Chapter 4. Touchdown.

Chapter 4 — Touchdown

The plane touches down at the airport and a lone pack car is waiting for me. The moment the wheels hit the ground, Sylvie stiffens. The air feels different here — heavier, familiar in a way that makes her uneasy. She remembers this place. She remembers everything that happened here. The betrayal. The humiliation. The night she almost died inside me.

I grip the armrest for a moment, steadying myself as the plane taxis. Five years gone, and the land still feels like it’s breathing down my neck. Sylvie presses forward, uneasy, her instincts already sharpening.

When the plane finally stops, I stand, grab my duffel from the overhead bin, and step into the aisle. The air that hits me when the cabin door opens is colder, heavier — saturated with pack territory energy even this far from the border. My pulse kicks once, hard.

I walk through the jet bridge, past the terminal crowds, ignoring the curious stares. Humans move around me unaware, but Sylvie feels the shift the moment my boots hit the polished airport floor.

We’re back, she whispers.

I don’t answer.

Outside, the noise of traffic and rolling luggage fades under the weight of familiar scents — pine, dominance, wolf. A lone black pack car sits at the curb, out of place among taxis and shuttles.

Elias steps out from the driver's seat and holds the back door open for me. He looks nervous, like he’s bracing for impact. Good. He should be. He knows exactly what Adrian sent him into. He knows I didn’t come back willingly.

I glare at him coldly.

“Open the trunk, asshole.”

He doesn’t argue. He opens the trunk. I place my lone duffel inside and slam it shut. The sound cracks across the tarmac, sharp enough to make him flinch. Sylvie likes that. She pushes forward, her presence brushing against my skin like static.

I walk around to the passenger side. The wind carries the scent of pack wolves — dominance, hierarchy, judgment. It’s thick, cloying, invasive. Sylvie growls low, irritated, her hackles rising.

A hulk of a gamma stands by the front door, unmoving. He’s planted there like a wall, shoulders squared, chin lifted, eyes forward. He knows I am an Omega, weak by nature. He thinks I’m still the girl who left here broken. He thinks I’m prey.

He’s about to learn a cold, hard truth about living five years in the human world.

His eyes flick over me once, dismissive. Sylvie bristles. She doesn’t like being blocked. She doesn’t like being dismissed. She doesn’t like being treated like prey.

I pretend as if I’m going to take the back seat. As I turn, his posture relaxes.

That’s when I kick my right foot up and out, catching him in the groin. As he doubles over from the kick, I hook my ankle around his and sweep his feet out from under him.

He hits the tarmac hard, breath knocked out of him. The shock in his eyes is priceless — he never expected an Omega to drop him. Sylvie pushes forward, satisfied, her growl vibrating through my bones.

Laid out on the tarmac, holding his injured pride in agony, I take my stiletto heel and press it down on his manhood.

His breath catches. His pride shatters. Good.

“Don’t ever stand in my way again, you brainless dog,” I and my wolf growl at him.

The growl echoes off the car doors. Elias freezes. The gamma doesn’t move. The air itself seems to hold still, like the territory is holding its breath.

I turn and sit down in the front passenger seat. Elias sits down in the driver's seat. Shock at what I had just done is written across his face. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t dare.

I don’t make eye contact.

We wait for the gamma to gather his wits and get into the back seat. He does, still holding his junk, and he’s very uncomfortable as we hit bumps along the road. Sylvie settles, but she stays alert. Elias keeps glancing at me, unsure. The gamma stays silent, humbled.

And with every mile we drive deeper into pack territory, the air gets heavier — like the land itself knows I’m back.

The trees look darker. The roads feel narrower. The scent of wolves grows stronger, layered with smoke, blood, and fear. The pack is wounded. The territory is scarred. And somewhere in the center of it all is Adrian — the Alpha who broke me, the man who rejected me, the wolf who nearly killed Sylvie.

Sylvie presses forward again, her voice a low whisper in my mind.

We’re not the same girl he threw away.

“No,” I whisper. “We’re not.”

The car continues down the long road toward the pack house, and the weight of five years settles over me like a storm.

I’m home.

But not the same Omega who left.