"I Knew Exactly What My Husband Would Do": When a Time-Looping Wife Survived a Doomed Flight Twice, Handing Her Lifesaving Gear to Her Husband's Mistress Triggered Total Destruction

It bit through my heavy wool coat, sinking deep into my skin like microscopic needles.

I blinked, my eyelashes heavy with frost.

The polycarbonate dome of the survival pod was covered in a thick layer of rime ice, but through a clear patch near the top, I could see a vast, blinding expanse of white.

The pod had landed hard, plowing a deep trench through a snowdrift high in an alpine clearing before coming to a dead stop against the trunk of a massive pine tree.

Hiss.

The automated internal seals of the capsule released with a pneumatic sigh, and the heavy dome slowly tilted upward on its hydraulic arms, letting a rush of freezing mountain air flood the interior.

I coughed, a dry, ragged sound, and dragged a trembling hand across my face, wiping away the sweat and condensation.

I checked my body first.

My arms moved. My legs responded. I wiggled my toes inside my boots. Aside from a dull, throbbing ache in my muscles from the brutal G-force of the ejection, I was completely intact.

I unclipped the multi-point harness, letting the heavy straps fall away from my chest. I gently placed my hand over my abdomen.

A faint, reassuring flutter answered beneath my palm.

Baby was safe. We had survived the fall.

I pushed myself up and climbed out of the pod, sinking knee-deep into the powdery alpine snow. The air was thin and biting, but the sky above was a brilliant, indifferent sapphire blue. The storm that had crippled Flight 402 had already blown past, leaving behind a pristine, silent wilderness.

I looked around the clearing.

About fifty yards away, half-buried in a snowbank near a jagged cliff edge, lay the main wreckage of our plane. Or rather, what was left of it. The tail section was snapped cleanly off, and the cockpit nose was completely crushed against the rocks, black smoke still lazily curling from the charred remains of the starboard engine.

Rescue teams wouldn't reach this remote sector of the Rockies for at least twenty-four hours—maybe longer, given the weather and the rugged terrain.

Which meant I was entirely on my own.

Except... I wasn't the only one who had ejected from that plane.

My eyes scanned the white landscape, searching the tree line and the steep slopes below the wreckage.

If Lucas and Vanessa had used the rear emergency exit doors with their standard parachute packs, they would have drifted down somewhere downwind from the primary impact zone.

And knowing my husband, he would be furious, freezing, and frantically searching for a way out—assuming he had survived the jump at all.

I reached back into the survival pod and pulled out its emergency kit: a heavy-duty insulated tarp, a military-grade flare gun, a compact GPS satellite communicator, and a thermos of warm water. I stripped off my ruined, blood-stained designer heels, swapping them for the thick, waterproof snow boots packed neatly in the pod's bottom storage bay.

I bundled up in the pod's thermal parka, pulled the hood tight over my head, and clipped the satellite communicator to my belt.