Ren raised his head and answered,

"Cilian said he was going to see if there was a response. To help you."

"Help me?" Harris let out a short, bitter laugh that sounded more like a cough.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, mangled piece of circuitry—the frequency modulator.

"Ren, look at this."

Ren leaned in, his medical training allowing him to see the precision of the damage. The wires hadn’t been snapped by a crash; they had been clipped. The casing hadn’t been crushed by impact; it had been pried open, and the internal crystal shattered with a blunt object.

"I found this when I checked the carrier wave," Harris whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of rage and realization. "The auxiliary power was fine. The hardware was fine. But this... this was damaged, and not done by the crash, but done by hand. Ren, Someone broke it."

Ren’s breath hitched. He looked at the jagged tool marks on the metal.

"You’re saying... it was sabotaged? On this island?"

Harris nodded.

"Yes, and it wasn’t the villagers. They don’t even know what a modulator is, so how could they?" Harris said, and Ren nodded.

That made sense. They didn’t even know the plane was called a plane; how could they know how to destroy the most important part of their radio? Then, who was it?

Ren looked at Harris, but as if he could see Ren’s thoughts, Harris immediately defended, "And it wasn’t me. I want to go home, Ren. I have a life to get back to."

Then, his gaze fixed on the jungle path where Cilian should have been.

"And I’m certain it wasn’t you either," He added. "Now, who else could it be?"

Ren felt the world tilt. He thought of Cilian’s smirk when the radio stayed silent. He thought of the way Cilian had whispered about ’building a kingdom’ on this island.

"He went to the shore an hour ago," Ren whispered, the nausea returning with a vengeance. "If he didn’t find you... and if the radio was suddenly destroyed... "

"Then he wasn’t going there to check for a signal," Harris finished, his jaw tightening. "He was going there to make sure I didn’t fix what he’d already broken."

Just as the words left the pilot’s mouth, the sound of rhythmic whistling drifted from the trees. Cilian emerged from the jungle path, looking entirely too refreshed, a few tropical fruits cradled in his arm as if he’d been on nothing more than a casual morning stroll. He stopped when he saw the two of them standing together, his lips curving into that devastating, fox-like smile. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"Ah, Harris! There you are," Cilian called out, his tone airily sweet. "I went to the shore to find you, but the tent was empty. I assumed you’d finally given up on that pile of scrap metal since you’re literally a part of this island now."

His gaze shifted to Ren, dropping for a fraction of a second to Ren’s trembling hands before returning to his eyes.

"Is something wrong, darling? You look even paler than you did this morning."

Ren’s fingers tightened on the edge of the wooden basin until the rough grain bit into his palms. He didn’t look at the fruit Cilian was holding; he looked at the hand carrying them—the same hand that had likely held a jagged rock or a blade to those delicate wires.

"We were just discussing the radio, Mr. Vane," Harris said, his voice regaining that rigid, military edge. He didn’t hide the mangled modulator. He held it out in the open, the crushed crystal glinting like a dead eye in the sunlight. "Specifically, how this damage occurred. It’s a very clean break for a plane that allegedly ’snapped’ apart."

Cilian stepped closer, his shadow stretching over them both. He peered at the component with an expression of mild, polite curiosity, as if he were looking at a strange shell found on the beach.

"Is it?" Cilian tilted his head, the fox-like glint in his eyes sharpening. "The physics of a high-altitude crash are quite unpredictable, Captain. Or are you suggesting the island spirits have a grudge against modern technology?"

"I’m suggesting someone didn’t want a rescue team showing up during their ’vacation’," Ren snapped, his voice trembling with a cocktail of nausea and fury.

He stepped toward Cilian, ignoring the way his lower half screamed in protest.

"Harris was at the tail unit since dawn, Cilian. He didn’t see you. So where were you for the last hour?"

Cilian’s smile didn’t falter, but the atmosphere around him shifted—the playful warmth vanished, replaced by the cold, suffocating pressure of an Alpha who had been challenged. He set the fruit down on a nearby flat stone with deliberate slowness.

"I took a detour," Cilian said smoothly, moving into Ren’s personal space. He reached out, his thumb catching a bead of cold water on Ren’s chin and wiping it away. "The jungle is thick, darling. Perhaps the Captain and I simply missed each other. Or perhaps he was too busy with his... other distractions to notice me passing by."

He shot a pointed, mocking look at the marks on Harris’s neck. Harris stiffened, a flush of shame and anger creeping up his throat, but he didn’t back down.

"I know what I saw, sir," Harris insisted. "And I know what I found. That radio was our only link back to the Syndicate. Back to the outside world."

"Then it’s a tragedy," Cilian sighed, though his tone was anything but mournful. "Why are you acting like this, though? Do you want to leave your wife as soon as you are married?" Harris flinched. "Hm, I didn’t picture you for that kind of man, Harris."

Harris wanted to explain that it wasn’t like that, but Cilian turned away from him and turned his full attention back to Ren, his gaze dropping to Ren’s stomach again with that terrifying, possessive hunger.

"But a broken radio doesn’t change our reality, Ren. We are here. We are together. And the village is already preparing the morning meal to celebrate our ’fertility’."

He leaned in, his lips inches from Ren’s ear, his voice dropping to a whisper that Harris couldn’t hear.

"Careful, wifey. Accusing the master of the house in front of the help is a very dangerous game. Especially when you’re in no condition to run away."

Ren felt a chill run down his spine. He looked at Harris, seeing the pilot’s frustration, and then at Cilian, who looked like he had already won.

Cilian wasn’t just trapping them on an island; he was erasing the world they came from, piece by piece.

"You destroyed it," Ren whispered, his eyes burning and his jaw locked as he clenched his teeth and hissed. "Cilian, you destroyed the Raio, didn’t you?"