Chapter 22
Something was wrong.
Elm dragged himself groggily out of sleep, a sense of dread prickling at his heightened senses.
The other side of the bed was too hot, the air in the room thick and cloying.
At first, he lay there taking stock of his body, confused why he felt off, worried his heat was coming.
There weren’t any cramps though, and his skin didn’t feel like it was burning.
He clenched his nether muscles, but the ache of being empty didn’t sweep over him like it did when he was desperate to be held down and knotted.
He rolled his head, considering waking Levi to tell him something wasn’t right, and ended up gasping and springing up instead.
“Hey!” Elm cupped Levi’s face, breath catching in his throat when he felt how high his temperature was. He shook him, but the alpha gave no reaction. “Levi, wake up!”
There was a glistening sheen of sweat on the alpha, and his brow was pinched. When Elm tossed off the covers, he saw he was clenching his hands into tight fists at his side, hard enough his nails must have punctured through his palms, because the smell of blood was apparent.
“Wake up!” Elm shook him by the shoulders, but all that did was have the alpha’s head lolling. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
What did he do?!
What—
His eyes landed on Levi’s multi-slate, which was set on the end table on his side of the bed. In the couple of weeks they’d been here, Elm hadn’t bothered trying for the device, and the alpha had grown laxer about taking it off for bathing and sleeping.
Elm hadn’t seen a point to try stealing it.
Even if he were able to call Kian, what then?
There was the risk that the Eumia showed up and Elm ended up hurting them with his chaotic pheromones.
Since he’d needed Levi to stabilize anyway, and he was no longer being mistreated to the degree he had been, staying put made the most sense.
But this was different.
He snatched the device, relieved when he found it wasn’t locked. There weren’t many contacts, so it only took him a second to find the number he’d been looking for, hitting the call button and nibbling on his bottom lip as the line began to ring.
“Pick up,” he hissed, every second feeling like it was an hour.
“Leviathan,” Baal’s voice finally echoed from the speaker. “Is—”
“He’s—” Elm only managed to get the one word out before the multi-slate was grabbed out of his hand.
Levi ended the call and chucked the device to the side, hard enough it hit the wall. He was already moving before it landed on the floor, rolling over Elm so that he was on top of him, vision clearly unfocused, breathing labored.
It felt like being engulfed by an oven.
“You’re sick!” Elm pushed against the alpha’s chest, snapping his teeth when Levi gave a low rumbly growl. “Stop that. You’re ill. I was calling your underboss for help. I think you might need to go to the hospital.”
“No.” Levi squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his forehead to Elm’s chest, inhaling deeply before he groaned. With one swift move, he practically tossed himself to the side, landing on his back in the spot on the bed Elm usually occupied. “In the drawer. My pills.”
Elm scrambled to open the end table drawer, frowning when he found the packet of gum he was always seeing the alpha chew. After riffling around and finding nothing else, he picked them up and turned. “These?”
The alpha tore the packet from his grasp and frantically popped a tiny white circle free. He dropped it into his mouth, chewed quickly, and swallowed, then went still, clearly struggling against whatever discomfort he was enduring.
Across the room, the multi-slate chimed, but when Elm went to retrieve it, Levi captured his wrist, stopping him.
“It’s probably Baal,” Elm said, trying and failing to pry the alpha’s fingers off. His grip was tight enough it was starting to hurt, but he didn’t say anything about it. “Levi.”
“I’ll be fine in a minute,” he replied, voice guttural and scratchy, very unlike how he usually sounded. “Don’t let anyone else come. Otherwise…”
“Otherwise…?” he prompted when the alpha’s sentence trailed off, but Levi merely shook his head against the pillow. Fine. If the stubborn idiot refused to call for help, Elm couldn’t stop him. “What should I do?”
“Nothing. Just sit here. Stay.”
“At least let me go get a washcloth. We need to try and get your temperature down.”
“No.”
“Levi—”
“I said no.”
A sharp flick of aggressive pheromones snapped against Elm’s skin and he recoiled.
The alpha immediately reached for him, grabbing onto his forearms. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
“Yeah. It barely stung.” That wasn’t a lie. Just a quick flash of mild pain and then nothing. “Lay back down.” He urged Levi back into a lying position. “Five minutes. We’ll stay like this for that long, and then I’m going to go get a washcloth and you’re going to let me. Agreed?”
Levi hesitated, clearly not fond of that plan, but must have seen Elm’s determination. “Okay.”
