Chapter Text
Mikaela Tepes wanted out of his body.
Headache and nausea mingled, washed over him in waves, and wracked him until the small wails he’d held captive in his throat were ejected one by one, broken and raspy. The fever was worse. He wondered why Krul’s sophisticated sectional sofa didn’t catch fire from his touch. By the minute, his frame, soiled and damp, grew hotter.
Within him, a war rampaged against nature itself, compelling him to obey his excruciating hormones, the outlook of such looking more and more dire.
This discomfort, however, paled in comparison to the abject misery in his heart, to the self-contempt festering in the pit of his stomach. It burrowed until it made a hole, spilling its contents and allowing them to plague his bloodstream like an infection.
Amidst the hyperthermia, his mind stayed woefully intact.
Tears washed out the colors of the crochet quilt hanging off the sofa.
In his limbs lived two unbearable aches: one from the torment of his body betraying him after eighteen years, another from the desire to throw his arms around his best friend’s neck and apologize until his vocal cords deteriorated.
Yuuichirou Ichinose had confessed to him, and he rejected it.
The excuse left his lips slow and careful, made an incision past his sternum, and plunged deep into his heart.
What a stupid lie - that his love belonged to someone else.
As if every moment he breathed wasn’t dedicated to that arresting smile, rivaling the sun in brilliance.
Like he wouldn’t sell his own flesh and blood to protect it.
He’d burn himself to the ground if it’d do Yuuichirou any good.
Pins and needles ran along his skin, a mere fraction of what he deserved for his transgression.
The unfairness of it all ate him alive.
Why, he wondered with every breath pained and deep, did his body fail him so utterly?
Another wave of nausea was the answer, coupled with a series of throbs echoing in the marrow of his bone.
His fist tightened around the confession letter he wrote to Yuuichirou—back when the certainty of being an alpha felt all but secure.
Yuuichirou had presented as an omega just a week prior, and the resulting elation brought grins to his face that couldn’t be contained, as well as entries upon entries about their future in his journal.
He had been halfway towards the dream life he anticipated. All his body had to do was make up the difference.
But it didn’t.
Footsteps emerged from the kitchen, and anticipatory stress welcomed itself to the cacophony of his suffering.
There he was, curled up in a ball, his discomfort on full display to his adoptive mother.
No doubt she’d put him in the wrong for being upset in the first place.
What he wouldn’t have given to unravel.
“The nurse called.”
In the depths of his heart, he hated no one more than the person who took away his right to Yuuichirou Ichinose. No matter how much the sliver of his brain that was still logical reminded him she was the mere messenger, not the arbiter, of his suffering, the image of her pity-filled, beady gray eyes sickened him to his stomach.
He despised her.
‘Give him back!’ he wanted to scream in the infirmary.
‘Give Yuu-chan back to me!’
“She found your pamphlets in the trash.”
Mikaela made no answer. To confirm would only worsen his desire to fade into the background.
His groveling for her to leave couldn’t be louder in his head.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Not a hint of the sympathy lived in that question, but neither did the anger he feared. She remained matter-of-fact, as though she already knew the answer but wanted to force it out of him.
“Describe it to me.”
From a source of energy Mikaela didn’t think he had, he shook his head. The resulting headache rattled to and fro in his skull.
A want unlike anything he’d ever experienced pounded in him like a heartbeat, and all he desired was the person he couldn’t have.
With this at the forefront of his mind, he listed not a single ailment, but a pathetic whimper of:
“This is wrong…”
A renewed sense of injustice ruptured forth and brought with it a fresh set of tears.
“It has to be a mistake—”
“Mikaela. I’ll ask you again. What’s wrong with you?”
He whimpered.
To relay his symptoms to his Krul Tepes, builder and founder of one of the top pharmaceutical manufacturers for suppressants, would only give him a conclusion he didn’t wish to hear.
He desired nothing more but to cling to the hope he ate something bad. Perhaps a virus had been dormant in his system and finally decided to replicate, which explained the immediate onslaught of malady. Then he’d end up in the hospital for food poisoning. Malaria. Anything.
Anything but this.
“I can’t…” he began, but his voice collapsed into the tuft of a decorative pillow.
In truth, he was waiting.
Waiting for the nurse to call and apologize for ruining his future. To tell him he was an alpha instead. He’d forgive her for the false alarm, throw up whatever made him sick, and life would go on as intended—
The confession letter he thought so tightly bound in his fist slipped out of his grasp like Krul took a Kleenex from a tissue box.
When had he become so weak?
Embarrassment was impossible as she ran her fingers across the crumpled pages. The weight of his other emotions crushed any shame he might’ve experienced. When an irritated sigh of “that boy again…” left Krul’s lips, he wanted to plead his case, tell her everything Yuuichirou Ichinose meant to him, but all he mustered was yet another mewl of devastation.
“It’s not fair…”
Without a doubt, he uttered the worst phrase possible in front of Krul, but he couldn’t help it.
