Danger Zone

The trip back home is quiet. Only the sound of the wind can be heard all throughout the mountains. Daime is walking past behind the old lady while he is thinking of the things that they are talking about earlier.

"If the Omega inside of him hates the Alpha who bites him, they are still not mated. The bite marks are there, but the Omega will not let the other Alpha mate him if he know that he is not the right for him.

It will be their biggest struggle in the future."

Daime looked at the old lady as if she just revealed him a secret that he would carry on to his death. She looked at Daime and winked. 

The old lady was and would always be a Beta, but she also knew the law of the nature of Alphas and Omegas. And in this case, the Omega that Daime was talking about was rejecting every Alpha that court him unless it was Daime. 

The Omega already knew the younger man's scent and he was already asking for him. But since Daime was in another country, could be missing and already announced dead, the Omega who longed for him didn't want to be mated. 

Hence, the Omega might rather be mated by a random Alpha rather than the Alpha who want him. 

"So, you mean, he is waiting for me?"

The old lady nodded at Daime as she moved away from him. Sighing to the wild bunny underneath her before proceeding to wash its clotted blood to the river. 

Daime still can't believe that Aiden's Omega is waiting for him when Primo is there whenever he missed him. There is no way that this is the case for the three of them. 

Aiden will never want Daime to be his mate, he knows that. And there is a small chance that being wanted by Aiden is possible. The younger man sighs as he walks faster to catch up with the old lady. 

As he lifts his head towards her direction, he can see her having a hard time climbing up to the direction of her house and eventually falls down. Quick on his feet, Daime catches her in a swift move, preventing her head from hitting any sharp object around her.

"Auntie!"

The old lady heaves a deep breath as Daime carries her back to the house but running towards the house will just waste his time especially when he remembers that the old lady never drank any of her medicine.

Or he hasn't seen her drink any of her medicines. Daime curses under his breath before deciding to loops the old lady's arms around his neck and carries her on his back.

"Please wait until we get to the military base, Auntie!"

Daime sprints down the mountains, dodging tree branches out of his way as he runs as fast as he can before the old lady dies on his back. He doesn't knows the borderline of her disease but he knows that it is the reason why she suddenly faints.

Daime tries to get his phone and calls the emergency hot line of the military base down the mountains in Vladivostok. But the other line is not answering and it looks like no one is home.

"Fucking hell!"

Daime feels something inside of him plucks a vein that he almost stumbles down to the ground. 

"Shit! What is it now?!"

The stops from running and looks around him, he doesn't know where he is but he knows that he is near. He uses the Alpha in him to track down the nearest gates out of the mountains.

A way that will not allow him to pass by the military base. The Alpha in him awakens when he suddenly smells pine trees.

His mind immediately rewinds the path that he and the old lady takes when he first arrived in the mountains. The smell of pine trees that surround the whole area of the military base. 

This is when Daime knew that he is near the base. If the perimeter of the base surrounds the whole feet of the mountain, then he doesn't care anymore. 

If Daime needs to enter the military base to get to the city then so be it. He shakes his head to stop it from throbbing for unknown reason. 

If it is about his health, then he will not care about it. What is important now is to bring the old lady to the hospital as soon as possible.

Daime pushes the wired gates connected to the fence of the military base as he is being surrounded by other military soldiers. One of them is the officer that interviewed him the first time he is here.

"What happened? Are you okay? What is wrong with Auntie?"

Daime's head is hurting so much that everything he sees is turning into a blur. He closes his eyes tightly as he tries to answer the officer's questions but the only thing that comes out of his mouth are the stuttered words "hospital."

Before his sight turns into black and his face becomes paler, he passes the old lady to the soldiers as he drops to the ground himself. Voices of military soldiers call out of his name but he can only hear a sound that sounds like a flat line from an ECG monitor.

For what he can remember, he doesn't have a series of tinnitus before. But this version of tinnitus is a longer one and much louder. Daime feels as if he died the moment he hits the ground.

But at least for him, the old lady will now survived. 

***

The sounds of beeping from monitors is what awakens Daime from his slumber. The pain on his head is still there but it is now bearable. Unlike when he first feels it back in the mountains. 

A lady in blue scrubs enters the room he is in and checks all of his vitals and the perimeters of the dextrose attached to his hand. She looks on Daime's direction and shocks to see the latter waking up and immediately calls out the doctor in charge of the young man.

Daime full wakes up when he hears the voice from the nurse and tries to sit down when he feels the straps on his hands. He looks down to his arms and frowns. 

"Wha-What? Why are these straps on me? What is going on?"

As soon as he asks the very last question to himself, the doctor in change of him enters the room and introduces himself.

"Good morning, Mr. Santoro. Do you know where you are?"

Daime looks at him, his visions are still blurry but he knows that the person in front of him is a doctor. The signs of the white robe and the stethoscope are what his mind keeps on suggesting to him.

He nods at the man as he blinks more to see if his vision will cleared out. The doctor nods his head before sitting beside Daime. 

He pulls out his penlight to check Daime's eye movements. The doctor moves towards Daime and flashes the penlight to his eyes and moves it side by side to see if any of Daime's eyes will constrict. 

The doctor hums at his discover as he calls out for a nurse and tasks her to get more test from Daime before giving his diagnosis. The nurse nods her head and heads out the door. 

The doctor is about to stand up when Daime grabs his hand and asks about the old lady's condition, hoping to hear better results that his own.

"She is stable but her condition is progressing. She needs to undergo more tests just like you to know more about the disease that she got before giving the proper diagnosis to her."

Hearing his statement, Daime looks at him with curiosity. His eyes are directly asking the doctor what is wrong with his body and why his vision on his right eye is blurry but he doesn't have the power to do so.

"Rest for now. I will give you an update about her condition and yours."

Daime can only nod his head as he lays back to his bed and closes his eyes. The darkness of the void that he sees in his dream comes back again. 

The void where Aiden is not there to light it up and save him from this abyss that he finds himself in. Wherever he is right now, none of that matters anymore. He knows that Aiden is not missing him since Primo can satisfy his needs more than he does.

Soft intakes of breath surrounds the whole room where Daime is located while the doctor and other nurses on that floor sigh at the oblivion for having such a rare case of Daime's condition.

"Who would've thought that we will have a patient like him in Russia? This condition is usually known in the Middle East or Far East regions of the world. It is even rare in American regions."

The doctor shakes his head as he looks at Daime's door and waits for the nurse to come back with the old lady's result.

"I just hope they both survive his condition or it will be a waste for a young man like him to die early just because of it."