woman who gets to decide the fate of this pack,” Ezra says, his voice, and probably Thorin’s, growling with the intensity of his words.

When he pulls up to the packhouse, I can see that no one has been here in the year or so that it’s been since I killed Joshua. The planters in the front of the packhouse are overgrown with weeds and the perfectly manicured lawn from before is now wild and unkempt.

The packhouse is dark and it not only looks abandoned, but it also looks haunted. I stare at it, fighting with myself to get out and face my fears.

Ezra, to his credit, sits with me, but remains quiet. He lets me fight my demons, lets me argue with myself about going back into that place that is the source of all my nightmares.

“Let’s get this over with,” I finally say. I know this isn’t the end of it. Next week, I’ll be here with hundreds of contenders for the competition. Because I used to live here, I’ll be the one giving the tour of the packhouse. They won’t know the torment I suffered here, but I will.

I step out of the car and begin to walk to the front steps. Almost instantly, Ezra is there, grabbing my hand and pulling me to a stop.

“I told you, Margot. You’re not alone. I’m going in with you. I’ll stay by your side. I won’t leave you alone, not for a moment.”

When I look at him, his eyes are burning with an intensity that I’ve only ever seen after I’ve had a nightmare. I realize that the look he’s got is more about what he’s NOT saying than what he is saying. Right now, what he’s not telling me is that he’s willing to walk through hell with me, carry me, if necessary, to make sure that I make it to the other side.

Something about that brings me enough comfort that I feel like I can do this. It may break me, but at least I’ll know that I did it. And I know that with Ezra’s help, I’ll make it to the other side.

We walk up the steps, and Ezra pushes open the door. It squeaks, the hinges complaining about being opened after so long without being used.

Stale air blasts out of the packhouse, leaving the scent of dust and disuse behind.

“It will need to air out,” I say, my mind on autopilot.

“We can open some windows before we leave,” he says.

When we walk in, it looks like the pack members were just swooped out of this space suddenly. There are jackets resting on seat backs that are now covered in dust. The kitchen, when we walk further into the packhouse, looks like it was left without being cleaned after a large meal. The scent of rotting food is long gone now, but the remnants of the meal linger all around the kitchen and when we walk into the dining room, they are there too.

I know, because I live in Ezra’s pack, that most of the people who used to live here have moved to his pack. There are other packs where my previous pack members and my mother’s were offered as a place to live and they agreed, but most of the pack members came to Ezra’s pack as the closest pack to this one.

“It feels like a time capsule,” I murmur.

“It does. When you killed Joshua, everything must have just stopped. It feels like time stopped in here,” he says, looking around.

“Do we leave it like this, or do we have someone clean it up?” I ask.

“Leave it. When the omegas come in to help cook for the competition, they can decide what to keep and what to toss. I’ll make sure they know that anything that isn’t salvageable is okay to throw out,” he says.

We walk to the back of the packhouse. The pool that once was the focal point of the pack’s parties is now green, and it looks like it’s become infested with frogs and probably snakes. Even back here, what used to be a well-maintained space is now overgrown with grass as high as my waist.

“I’m not sure this pack is worthy of being won,” I say, turning away.

“Anyone who agrees with you is welcome to step down and not compete. But I doubt others will feel that way. It’s a lot of work, yes. But it’s an opportunity for someone to become an Alpha, something that doesn’t happen very often.”

“Except with us. It seems to happen a lot with us,” I say, dryly.

We walk through the omegas’ quarters, then the warriors’ quarters as well as the conference room and offices.

When I can’t put it off anymore, we walk up the stairs to the Gamma floor. We walk down the hallway, looking in the rooms.

“There’s a lot of space here for pregnant she-wolves. We have quite a few now, so that’s good. The unmated wolves can sleep outside, but the mated wolves, especially those with young pups and pregnant mates, will want to have a space to sleep away from the elements in case it rains or is cold during the competition,” he says.

“Very true.”

We make our way to the Beta floor and it’s much the same as the Gamma floor. There are a couple of rooms that need to be cleaned out, but overall, it will be a good space for people to sleep for the next two weekends.

