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81
The last thing I expected was to hear my name spoken like that.

Soft. Familiar. Heavy with something unsaid.

“Lyra?”

I turned.

The air in my lungs froze.

Standing just beyond the line of tents, near the edge of the firelight, was a figure I hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Not since the night everything fell apart.

Not since the betrayal.

“Erin,” I breathed.

My cousin.

My friend.

My almost-sister—until she disappeared the night I was dragged before the Alpha’s judgment hall, never to be seen again.

My blood roared in my ears.

Kade moved beside me instantly, tense, protective.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure if I meant it for him… or for me.

Erin stepped forward slowly, hands raised like I might vanish if she moved too fast.

“I didn’t think you’d come here,” she said.

“I didn’t think you were here,” I replied.

She gave a faint, broken smile. “I’ve been here since the fall. Before, even.”

My throat was dry. “You left. That night, you left me.”

She winced. “No. I ran because I was told you were already dead.”

A sharp silence wrapped around us.

“What?”

Erin’s voice shook. “I tried to get to you. I went to the hall that night. But there were guards. Rumors. Someone told me you’d been executed by dawn.”

“Then why didn’t you try to find out the truth?”

“I did!” Her voice rose, raw and desperate. “But by the time I got back to your family’s hut, it was burned. There was no one left. I thought—” She swallowed. “I thought if I stayed, I’d die too. So I fled to the only place I knew would take me.”

I stared at her.

The shape of her face. The way her hands trembled.

This wasn’t the cold traitor I had painted in my memory.

This was Erin.

Scared. Tired. Still carrying the weight of what we lost.

“You never tried to send word?” I asked.

“I didn’t know how,” she said. “And after a while… after Ronan’s grip got worse… I thought you’d really died. I thought I’d never see you again.”

Kade stepped back, giving us space.

Erin took another step closer. “Lyra, I didn’t betray you. I just… wasn’t strong enough to stay.”

My chest felt like it was folding in on itself.

Because I had spent months imagining this moment.

And in all my imaginings, I’d screamed. I’d spat accusations. I’d made her beg.

But now?

I just felt tired.

And old.

And so, so sad.

“I mourned you,” I said quietly. “Even when I hated you, I still mourned you.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “I mourned you too.”

We stood there like that, locked in a silence that held years of unanswered questions.

And then I walked forward.

And wrapped my arms around her.

She sobbed against my shoulder.

We weren’t the girls we once were.

We were worn down, bruised by life, hardened in different ways.

But we hadn’t been broken.

Not completely.

Some ties, no matter how frayed, were still stitched from blood and memory.

And not all ties could be severed—not truly.

We stood there under the moonlight, two ghosts finding each other in the ruins.

And for the first time since the war ended—

I felt something close to peace.