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I opened my eyes. The steady hum of the airplane engines made for a soothing background noise, tempting me to drift back to sleep, but for some reason, I couldn’t. It was dark outside. The older omega to my right was still napping, breathing softly.

My gaze slowly shifted left, landing on my director, Winter Nolan.

He was awake too, his light silver-gray eyes fixed on his tablet screen, scrolling through some spreadsheets.

I watched his hand for a moment, the way his fingers moved smoothly across the glass. Everything inside me was building up, unspoken words I'd been carrying for months, a need I kept pushing aside, telling myself there was no room for it. That whatever had awakened in me was insane. The silence was getting heavier, harder to bear.

Winter noticed I wasn’t sleeping and turned toward me, his expression as calm and unreadable as ever. And maybe I could’ve believed that, if not for the way I felt him. It wasn’t something I could easily explain. It was like I could pick up on his energy through my entire body, as if his emotions, hidden on the surface, somehow slipped into my nervous system through a different, almost supernatural pathway.

The sense of urgency grew, but I’d promised him this trip would be completely professional. Every impatient ache inside me had to stay buried a little longer. But it was taking an immense effort.

As we looked at each other, something in me kept rising up. I even parted my lips, and Winter’s gaze flicked down to them for a fraction of a second before meeting my eyes again.

"Have you ever thought about what it’d be like to hear people’s thoughts?" I blurted out.

Winter’s white eyebrows lifted slightly.

"I think the world would be a very dangerous place if we could read each other’s minds," he said, with a note of subtle regret in his tone.

"Probably. We’d all be brutally honest, hurting each other with no filter."

Winter didn’t respond. His face remained impassive, but his eyes stayed on mine.

"But there’d be upsides too," I continued, albeit a bit hesitantly. "Not all thoughts are bad or hurtful. Some of them—" I trailed off, my heart pounding way too fast. Now I was grateful Winter was a beta, he wouldn’t be able to hear it.

He was still looking at me, waiting for me to finish my sentence.

"Some thoughts… express things." I stopped again, biting my lower lip. The words wouldn’t come. Something was choking me. I cursed under my breath. Either now or never, I had to decide, had to just say it.

My mouth opened, my courage gathered—

And then a loud bang shook the entire plane.

The whole aircraft jolted, like we’d just hit the top of a skyscraper, but there were no buildings this high. We were cruising at 35,000 feet.

In an instant, oxygen masks dropped from above. The plane trembled violently, and a deafening roar surrounded us. The moment I felt the icy wind slam into me, I knew, this wasn’t turbulence.

The fuselage had been breached.

And I knew one more thing: at this altitude, when something like this happens… people don’t survive.

Screams erupted around us, but for some reason, neither Winter nor I shouted. We pulled on our masks, listening to garbled, broken announcements over the failing intercom.

Then another crack. Louder, more gut-wrenching. The plane lurched again, and a freezing gust of air hit us like a battering ram, whipping our hair up.

My hand instinctively grabbed Winter’s, gripping it hard. His fingers clenched around mine. And in that moment, I understood.

I’d waited too long. I would never get the chance to say it, not to him, not to anyone.

This was the end. Then, a silly thought: I was going to die a virgin, on top of that.

Another shattering noise. Then suddenly, beneath us, the floor gave way.

The plane split apart. The row of seats where Winter and I sat broke loose, falling, plummeting into the endless black void below.