Second Chance Mates

-54- 🌹 The Man Behind The Trigger

[A/N - POV switches part way through]

TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of sexual assault and suicide. You may skip the italicized portion if you need to

"It ain't the gun. It's the man behind the trigger, gets blood on his fingers and runs. It ain't the lie. It's the way that the truth is denied."
~James Arthur, 'Suicide'

~~~

*Third Person POV*

| FIVE YEARS AGO |

With his heart beating erratically and alarm shooting through his veins, Mateo Pérez ran as fast as he could towards the pack house. The moment he heard the panicked voice of his best friend through their mind link, Mateo dropped what he was doing and sprinted to the pack house.

Ever since they were little kids, Mateo had always felt like it was his responsibility to watch after his best friend and Alpha, Easton Butler. While the red-haired boy insisted that he was strong enough to take care of himself, Mateo could sense that wasn't quite the truth. Deep down, Easton was lost and scared, and Mateo knew it.

No matter how many times Mateo tried to pry open Easton's shell, the young Alpha refused to shed his tough exterior. He was the Alpha of the Silver Woods Pack, and an Alpha mustn't show weakness. At least, that was what Easton believed.

Even Mateo's wolf, Maverick, sensed that there was a part of Easton that he kept bottled up. Buried beneath an avalanche of overcompensating masculinity. Buried so deep that not even Easton's wolf, Elias, had a clear understanding of how badly Easton was suffering.

His mind was tormented daily, long before he was abducted and tortured. The voice he would hear, telling him that he was a failure; that he was pathetic. The voice that seemed to ease up when Easton found his mate, only to return stronger than ever when his body and mind was violated by a group of vicious rogues.

After he was rescued, Easton shut down. Refused to tell anyone exactly what had been done to him. The nightmares still haunted his mind; saying the words out loud would be too much. Too real. More real than the phantom touches ghosting over his body, making his skin crawl and stomach churn.

He couldn't let them know how their Alpha was humiliated. How he was overpowered and stripped of his dignity in such a brutally horrific way. Easton knew he would rather die than have the entire world know what happened to him.

And that thought began to fester in his mind, until it manifested into an obsession. Death. An escape from the nightmares, from the voices, from the lying. It all seemed so much easier than having to suffer every single fucking day.

But he couldn't.

Not when he had a mate that needed him. Loved him. Anytime Easton felt his fingers twitch with the need to drag a blade over his forearms, he would picture Landon's face in his mind. How sad, how torn up Landon would be if Easton ever hurt himself.

Even so, Easton couldn't fight away the shadows that torn at his mind; the invisible hands that would choke all the oxygen out of him.

In his anguish, Easton called out to Mateo through their mind link. For what exactly? He didn't know. He was just so fucking tired of being alone, yet the idea of Landon seeing him so defeated made him feel even worse. Mateo was the one person who had already seen Easton at his worst; the one person who knew how to talk him off a ledge.