Finally, we make our way to the Alpha floor. I stop at the end of the hall, looking at the place where all of my nightmares originate.

“Talk to me, Margot,” Ezra says softly.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I say, so quietly that I’m not even sure he can hear me.

“Then I’ll go for you,” he says, releasing my hand that he’s held throughout every part of this. He takes a step forward, but I stop him.

“No.” I close my eyes, fighting against the fear that threatens to claw away my insides and the nausea that threatens to make me vomit my fear all over this floor. “I have to do this.”

He steps back and wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me against him. I didn’t realize how cold I was until I feel the blazing heat of his body against mine.

“Then, I’m with you, Margot. Always.”

I nod, still staring at the doorway of my nightmares.

We make our way to the door that was the bedroom I shared with Joshua.

Ezra reaches out and puts his hand on the doorknob. “Ready?”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath, willing the tears that are burning in my eyes to go away.

I nod, my throat so tight that I can’t speak.

When the door opens, I expect to smell his scent. I expect to smell Joshua. But his scent is long gone from this room. Instead, it smells like it did when we walked into the packhouse downstairs, stuffy and dusty.

However, when I open my eyes, I see it across the room, the place that was my hell.

I stop, unable to move forward, just staring at the small space where I spent so many hours, so many days. The place of my nightmares.

Ezra releases me, and I instantly miss the warmth of his body.

“Stay here,” he says softly. His voice is tight, full of anger and another emotion I can’t name. He walks to the room, the space where Joshua used to lock me when I didn’t give him a pup every month.

I watch as Ezra extends his claws and swipes them over the bolt lock that is dangling on the door. It clatters to the floor with a sound so loud it makes me jolt. Then, Ezra opens the door and steps inside.

He has to duck. The space was never meant to be comfortable. It was meant to punish.

I couldn’t stand up straight and neither can Ezra. He’s larger than I am, so his body barely fits inside the small area.

“How long, Margot? How long did he force you to stay in this space?”

His voice is devoid of emotion and somehow, that makes it sound more deadly.

“It would depend.”

“On?”

“How angry he was.”

“What did you do? When you were in here, what did you do?” he asks.

“I sat on the floor, covering my head with my hands. Sometimes I would rock, trying to keep myself from falling apart.”

I watch as he tries to sit, pulling his legs up to try to make them fit. They don’t.

I can feel the heat of his fury blazing off him even from here.

“What is this?” he asks, his voice deceptively calm as he points to the pot that Joshua kept in the space.

“My toilet.”

He slowly stands, struggling to get up from the small space. Then, without a word, he walks over to the bed and rips the sheets, blankets, and pillows off of it. He grabs the mattress and begins dragging it from the room.

“Ezra?”

He stops to look at me, and his eyes are dark with anger and pain.

“We’re going to burn this,” he says before walking out of the room, dragging the mattress behind him.

: The Burning Bed

Ezra

It’s all I can do to not lose my fucking shit and tear this fucking packhouse down to the ground. I want to burn it all. I want to see this awful place destroyed.

Through our bond, I could see everything that Margot suffered. I needed to be inside the space he kept her, needed to feel just how tight those confines were so I could better understand her fear of enclosed spaces.

And now I do and all I want is to have Joshua alive again so I can kill him slowly and painfully for what he did to my mate.

I don’t want to leave her alone, especially not in that room of horrors, so I toss the mattress over the banister and let it drop three stories while I go back into the bedroom and grab the box spring. I do the same with it, grabbing the bedding on the way and tossing all of it over the banister before coming back to pull Margot in my arms.

She hasn’t moved a muscle, as if she’s unable make her body leave this place where she suffered so much.

“Is there anything else we need to see on this floor?” I ask, wrapping my arms more tightly around her when she leans into me. Her body is shivering and I know it's from fear, more than cold.

“We should check the other rooms, just to be thorough,” she says against my chest.

“Do you want to stay here, or do you want to come with me?” I ask her, giving her a choice since she obviously never had one in this environment before.

“I want to stay with you,” she says.

“Okay.”

I tuck her under my arm, keeping my arm wrapped tightly around her as we walk down the hall. As quickly as I can, I check the other rooms, making sure no critters and no squatters have taken over while the packhouse was vacant.

