"The engine!" Cilian yelled over the loud rumbling.

The cabin pressure dropped instantly, the air turning into a screaming vacuum that threatened to suck the oxygen right out of their lungs and spit it all outside.

The flight attendant let out a shrill cry as she was thrown against the bulkhead, but Cilian didn’t even glance her way. His eyes were locked onto Ren, stripped of all mockery, replaced by a terrifying, singular focus.

And Ren... he just couldn’t believe all of this was happening and was ready to believe that this was one of Cilian’s pranks. But it did not stop pr hide he dread creeping in his face.

"Ren! Look at me!" Cilian commanded with a light, almost loving tone, trying to bring a dreading Ren back to the present moment.

Before Ren could look at him, the plane pitched sharply to the left, the nose diving toward the dark expanse of the ocean below. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

The cabin was a symphony of screeching metal and the roar of the atmosphere devouring the plane. Cilian kicked the locker open, but as he reached inside, his movements stilled for a fraction of a second. He pulled out the first parachute—the straps were sliced clean through. He grabbed the second; the casing had been gutted.

It was at this point that he realized it was a setup. A clean, professional sabotage, and he gritted his teeth.

Finally, he yanked a third pack from the very back. He checked the seal with a clinical eye and a sharp grunt of satisfaction. It was the only one left intact.

"Cilian, your arm—the stitches—" Ren started, his voice thin and high, lost to the roar of the wind.

"Forget it and worry about staying still, Ren," Cilian interrupted. His voice wasn’t harsh; it was eerily steady, almost hypnotic against the backdrop of the second explosion.

He shoved Ren against the vibrating bulkhead, his good hand working fast to clip the heavy buckles of the parachute harness. He wasn’t fumbling. He wasn’t panicking, moving with the precision of a man who had been trained for exactly this kind of betrayal.

He wove Ren into the safety gear as if they were simply preparing for a stroll, his fingers brushing against Ren’s chest with terrifyingly calm precision.

Ren looked up, his breath hitching. In the flickering, red emergency lights, he saw it—the corner of Cilian’s mouth was still curled. Even now, with the plane tilted at a lethal angle and the smell of burning fuel filling their lungs, Cilian looked like he was enjoying a private joke.

How can you be so calm? Ren wondered, his heart hammering frantically. How can you smile when we’re about to be blown to bits?

Then, the realization hit Ren as he looked at the empty locker. "Wait... what about you? There’s only one."

Cilian chuckled. Even with the wind howling and the fuselage groaning, Ren could hear that chuckle with haunting clarity, as if it were whispered directly into his mind. Cilian leaned in, his face inches from Ren’s, the heat of his skin the only warm thing in the freezing, chaotic cabin.

"I’ll go down with my darling, of course," Cilian murmured, his gold-brown eyes dancing with a manic, golden light. He reached out and cupped Ren’s cheek for a fleeting second. "When the door opens, you jump when I say. Do not fight me. Do you hear me, Ren? If we’re going to hell, we’re going together! But don’t worry, it’s not time to die yet, so we’ll survive."

He didn’t wait for a response. Cilian reached for the manual release of the emergency door. He looked at Ren one last time, that dark, unreadable smirk widening into a barked laugh that defied the very laws of survival.

"Hold your breath, darling," Cilian said, and then he yanked the lever. "We’re adding skydiving to the list of things to do on our ’honeymoon’."

"Psycho!" Ren screamed, the word stolen by the pressure.

The door vanished into oblivion with a deafening crack. The freezing wind hit them hard, and before Ren could even gasp, Cilian wrapped his good arm around Ren’s waist, pulling him flush against his chest, anchoring himself to the only harness left on the plane.

Ren wanted to protest, to say he wasn’t ready to jump off a plane yet, and that it was never on his to-do list, but he was too late.

Cilian wasn’t about to give him a minute to think—not with the final explosion imminent. With a predatory grin, the Alpha threw them both into the screaming void, and Ren screamed.

Ren’s scream was ripped from his throat by the sheer force of the wind as they dropped from the plane. As they plummeted, the sun caught the smoke trailing from the dying plane, turning the sky into a bruised canvas of blue and smoky grey.

Cilian’s arm was like a band made of iron wrapped around Ren’s waist, crushing him against a chest that remained terrifyingly steady even as the wind tried to tear them apart.

His life depended on it, so he had to hold on and not let go. He wouldn’t have, even if he had his own parachute anyway.

He would rather hold Ren like this than let him face this terrifying fall alone.

When he finally snapped the parachute open, the jerk was violent enough to make Ren lose his mind for a second there. He caught one last glimpse of the sun shining high above their heads before they slammed into the shallow ocean underneath.

The impact with the water was like hitting a wall of concrete. Ren’s lungs seized, salt water burning his throat, and then there was only the heavy pull of someone dragging them toward the shore. He couldn’t think and just passed out, the drain from the whole ordeal taking a toll on his weak omega body.

Ren woke up with the burning taste of salt in his throat, the creaking sound of crickets, and the steady thrum of the shore in front of him.

The silence of the beach was a mercy after the loud roaring of the engines in his memory.

He coughed, his lungs aching as he dragged himself out from under the damp, tangled silk of the parachute. His skin was coated in a fine layer of grit and dried brine, and every muscle in his body screamed in protest.

"I told you I never tell a lie," a raspy, familiar voice drifted from the shadows of a nearby palm tree. "We survived."