Page 56 of Let It Snow (Eden’s Omegaverse #7)

That fact is the source of Lake’s particular dread. He knows that Blue Lowen is someone whose life is under constant threat, with assassination attempts coming one after another.

One of their own relatives, Snow’s second cousin, Gabriel Nolan, who works as Blue’s bodyguard, got a warning text from Snow two days ago, and Blue was the only one who took it seriously, deciding not to board.

Still, Winter ignored Snow’s plea.

Today he got on the plane.

Lake hunches on his rattan couch, hands trembling with nerves. Aiden squeezes his fingers, his silver eyes filled with love and worry for his husband.

Snow tries playing his harmonica to calm him down, but it isn’t working. The source of Lake’s fear runs deeper. And, unfortunately, it’s real.

At one point, Lake drifts off for a moment on the couch, then wakes up with a piercing scream that makes everyone jump, including me.

"WINTER!"

Aiden and Snow rush to his side, grabbing his hands.

"A bomb!" Lake shouts. "A bomb just went off on the plane! They’re high above the ocean! It’s over—it’s over—oh God, oh my God! My child! My child is dying!"

A cold wave of fear runs through me. I can see, can feel, the pain tearing through Lake’s body. It hits me that he must have some kind of energetic bond with his children, like an invisible umbilical cord that was never severed.

Suddenly Lake, with eyes wild and blown wide, turns sharply to Snow and grabs him by the shoulders, shaking him almost violently.

"Save them! I’m begging you, Snow!"

Snow’s face goes pale, filled with pain that mirrors Lake’s own. I know Snow can’t save them.

But maybe I can.

It’s a mad thought, completely baseless. Winter’s plane is thousands of miles away, plunging from the sky as we speak.

Could I focus my energy across that distance if… if Lake’s bond with him could pull me there like a thread?

I spring to my feet, locking my gaze on Lake’s tear-filled eyes.

"I can try," I breath out. "But I can’t guarantee anything. I don’t know if it’ll work." I reach out and grab Lake’s hand.

"Grab your dad’s hand and mine!" I call to Snow. "He’s your blood. It may work as a lens to focus my power."

Lake grips Snow’s hand. Snow takes hold of Aiden. Now all four of us are connected, forming a strange circle.

A total experiment.

I tilt my head back, close my eyes, hearing Lake pleading in the background: "Please save my child. Please save my child."

The next moment, I feel our energies merging, but it isn’t me doing it.

I know Snow has triggered it. This isn’t my gift, manipulating energy.

Then I feel something strange. I see Snow as pure energy beside me. Everything else vanishes.

We’re in some kind of dark dimension, just me, him, and two other sources of energy, the rest swallowed by darkness.

It’s so strange.

It’s like I see Snow as a perfect orb of light, and it seems to hesitate, as if considering something.

What is peculiar is that he appears to be connected to those two other orbs by a golden thread, almost like an umbilical cord.

Is this an energetic representation of the fact that they gave Snow his life?

Snow’s orb still hesitates. I can almost catch it, the pros and cons of some dilemma swirling in him, but then suddenly he starts closing in on me.

His orb touches me, and I realize I am a similar-looking orb, and I sense a powerful surge of discharge. The two other sources of energy seem to pull us by this golden thread and… swallow us for a second, then a blinding burst of light stuns me for a moment.

In the next instant, I feel something extraordinary. My whole body seems to move quickly like a light missile, becoming a wave of pure energy containing me and Snow.

The next second I’m on the other side of the planet, under its dark night sky, over a black ocean where tragedy is unfolding.

I look around. Something’s flying through the air.

It’s debris from the plane. Even from cruising altitude, I realize the wreckage would hit the ocean in at most three minutes, and we’ve already delayed.

A thin silver thread of Lake and Aiden’s joined energy, visible to me, leads toward a set of seats falling through the sky.

Damn, they’re already close to the water!

They'll be lost forever in a matter of seconds!

My awareness rockets toward them, and—wow—my power has never worked like this before. The connected section of seats is now glowing with light.

I see Winter; I’d recognize him anywhere, the brother who looks most like Snow, with the same white hair, sitting strapped in next to a young alpha with green hair. They’re holding each other’s hands tightly, bracing for death. Not today, gentlemen. This is not the day you die.

I hold the seats in a sheath of wind, pushing them forward instead of down. But we’re over the ocean. I have to find somewhere to set them down.

Scanning with my ‘astral’ eyes, I push and push, straining until I catch sight of a sliver of land, a faint outline of a volcanic peak barely visible in the dim light. My focus is fading. The link holding me to Winter exists only because of Snow, Aiden, and Lake’s blood—a lens focusing me on him.

How much longer can we hold on? How long?

Finally, after what feels like forever, I manage to push the seats onto that scrap of land and settle them on a grassy slope.

Then I pull my consciousness back from that place, and…

Something cracks in me, like a bolt of painful, searing light.

Darkness falls.