[BL]Hunted by the God of Destruction-Chapter 221: Nausea and gods

Elias woke to nausea instead of sunlight.

It came in fast waves, sharp, sour, and deeply unfair to someone who had once taken pride in his iron stomach.

He barely managed to roll out of bed before the next one hit, the sound of his feet against the floorboards drowned out by the low groan he tried, and failed, to stifle.

He’d known this would happen. It began the other day, after breakfast, right after smelling the honey Robert had bought and the others claimed that his reaction was "perfectly natural."

Perfectly natural, yes. Also perfectly traitorous. He hadn’t expected to be wake up by the sickness.

"Unbelievable," he muttered under his breath as he stumbled into the bathroom, one hand on the wall. "I warned him about divine chemistry, and now look at me. I’m incubating a star... or indigestion. Hard to tell."

He sank to his knees beside the basin, closing his eyes and breathing through his nose until the worst passed. The world stopped spinning, but his irritation didn’t.

When he finally lifted his head, his reflection in the mirror looked pale and unimpressed. His brown hair was a mess, his face flushed, and his eyes carried the unmistakable look of a man reevaluating all his life choices.

"Wonderful," he rasped. "The god gets eternity, and I get morning sickness."

He splashed cold water on his face, muttering to himself between breaths. "If there is justice in this universe, I’ll invent a way to make him throw up for balance."

He paused, then frowned at his reflection. "...Except I wanted this. Half of it’s my fault."

The admission came out grudgingly, like it physically hurt to say. Because it did.

He rested his forehead against the cool edge of the counter and exhaled slowly, the kind of breath that carried equal parts resignation and disbelief.

He had wanted this... wanted him.

Victor hadn’t tricked him, hadn’t whispered promises in the dark that Elias hadn’t already been half-willing to believe. No, he had known exactly what he was getting into. The scent, the pull, the quiet certainty that had anchored itself in his bones the moment Victor had marked him.

And now here he was, paying the price in nausea and regret and something far more dangerous than either: attachment.

"Brilliant," Elias muttered, pushing himself up to his feet. "Absolutely brilliant. The scholars will write papers about this, ’The Omega Who Outthought Everyone Except Biology.’"

The sound of the door opening behind him made him groan quietly. He didn’t need to turn around to know who it was; the faint trace of ozone and smoke was enough.

Victor’s voice came softly, still rough from sleep. "You’re awake early."

Elias shot him a withering glance over his shoulder. "If vomiting counts as being awake, then yes, I’m practically thriving."

Victor leaned against the doorway, hair tousled, a half-buttoned shirt hanging loose on his frame. "You should have called me."

"For what? Moral support?" Elias muttered, rinsing his hands in the sink. "Unless you’ve suddenly learned to reverse pregnancy, there’s not much you could have done."

Victor’s mouth curved, a flicker of amusement barely contained. "I would have held your hair."

Elias turned to stare at him. "I have short hair, Victor."

Victor didn’t miss a beat. "Then I would’ve held your pride," he said smoothly, as if that solved everything.

Elias blinked at him, deadpan. "You’re insufferable."

"I’m consistent," Victor countered, stepping into the room. The air shifted slightly with his scent, warm smoke layered with something electric underneath, subtle but impossible to ignore. He smelled like comfort and trouble in equal measure.

Elias pinched the bridge of his nose. "You realize that scent makes me sicker, right?"

Victor’s brow lifted, the faintest curve of mischief ghosting over his mouth. "You loved it last week."

"That was before my stomach declared war on me," Elias snapped. "Now I can’t even look at honey without thinking of you and nausea in the same sentence."

Victor chuckled low, the sound far too pleased for someone accused of being personally responsible for morning sickness. "I’ll try not to be offended."

"Try harder," Elias muttered, reaching for a towel to dry his hands.

For a moment, neither spoke. The early light filtered through the frosted window, catching on the glass edges and scattering across the tile floor in quiet patches of gold. Elias leaned against the counter, still pale, still annoyed, but calmer now.

Victor watched him carefully. "It’s getting worse?"

"No," Elias said, then grimaced. "Maybe. It’s unpredictable. Yesterday it was honey; today it’s air. Tomorrow, who knows? The scent of you breathing, probably."

Victor tilted his head, the faintest amusement flickering in his eyes. "I could stop breathing."

Elias glared at him. "Tempting."

Victor crossed the room in two unhurried steps, his movements fluid in that irritatingly graceful way that made him look carved for this world while Elias merely existed in it. He placed a hand at Elias’s waist, pulling him in a slow embrace. "I love you even hormonal."

Elias didn’t melt. Not immediately, anyway. He stood stiff against him, arms folded between them as if they might hold the last scraps of his dignity together.

"You love me when I’m sleep-deprived," he said flatly. "When I’m snoring. When I’m bleeding out of sheer academic frustration. This one’s just another entry in your list of questionable life choices."

Victor laughed softly, the sound reverberating against Elias’s temple where his lips brushed. "Then let me make all of them."

Elias closed his eyes for half a heartbeat. His warmth was disarming: steady, solid, and unfairly gentle. He hated... no he actually loved how his pulse eased under Victor’s touch, how even the nausea seemed to take a step back when that hand moved in slow, absent circles at his back.

"You smell like a thunderstorm," Elias murmured, voice thin with fatigue. "And arrogance."

"I’ve been told both are intoxicating," Victor said.

"They were," Elias muttered, "until my body decided to reenact divine retribution."

Victor’s laugh was quieter this time, nearly fond. "I don’t think it’s my pheromones, but the cologne."

Elias’s brow arched, unimpressed. "Oh, yes, of course. The cologne. How foolish of me to confuse manufactured scent with metaphysical torment."

Victor smiled faintly. "You asked me to wear it."

"I asked you to wear less of it," Elias corrected, voice rasping as he reached for the sink towel again. "You apparently took that as an invitation to bathe in it."

Victor moved closer, the soft sound of his steps swallowed by the hush of the morning. "You seemed to like that interpretation," he murmured.

Elias met his eyes through the mirror, expression flat but his reflection betrayed the faintest warmth beneath the exhaustion. "I liked it before my hormones decided to host a coup."

"An impressive rebellion," Victor said. "You’ve survived worse."

Elias scoffed, wringing the towel between his hands. "Not from the inside out, I haven’t."

Victor’s smile tilted, small and almost tender. "Let’s get you back to bed before you collapse from exhaustion and shame."