The question didn’t waver, but Ayla heard the ache beneath it. She looked up at her mother, saw the lines at the corners of her eyes, the way hope and worry lived side by side there. Ayla smiled, steady and deliberate, feeling the truth move through her like a calm breath.
“You raised fighters, not runners,” she said.
Her mother blinked, a soft exhalation catching in her throat. Ayla knew she had hit the mark. She always did when she spoke with her full chest.
Her mom leaned forward, took her into her arms, and Ayla closed her eyes, her breath releasing at how good it felt to be held. For a heartbeat, the airport fell away. She was back in Bolivia, wrapped in the arms of the healer who had found her half-conscious near the riverbank and pulled her into a world that mended her. A woman who had braided her hair, pressed cool leaves to her fevered skin, and called her daughter long before Ayla remembered how to speak again.
The sting rose behind her eyes. She didn’t fight it. Not this time. And not for the first time, she wondered if she would ever see them again, the people who had saved her, sheltered her, and made it possible for Taryn’s gift to come to fruition.
The tears slipped free, soaking into her mother’s soft shirt. Ayla breathed in the eucalyptus and mint that would always smell like home. Her Lakota home. Her first home.
“I love you,” she whispered, letting the words slip into the air like a prayer, like a reclaiming. Letting them travel past the airport walls, past the prairie, past everything she was leaving, carrying her gratitude and love all the way back into the jungle where another mother still held space for her in her unrelenting heart.
Bear stood a few steps away with his arms crossed, watching her with that quiet intensity he rarely let anyone see. He, too, smelled like home. Solid. Familiar. So different from the smoke and river-scented men who had saved her. His presence grounded her. No matter where she was going, she would always be tethered to that man. Her big brother. The one the world hadn’t managed to break. The one who had been both shield and example.
His chest rose and fell once, slow and heavy. She knew that look. Pride and fear always lived in the same breath when he cared. He opened his mouth like he wanted to tell her she had done enough by surviving. She felt it in him, the protectiveness, the wish to keep her from more danger.
But he saw the fire in her eyes. The calling. He swallowed whatever warning he had been about to give.
Their mother gave a shaky laugh, a sound caught between humor and prayer. “Three children to the Navy. You would think the ocean owed us something by now.”
Bear stepped closer, voice low. “Maybe it does,” he said. “Maybe it gives them back.”
Ayla felt that land in her bones. A blessing. A hope. A reminder that leaving didn’t always mean losing.
The intercom crackled with her boarding call. Passengers rose around her. People gathered their things. The rhythm of departure began to move.
She lifted her duffel. It felt lighter than she expected.
Her mother pulled her into a tight embrace, arms wrapped around her as though she could memorize the shape of her one last time. Ayla inhaled deeply, taking in the scent of sage and laundry soap and comfort.
“I am proud of you,” her mother whispered. “But Lord, I will miss you.”
Ayla kissed her cheek. “I will come home.”
Bear stepped in next. He didn’t hug quickly. He folded her into his arms with the careful strength of someone who had missed too many chances in his life. His warmth wrapped around her, silent and fierce.
“I will be right here,” he said into her hair. “Wherever you go. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” she murmured.
He pulled back, hands on her shoulders. “You walk your path, Ayla. Not the one the world wrote for you. The one you choose.”
She nodded. She understood. Completely.
She turned toward the gate.
The world opened before her.
Just before she stepped forward, she pressed her palm to the large window. The glass was cool. Her reflection faint in it. Her brother and mother behind her, their silhouettes proud and aching.
She smiled, a small ghost of a grin she hadn’t worn since she was little.
For the first time in years, she didn’t feel like the girl who had vanished.
She felt like the woman she had fought to become, maybe still a tad broken, maybe more than a little sad for the family she had to leave behind.
But the horizon no longer felt too big. It felt exactly right.
