The Alpha's Scarred Substitute Omega Bride

Althea POV:

A violent jolt threw me hard against the leather armrest, the cabin alarm screaming in my ears as the plane plunged hundreds of feet.

I tore my eyes open and looked through the cracked window into the pitch-black night. Out on the wing, three massive men with glowing red eyes were ripping into the metal engine cowling with bare claws. Rogues. Packless, feral werewolves who answered to no law.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood up, my flat boots crunching over shattered glass and expensive designer suitcases littering the aisle. After twelve years of exile in the border wastelands as the disgraced, wolfless Omega daughter of the Langley Pack, I had only boarded this flight to Frostcrown City to fulfill a substitute marriage contract and reclaim my late mother's belongings. Dying at thirty thousand feet was not part of my plan.

I pushed toward the cockpit to find a weapon, but the main cabin door suddenly blew inward. Freezing wind howled through the breach. A hulking Rogue with bloodstained fangs lunged into the aisle, blocking my path.

I stepped back half a pace, my right hand sliding into the hidden pocket at my waist. Three sharp bone needles soaked in paralyzing herbs slipped between my fingers.

Before the monster's claws could graze my nose, a tall shadow shot out from the first-class cabin.

The man wore a solid gold mask over the upper half of his face. He did not even shift into a wolf. He simply clamped one bare hand around the Rogue's thick throat and squeezed. The sickening crunch of crushed cartilage echoed over the roaring wind.

He tossed the limp body against the cabin wall like garbage. A suffocating wave of pure Alpha dominance rolled off him, cold and heavy as a winter blizzard, making my lungs ache for air. Even among top Pack CEOs, this level of genetic power was terrifying.

He turned his head, his pitch-black eyes sweeping over my scarred face from behind the gold mask.

"Stay out of the way if you want to live," he rasped, his voice cold and gravelly.

I said nothing, shrinking back behind a row of seats while my eyes tracked his movements. More Rogues poured through the torn doorway, turning the narrow aisle into a slaughterhouse. The masked Alpha fought with brutal precision, snapping necks and tearing throats, likely the legendary underground warlord known as the Shadow Falcon. Yet the sheer number of attackers soon boxed him in.

Three Rogues pinned his arms from the front while a fourth leaped from his blind spot, aimed straight for the back of his neck.

I clenched my jaw, dropping my weak act, and sprang from behind the seat.

The gale-force wind whipped loose luggage across the cabin, and a heavy metal beverage cart rolled into the aisle, blocking my sprint.

I planted my boot on the edge of the cart and vaulted into the air. Reaching into my left pocket, I flung a handful of fine, glittering silver powder straight into the ambushing Rogue's eyes. Silver was the only fatal weakness to our kind, burning a werewolf's flesh and destroying their healing factor on contact.

The powder hissed like acid against his eyeballs. The Rogue let out a bloodcurdling shriek, clutching his melting face as he tumbled backward out the open door.

The masked Alpha snapped the necks of the remaining three enemies and spun around, catching the exact moment I lowered my hand. His dark eyes narrowed in sharp scrutiny.

"Silver powder? Who the hell are you?" He strode over the corpses and pinned me against the cabin wall, his towering frame caging me in.

I opened my mouth to invent a lie, but a deafening explosion ripped off the right wing. The cabin tilted straight down toward the abyss.

Gravity vanished. The suction yanked my feet off the floor, dragging me toward the jagged hole in the fuselage.

A steel-like arm hooked around my waist and slammed me against a hard, burning chest.

"Hold on to me!" he commanded over the screaming wind, his free hand snatching an emergency parachute pack from the bulkhead.

We leaped into the freezing night one second before the jet blew apart in a fireball. The falling pressure crushed my chest, forcing my eyes shut, though my nose filled with his clean, intoxicating scent of winter cedar. He pulled the ripcord with one hand, steering us away from the jagged mountain peaks below.

The canopy snapped open, the harness jerking us hard. I let out a muffled groan as his arm tightened around my waist, pressing my spine flush against his front. The parachute cords scraped across the high forest canopy with a sharp snapping sound.

He lowered his head, his hot breath brushing the shell of my ear.

"If we survive this, remember you owe me a life."

I looked up into his dark pupils, my pulse hammering against my ribs, ready to retort-when the main cords snapped completely, dropping us straight into the pitch-black trees below.