Fighting sleep

I hope you can help me. My son is 19 months, never sleep trained, only cuddled to sleep (we don't rock him). In the past 2 days, we were all unwell and because of lack of energy, we brought him into our bed during the day to rest. Now, he's fighting sleep. He doesn't want to go to sleep in his cot, in his room (where he slept since 2 weeks old). He's appropriately dressed. The room temperature is good. The thing is that even if we cuddle him for hours, the moment we put him down, he wakes up and start SCREAMING! He screams so badly. Please, How can I stop this? I'm not a big fan of crying it out, so, if there are other options, there would be amazing. Thanks