Burr doesn't know where he is. His eyes are open, but they roll unseeing in his head. Has an omega yet died of heat sickness? If he were sensible to know, he would feel like dying. His skin burns, and the jolts of the carriage shoot through his joints like lighting. He is making sounds--sounds he doesn't wholly recognize, and his face is wet, and--he is shivering. Shaking apart, and he must be bleeding still.

He is far away, lost in an endless sea of things unfulfilled. He was used to that, once. Disappointments without end, tossed about like the last crust of moldy bread. He was used to being discarded, once. When had that changed? He sees his uncle, he thinks, sitting on the seat near his head, and he shrinks away.

A disappointment, a slut, a whore, spreading your legs for some Irish bastard, some island whoreson, I never want to see you again, would that you were born a man, and Burr tries to plug his ears with hands that won't cooperate.

But there's the smell--cutting through delerium, and it lights in him like something burning, wet wood cracking and splitting and popping. He latches on, drags that smell closer, and he's sobbing for all he's not sure he makes a sound. He thinks--is Montgomery there? They've been away so long. But no, not Montgomery, but--Hamilton. His mate. His love. Not his mate. No, not--he has no mate. There is no one. No one, but--

He latches on anyway. One solid point in a storm with no end. A man who can focus on only one thing for sanity, in a nightmare without end.