They’d spent some time in the hot spring last night after dinner, despite the chill. Had the alpha gotten sick from that? It seemed unlikely, since Levi could handle the cold even better than Elm could, but there was no denying the flu-like symptoms he was showing now.
A sudden pounding on the front door, loud enough it could even be heard from all the way up there, had Elm jumping. At the same time, the multi-slate began ringing again.
He got off the bed fast and went for it, ignoring how the alpha growled at him. Baal’s number flashed across the screen and Elm hit accept.
“Omega,” Levi tried to get him to come back, but Elm was too concerned about his health to be blindly obedient.
“Zan is outside, let him in,” Baal instructed, his worry obvious.
Elm moved to the door, practically jogging down the hall to the stairs. “Something is wrong with Levi,” he explained as he went. “He’s burning up, but he says he doesn’t want help.”
There was a pause and then, “Elm Erskine?”
“Duh.” He reached the second landing, then picked up the pace when he heard Levi stumbling after him. The guy was in no condition to be moving about. “Who else would it be?”
“How did you get his multi-slate?”
“Are you even listening to me?” he snapped. “The Dominus is sick! Do something!”
Elm’s feet hit the final landing and he rushed to the front door, undoing the locks and opening it up to find an unfamiliar alpha standing on the porch. “Zan?”
The alpha was in a defensive pose, suspiciously staring Elm down until Baal’s voice trickled out of the device again.
“Zan,” Baal sighed in annoyance, “false alarm.”
“What?” Elm glared at the multi-slate he was holding. “What the hell do you mean?!”
Before the underboss could answer, Levi leapt over the balcony on the second level, landing on his hands and feet in the living room.
Elm was momentarily shocked into silence, giving the alpha ample time to storm forward. The multi-slate ended up on the floor again, and then Elm was dragged away from the door, a wave of targeted aggressive pheromones flung in that direction.
Zan dropped, hand going to his throat as he choked on seemingly nothing.
“Leave,” Levi demanded, right before he slammed the door shut in the soldier’s face and twisted the locks back into place. He didn’t turn to face Elm again right away, resting his head against the wood instead as he struggled to even out his breathing.
Elm went to say something, but then he smelled it.
Maybe there’d been hints of it on the air this whole time, and he’d simply been too distracted to notice. Or perhaps it was because of his inexperience with such things. Or maybe even it’d been easier to miss because Levi had been holding it back.
He wasn’t anymore.
The scent of an alpha in rut was like a sucker punch to the gut.
Elm’s body responded immediately, his muscles tightening, his dick hardening.
He felt a gush of wetness between his cheeks, and an electric sensation unlike anything he’d ever felt seemed to zap straight through him, from his head to his toes.
“Run,” Levi instructed, but Elm’s mind was too busy trying to make sense of what was going on to process quick enough.
“What?” He retreated a step instinctively.
The alpha growled and finally turned, his eyes glowing a molten silver when he set them on Elm. His nostrils flared. “Run, omega. Don’t let me catch you. That’s an order.”
Elm reacted before his mind could catch up with what he was doing, spinning on his heels and darting up the stairs as fast as he could. He’d only made it part way when the alpha shot forward, giving chase.
His heart leapt in his chest, a wave of fear, an emotion he hadn’t felt in a month or so, overtaking him, spurring him on.
He miscalculated in his panic and hit his shoulder against the archway on the second level, the impact causing him to stumble and fall.
He tumbled off the platform, already rolling back onto his feet before his body could register the pain.
He darted around the couch, turning into the nearest hallway, alarm causing muscle memory to take control. It wasn’t until he spotted the door to the studio that he realized that’s where he’d been heading. If he was fast, he’d have time to barricade the door with the drafting table.
Elm had just made it into the room when he felt the alpha catch up, yelping when he was shoved forward. He crashed into the paint shelves, and ended up knocking over one of the gallon tubs in his haste to try and grab the edge of the shelf.
He hit the ground hard enough the wind was knocked out of him, the can of white paint landing at his side, exploding and spilling everywhere. Some of it splattered over him, drops getting on his cheek, others smearing across the silver pajamas he’d worn to bed.
He hardly had a chance to slide around in the mess before the alpha was on him, tearing the silk material off of Elm’s upper body with a strength that left him gasping and floundering. Elm was flipped onto his stomach, crying out when he tried to crawl away, only to find his hips captured.