🦋 ALTHEA
​The fever had teeth.
​My head throbbed and my back ached, but I wished that were the worst part of my body revolting against my will. But like everything else in my life, it could always be worse—and right now, it was.
​My core ebbed like it had its own heart, walls clenching rhythmically around nothing. It forced my pulse into a sprint that exhausted me before I even rose from bed. Like I had dreaded—and in a way, anticipated—my heat had come. It hit like a fucking club to the noggin.
​If food wasn't already unpalatable, now it just twisted my guts. The light from the windows had grown far too bright; the room swam before my eyes as if I'd downed a bottle of liquor.
