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Ezra wanted to curl up into a ball, but he couldn’t move. The dirt floor of the cellar was so cold he could feel it through his shirt, biting at his skin. Not just his skin. The cold was inside him, making him sick to his stomach. Tears trailed silently down his cheeks, but he couldn’t wipe them away. The only part of his body that he could force to move was his eyes, which were fixed on the cellar door. It had been so long since Maul threw him in here. His stomach ached with hunger and his mouth was so dry. For all he knew, he’d been down here for days. And he wasn’t sure he cared anymore whether Maul let him out or not.
His eyelids were so heavy, and everything hurt. For hours, he’d been trying to will the cold away, but it didn’t do him any good. It seeped into his bones, making him feel like they were splintering apart. He was so tired. All he wanted to do was go to sleep and never wake up again.
For one moment, he let his eyes drift closed, but quickly forced them open again. Maul hadn’t told him he wasn’t allowed to sleep, but he still feared what would happen if the older wolf found him doing so.
But the cold, the pain, that unrelenting ache in his eyelids were just too much. They dragged at him viciously, pulling him down until he couldn’t fight anymore.
It took him a moment to realize that he was in his wolf form. He didn’t even remember shifting, just the pain and desperation that had come before it.
With a whimper, Ezra tucked into a tighter ball, trying to trap the warmth he felt beneath his skin. Even without opening his eyes, he could hear the crackling of wood in the stove, smell it burning, making the scarred skin on his left foreleg tingle uncomfortably at the memory of Maul holding his arm against the metal. He wished he would just pass out again. He’d been halfway convinced he would die in the cellar, that Maul had finally decided to get rid of him. And the relief of realizing it wasn’t true was almost too much to handle.
There was a low growl behind him and Ezra stiffened. Suddenly, something seized the scruff of his neck and flung him aside. Ezra hit the wall with a yelp and dropped to the floor in a heap.
Even in their wolf forms, Maul towered over Ezra. As the older wolf advanced on him, Ezra whimpered again, backing himself into the corner as fear wracked his small body.
He pressed himself flat against the floor, rough wood scraping at his belly as he shrank down. A part of him just wanted to run, but it would do him no good. That only ever got him into more trouble.
I’m sorry. The frantic plea cycled over and over in his head as he cowered in front of Maul. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please.
He’d been punished enough. Maul had to see that. He could have died. As much as he hated to acknowledge or admit it, Ezra knew that in his own twisted way, Maul did care about him.
A low, pitiful whine rose up in Ezra’s throat as he rolled onto his side, exposing his belly in a gesture of submission to the other wolf. Terror roiled within him as Maul growled at him again. The other wolf could easily gut Ezra right now and they both knew it.
Maul lunged and Ezra yelped as teeth sunk into the back of his neck once more. He didn’t fight it as Maul flung him into the wall again.
He could feel Maul begin to shift before the transformation was even completed. Ezra followed suit, drawing on the pain to help force himself back into his human form. But he remained where he was, lying silent and still at the older wolf’s feet.
In one swift motion, Maul crouched down and grabbed Ezra’s hair. Ezra flinched but didn’t resist as he was forced to look into the eyes of his captor.
“Next time, I will leave you down there to rot,” Maul snapped, his grip tightening enough to yank a few of Ezra’s hairs out of his scalp. “Is that clear, son?”
Ezra’s stomach lurched at the use of the word. That was what had landed him in the cellar in the first place. Maul had called him that and Ezra had snapped. He’d attacked Maul, kept trying to hurt him even after the man pinned him down and warned him what would happen if he didn’t stop. And now, as Maul taunted him with that word, all he wanted was to do it again. To rip Maul’s throat out and finally free himself.
But he couldn’t hurt Maul in any way that actually mattered. And the pain he would suffer if he tried wasn’t worth it.
“Is. that. clear?”
“Yes,” Ezra said, his voice breaking. “Yes. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
When Maul finally released him, Ezra crumpled back to the floor, shaking with fear and relief. If Maul had chosen to leave him in the cellar this time, no one would know. He would have frozen to death and disappeared into nothingness, just another missing kid who would never be found.
But Maul hadn’t let that happen. And as terrifying as his threat was, Ezra doubted he would actually follow through with it, at least not intentionally. Because as twisted as it was, Maul did see Ezra as a son. Ezra could feel it every time the man looked at him.
He hated it. And he didn’t. Every scrap of affection Maul threw his way, Ezra clung to, desperate to fill the hole in his heart where his parents had been ripped out.
He wanted to go home. He wanted his real parents.
And he would never see them again.
After four years, he thought it shouldn’t hurt so much. But every time he was reminded of it, it was like an open wound being stabbed at.
He would never see his parents again.
Maul really was the closest thing he had to family anymore.
Maybe it was time for him to accept that, if only so he didn’t get hurt like this again.