Echoes

When Lyra woke up, the rain had slowed to a drizzle.

She was sitting propped up against a bollard. Someone had draped a rough wool blanket over her shoulders—probably one of the betas.

The pier was a flurry of activity. Police lights flashed in the distance, held back by the pack’s connections.

Beckett was coming down the gangplank of the towed trawler. He was carrying two small children in his arms, wrapped in yellow rain slickers. A third walked beside him, clinging to his leg.

The pups. Safe.

The relief on Beckett’s face was transformative. The hard lines of his jaw had softened. He knelt, hugging the children, checking them for injuries, murmuring soft words Lyra couldn't hear.

Lyra watched them. A pang of longing, sharper than the pain in her head, pierced her chest. That was the pack. That was family.

She tried to stand up. Her knees shook, but she locked them.

Beckett handed the children off to their mothers, who were weeping with joy. He turned and saw Lyra standing there.

He walked over. He stopped three feet away. He was covered in blood that wasn't his.

"They're safe," he said. His voice was hoarse.

"I saw," Lyra whispered. Her voice was a ruin, a rasping croak.

Beckett nodded. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thick envelope. He held it out.

"Bonus," he said. "For the boat."

Lyra looked at the envelope. Then she looked at his face. She was searching for something—concern, gratitude, maybe just a recognition of what she had done to herself for him.

She saw only exhaustion and the desire to be back with his own kind.

"Take it," he said, pressing it into her hand when she didn't move. "The pack pays its debts."

"Debts," Lyra echoed.

"You did good work, Lyra. We won't forget it."

He nodded once, sharply, then turned around. He walked back toward the cluster of wolves, toward the warmth, toward the family she had helped save but could never join.

Lyra stood alone on the edge of the dark water. The envelope felt heavy in her hand, like a stone.

She wiped the blood from her lip. She looked at the backs of the wolves as they loaded into their SUVs.

"You're welcome," she whispered to the empty air.

She turned and walked toward her car, her footsteps lost in the sound of the receding tide. The phone in her pocket began to ring—another job, another desperate voice—but Lyra let it ring. She just listened to the silence inside her own head, vast and hollow, and drove away into the rain.