Kaiden's body breaks down

Kaiden has been feeling feverish this past week. His body is heavy yet his head feels light. The fever-reducing pills he found in the medicine cabinet are about to run out, but his temperature has not gone down.

He huffs out a hot breath as he climbs the stairs, grateful that at least there's no teal-eyed Beta to scold him for moving so slow. He wants to move the sweat-slicked hair sticking to his face, but such a simple action will take too much of his energy. The folded clothes in his arms feel as heavy as metal and every step he takes pulls an ache from muscles he didn't know were there.

Kaiden promises himself that after this - after he puts away Damon's clothes, he'll get some well-deserved sleep. It's the perfect chance since the Alpha-Beta couple won't be returning tonight. Not that they informed him, they never do, but he overheard Heath talking about celebrating in some fancy hotel. With the Beta being occupied preparing for a celebration, Kaiden has been given a reprieve from Heath's criticisms.

Celebrating for what, he doesn't know, but he'll be lying if he says he isn't jealous.

Kaiden wishes he can go out and have some fun too, except the pain in his head doesn't allow him to think of anything other than sleeping.

Yeah, he supposes in his sluggish mind, sleep sounds heavenly right about now.

Kaiden pushes the door to Damon's room open with his shoulder. It takes a while to do so with his meager strength, but the door eventually gives in with a creak.

The room is empty, of course, with the owner being gone. Still, even in Damon's absence, his pheromones are everywhere.

Standing by the doorway, Kaiden inhales a lungful of that honey and ginger spice scent. It doesn't do anything to bring down his body temperature. In fact, he suspects it only makes him hotter, but his limbs do feel less heavy than before.

Kaiden crosses the room slowly, making his way to the antique wardrobe by one side of the wall.

As a busy man, Damon likes to have his most worn clothing arranged not in the large walk-in closet, but in the smaller, more accessible wardrobe. Kaiden doesn't question the habits of the rich - why they hoard pieces of fabric as if they're about to be naked the next day - he simply does his job.

He balances the clothes atop one slightly trembling hand as he uses the other to pull the closet door open by the handle.

The wardrobe, made of old oak, looms over him with its size. Kaiden is positive it can fit three people inside but right now, it only houses Damon's items and a metal safe somewhere in the back.

Here, Damon's scent is the strongest, his well-loved belongings stacked on top of each other. Black suits hang next to one another in an organized manner, mimicking the owner's somewhat inflexible personality.

Once Kaiden stands on tiptoe to place the clothes on a high shelf, a wave of heat rushes over him like a flood. A dam overflowing, starting from a small crack to a large hole, something in him breaks.

His pupils constrict and then dilate as he falls to his knees, no longer in control of his weak legs. If he was feeling hot before, then now he's absolutely burning. The heat isn't coming from outside, but somewhere from deep within. Worse, despite the boiling temperature in his body, he begins shivering from the cold.

The choker on his neck badly itches as his body is sweating in buckets. However, even that is nothing compared to how wet he is from below. Slick gushes down his legs in a slow torrent, his biological reaction unstoppable.

Kaiden is breathing hard, hands palming the floor while putting all his weight on the ground, trying to keep himself from falling face flat.

Everything /hurts/.

His skin feels like it's tearing at every pore and his brain is throbbing inside his skull.

It's almost as if … as if he's going into heat.

But that can't be. There's no way. His heat is nothing this /intense/, this /painful/.

Kaiden cries, the loud sound straining his throat, when the muscles in his stomach suddenly contract. His eyes sting and burn, his tears are wet and hot as big drops start dropping on the floor.

Dripping with sweat, tears, and something else he doesn't want to think about, he tries to stand on shaky knees.

He grabs the open door of the wardrobe for support, weak fingers clawing at the wood. Just as he's pulling himself upwards, another wave of extreme heat rolls over his body.

The full-on body shudder that runs from the top of his head to the tips of his toes almost, /almost/ distracts him from the sound of his beating heart, loud in his ears and threatening to force its way out his chest.

Almost, but not quite, not over each labored breath he's struggling with.

Kaiden forces his mind to think—think about how to ask for help or who to ask for help—but the pheromones in the air split his already wavering attention.

Alpha, his inner omega whines, Alpha can help.

No, he tells himself through gritted teeth, we have no alpha. We're alone.

His inner omega disagrees. It tells him that they can smell their alpha nearby. It chants Damon's name through the searing pain coursing through Kaiden's body.

Kaiden tries to fight, tries to hold on as best as he can to his rationality, but the human body can only withstand so much pain before the mind shuts it down to protect itself.

Nowhere close to dialing the emergency services, nowhere close to reaching for his phone, Kaiden's mind goes blank when his stomach cramps again. The searing hot pain disappears as his mind is pushed underneath somewhere hazy, a place where he can feel numb and not be in agony. Of course, this is only his mind activating his defense mechanisms, his body is still scorching, trembling from the suffering he's facing alone.

The whimper he releases is pitiful, sorrowful, but there's no one to hear him when he falls to the floor. His inner omega overtakes, instincts ruling over his every action, as he crawls inside the wardrobe, chasing the scent on Damon's clothes.

He breathes in and out, sniffing the Alpha's pheromones as if he's parched, and he might as well be. Kaiden whines, needy and desperate, as he pulls on every shirt and every pair of pants he can grab. A circle surrounds him in the limited space, clothes shielding him from all sides.

He still feels hot, and the inhibitor around his neck is suffocating, but with the weight of Damon's clothes piling on top of him, it's easier to ignore the pain.

Kaiden doesn't know how long he stays like that, flushed red, sweating on scented fabric, unable to release his own pheromones, before he drifts out of consciousness.