When we’ve cleared the floor, I close the door to Alpha’s bedroom as we pass, and we make our way back downstairs.

“Do you want to sleep inside tonight?” I ask her.

“No! No, please. I can’t sleep here.”

“Hey,” I say, taking her face in my hands. “That’s why I asked. It’s your choice. If you want to sleep outside, we will. If you want to sleep in the car, we will. You have control, Margot. You get to decide. Whatever you want, that’s what we’ll do. Okay?”

Her eyes are haunted and I fucking hate it. It’s the look that Diana had at the end. Back then, I didn’t recognize it for what it was. I didn’t realize it was a disconnect, a separation from whatever it is that keeps us moving forward in this life.

“Margot?” I growl, shaking her a bit.

Finally, she nods. “Okay. I’m in charge. I want to sleep outside. I’m cold, Ezra.”

“Then let's get that fucking bed burning and we’ll have one hell of a bonfire to warm you up, my mate,” I say.

She nods.

“Is there anything else we need to burn, Margot? Anything else that holds horrible memories for you here?”

She turns and looks around. “No. It was all in that room.”

“Okay. Why don’t you go to the car and get the food we brought for tonight. I threw some sleeping bags in the back as well, just in case. I’ll get the fire going while you do that, okay?” I ask her.

She nods. I’m not sure she realizes that she’s clinging to my shirt, holding on to me as if she’s afraid to let go. When she doesn’t move away, I continue to hold her, letting her take whatever time she needs to get control of her emotions and feel strong again.

Finally, I feel her body begin to relax and she releases her grip on my shirt.

I lean down and gently press my lips to hers.

“I love you. I’m here for you. You’re not alone. You’re not weak. You’re in charge. You’re in control here, Margot,” I say, making sure to keep eye contact with her so I know she hears me.

She nods and, this time, she steps away. “I’ll go get the food.”

I watch her as she walks out of the packhouse. She’s a bit unsteady on her feet, but as she steps outside, she pushes her shoulders back, forcing herself to regain her composure as she pulls on the inner strength she still can’t acknowledge that she has.

As soon as she’s outside, I grab the bedding and begin dragging it outside. I already planned to burn the bed. I’d seen what Joshua had done to her through her nightmares, so I knew I wasn’t going to leave any semblance of the place where he raped my mate. But the room was different. In her nightmares, there’s only darkness. I couldn’t see the room, or the space. That’s because there was no space and no windows, only the darkness that terrifies her.

I keep my senses tuned to her while I stack the bedding and the mattresses along with some dry wood that I collect around the packhouse. There’s plenty of it. The place hasn’t been maintained in a very long time. Whoever wins this pack will have their work cut out for them. But honestly, the ones who win don’t care. I know when Jake, my previous Beta, won his pack, he told me it was worth every bit of manual labor he and Letti put into it to make it theirs. According to him, it actually made it feel more like his own pack and the pack members felt the same. So maybe it’s a good thing that these packs need so much work. It gives a new pack a sense of camaraderie and belonging to make their home their own.

When I get back with the wood, Margot is laying out the food for us. She’s already pulled out the sleeping bags, and I see that she’s also pulled out the lighter fluid I brought, in case we needed it to light the fire. However, I don’t think we’re going to need it. Cloth burns pretty easily.

“Margot,” I call quietly. The sun has set and the night is just starting to settle in. Staring the fire now will give us some light for the rest of the evening.

When she looks up at me, I beckon her over. “Why don’t you do the honors. It should be you burning away the memories of your past.”

I hand her the matches and step back, giving her space to decide what she wants to do.

She looks around and picks up a small stick, one that is dry and will make a great starter for the fire. She lights it, watching it burn, then steps up to the wood and bedding that I have stacked up.

She squats down, putting the lit wood underneath the box spring. It lights quickly and she moves the lighter to the bedding which also begins burning pretty quickly. When she gets the mattress burning as well, the fire already starting to blaze brightly, she steps back, looking at her handiwork.

“Fuck you, Joshua!” she growls.

I move behind her, wrapping an arm around her waist. She leans against me and together we watch the remnants of her past go up in flames.