35. Ember
Ember
S moke filled the cabin.
The plane had taken off an hour ago, and I was proud I wasn’t too scared. It was my first time, and I was thirteen, ready to show my parents that I was mature. Mom patted my hand, smiling.
Dad and Pops were sitting on my other side, sharing a book between them. My aunt and uncles sat on the aisle seats, having a lively debate about Cosmic Bonds.
I had my own book, a story about a tween girl who rescued an abused show horse and recently switched to being an omega.
My book was just getting to the part about the horse learning to walk again when something acrid tickled my throat. I coughed and looked around. White smoke rolled at the top of the cabin. It smelled burnt, like plastic that got too close to a flame.
White-hot fear made everything inside me turn liquid.
I didn’t want to ask Mom why smoke flooded the cabin. I wanted an adult to tell me what was going on.
The flight attendant hurried down the aisle, and that caught Dad’s attention. He saw the smoke, his face going ashen. He touched Mom’s hand. “Honey.”
That one word told me everything I needed to know.
The dream skipped. In reality it had been almost forty minutes of waiting. The captain told us that they had a small engine fire and everything would be fine.
The seat belt light came on. No one was allowed to walk around the aisle.
I moaned, trying to break out of the dream, knowing what happened next. Sometimes it worked and I could wake myself up.
It didn’t work this time. I twisted in bed, the panic of the passengers hammering into me. The sickening lurch as the plane hit turbulence. The face masks dropped down, and Mom squeezed my hand. “I love you. It’s okay. We’re okay.”
A chunk of the plane blew out then, the lights flickering, and people started screaming.
Doctors and therapists had told me how unlikely it was that I remembered that part. One therapist suggested kindly that I was filling in from seeing movies, that the trauma I’d suffered almost always results in fragmented memories.
But I remembered. I prayed I would pass out; no one could be this afraid and be conscious, but I stayed awake. The roar of the wind, the whine of the engines, the stink of people terrified around me, my mother’s burnt lilac scent heavy in my nose.
And then everything stopped. Everything slammed together and my body felt like it was being ripped apart, piece by piece. I did pass out then, only to wake up in agony, feeling wet and cold and whimpering for my parents.
Everything hurt. The pain swallowed me, took away everything that made me who I was.
Lights flashed. Paramedics. It felt like a nightmare, and I cried out for my mother. My dad. My pops. My aunt and uncle and even my brothers, sister, and cousins.
I jerked myself awake then, my heart racing. I was soaked in sweat and shivering cold. Ben curled behind me, and Alejandro lay on my other side.
For a moment the memory layered itself over reality and the acrid scent of burnt rubber covered the scents of the alphas.
I shivered, feeling so hot I could have thrown up.
I didn’t want to shift away from either alpha, their scents curling into my brain and soothing my instincts even as I felt like I needed to go, to run, to escape.
My hip and shoulder ached like fire. Everything felt fuzzy.
Rational thoughts fragmented away. I burrowed my face into my alpha’s neck, hunting for his scent.
Spicy woods and currant. A fragment of a song played in my mind but I couldn’t name it.
My skin itched and ached, like I needed to crawl out of it.
In his sleep, my alpha muttered and squeezed his arm around me.
I sucked in a deep breath, trying to soothe the fears, but when I closed my eyes, all I could see was the chunk of the plane tearing away, the shock of the black night suddenly exposed.
I let out a loud whine. Both alphas jerked awake, the omegas right behind them.
Even my fragmented thoughts abandoned me, and I sank into a dull gray haze.