There wasn’t enough mental preparation in the world to save him from the resulting heartbreak.
“… If I told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times.”
No. She had warned him about twenty times, each instance putting a damper on his excitement until a single gaze from Yuuichirou rekindled certainty in him anew.
“Do you recall? I told you not to get too attached to that kid before you figure out what you are.”
It didn’t matter.
He had wanted it too much. He couldn’t help but look forward to a life with Yuuichirou.
For so many years, that wish was all he had.
“Celebrating his presentation as an omega… how presumptuous of you—”
“Yuu-chan… told me he loved me.”
His admission was desperate, but if he let her into his heart just a bit… if she had a fraction of an idea that his affection was based on something real…
“I love him too.”
The thickness in his throat returned with a rush of torridity threatening to steal his train of thought.
He balled his up collar and tugged it away from his neck.
He knew better than to spill his heart to Krul. Yet part of him, the stupidest part of him where he laid all his hopes, wanted the comfort only a mother provided.
“But I… I said no! I rejected Yuu-chan! I told him I loved someone else! I lied! Right to his face! I—!”
His voice cracked. To speak exacerbated his nausea, but to lay down without a word proved impossible. His anger at the world, at himself, was a pressure valve broken.
“I’m not good enough! I can’t take care of him anymore! I can’t save him!”
Krul, averse to letting any more silence come between them, gave an answer slow yet urgent.
“Yes… there’s nothing you can do about it now. At least you acknowledge that much.”
Mikaela’s ribs grew tight; his breath constricted.
A chill broke through his fever, and the ceramic tap of a saucer placed on the coffee table made him flinch.
“Here.”
Krul didn’t leave time for him to guess what it was.
“Suppressants. The best ones on the market.”
No.
He didn’t need those.
This was but a nightmare, and at any moment he’d wake up with Yuuichirou by his side.
It felt nice, the delirium.
“You’re in heat, Mikaela. Take this, and everything will be over.
Yes, and so would his paradox.
To reject Yuuichirou Ichinose was a brief lapse into responsibility, reality, and the resulting grief returned him to a world where he might still be an alpha.
He didn’t want to leave it.
When silence reigned for too long, Krul apparently found it best to add yet another unhelpful consolation.
This one more devastating than the last.
“At the very least, I have a use for you,” she noted. “The son of a rival pharmaceutical company presented as an alpha the other day. I’ve been in discussion with the Eusford family for you to marry him.”
Mikaela didn’t want to sob, but another round of incessant throbbing, a longing both emotional and physical, coupled with the idea of giving himself to someone else, practically evicted it from his mouth.
And as always, this vulnerability went punished.
“Come now, Mikaela. I didn’t raise a stupid child. I will not tolerate one today.”
The tear of paper entered his ears like thunder, all-consuming.
Being halfway immobile rescued what bit of dignity he had left—he didn’t want to fall on his knees and collect the scraps off the floor.
“No one is going to tell you that you’re an alpha, so there’s no point in keeping this,” Krul said as if reading his previous thoughts.
She spoke from experience. He knew she did.
But never in her life had she had someone like Yuuichirou Ichinose.
She didn’t understand.
“So get up and stop worrying yourself sick about that child.”
Having exhausted all that she wished to say, relief quickened Mikaela’s blood when the click of her heels traveled towards the stairs.
Despite the lack of patience in her words, she’d been nice enough to grant him a little more time to wallow in his misery alone.
If he could fall asleep in this state, that would be ideal, but his body wouldn’t allow him that kind of escape.
Not with this sweltering heat coursing through his veins.
To lift his trembling frame took minutes. The world around him swayed.
Yuuichirou would suffer like this, the darkest corners of his mind chided, and he’d be useless to help him.
When the dizziness ebbs from his hyperthermic brain, the pill on the table had all the appeal of leaving him sugary arsenic.
With the pain of reality came the comfort of denial once more. A foolish hope swelled in his chest and tortured him with the thought: what if it doesn’t work?
If Mikaela could take a suppressant and his illness remained, wouldn’t that more than prove that he wasn’t in heat after all?
Therein lied his opportunity to be tested once more.
Emboldened by delusion, he popped the suppressant into his mouth and chased it with the warmed milk and honey she provided.
And within minutes, the aching began to subside.
The fire consuming him whole cooled, and the shakiness of his frame stilled.
A lump remained in his throat—far larger than the pill he ingested, and the corners of his tear ducts burned.
“Yuu-chan…” left his lips as a whimper before he gritted his teeth. It was the last time he’d allow himself to say his name with that amount of desire.
‘I’m sorry…’
His face fell into his palms.
For the rest of his life, he’d never forget how he wiped the caressing smile clean off Yuuichirou’s face. He had replaced it quickly with another, this one less wide and beaming, whereupon he focused all his energy on being happy for Mikaela and his imaginary feelings for some imaginary person.
Yuuichirou deserved better.
‘I can’t… live up to your feelings for me…’