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Gregory bumps into a wall his balance slightly off as he enters their bedroom. There are people downstairs, their muted conversations reaches upstairs. He could hear moments of laughter if not the exact cause of them.
Tired and grateful for the momentary respite he bumps the winged edge of his favorite chair by the balcony door. A small smile plays on his lips. He can all but hear the admonishment in Mycroft's cultured tones. "Gregory Lestrade-Holmes you are wrinkling that gorgeous suit in the most unflattering ways sitting like that!"
He realizes it doesn't matter.
None of it mattered, not anymore.
"Greg? It's John..." comes a knock at the door. "How you holding up mate?"
Gregory opens his mouth to answer, to lie he is fine, when he hears screaming and realizes it's his own voice.
When Greg opens his eyes again it is night.
The closed bedroom door answers the unasked. John had picked the lock and gave him a sedative. The alpha doctor spoke to him in a voice that irritated him until he felt the needle.
Gregory Michael Lestrade-Holmes was the only beta in known history to have been bonded to an Alpha.
His Alpha.
Mycroft David Alexander Holmes-Lestrade.
That connection, the feeling of Pack, was no more.
None of it mattered, not anymore.
"Till death us do part", took thirty-seven years, five months and eighteen days from the day his Alpha first claimed him.
He had asked John why he hurt so much. Now he knows what John couldn’t tell him. John could no longer reach him, could no longer compel him, could no longer heal him.
For the first time since Greg's bonding, Alpha John Holmes-Watson - Adeshyakar, had to use a needle. Greg's heart breaks in the slowly increasing aches of it all.
Severance.
He has in effect been reset to his default beta mode. Mycroft had bonded him body and soul and his default beta mode can no longer live that way.
He is atrophying and will not survive.
Greg bumps his knee on the nightstand and lays across the bed to wait, knowing then he will not have long before he may go.