When the laughter faded, Beckett turned to me. “You all right?”
I met his eyes over the rim of my cup. “Better than I’ve been in years.”
He reached out, fingers brushing mine. “You sure about staying with us?”
I nodded. “If you think I’m letting you run head-first into another war without me, you don’t know me at all.”
His smile was small, quiet, full of everything he didn’t need to say. “Didn’t think so.”
Cyclone closed his laptop. “We’ll rest today, re-arm tomorrow. After that—whatever comes next.”
Gage raised his mug in salute. “To whatever comes next.”
We all lifted ours. The sound of porcelain touching was soft but solid, like a promise.
Beckett’s voice was low beside me. “We made it, Elara.”
I turned toward him, letting the noise of the room fade until there was only us again. “Yeah,” I said. “But this time, we’re not just surviving. We’re living.”
He smiled, the kind that reached his eyes and made the rest of the world blur. “Then let’s start now.”
And as the sun cut through the cracked windows and the city outside began to stir again, it finally felt like the war was behind us.
For the first time, the Golden Team wasn’t fighting to escape the darkness.
We were walking toward the light.
Epilogue
Three Weeks Later — Carlsbad, California
The ocean smelled like home again.
Salt and sun and something almost clean, as if the waves themselves had been waiting for us to come back. Beckett’s home on the bluff was quiet now—no alarms, no gunfire, no weight of Hydra pressing down on every breath. Just wind moving through open windows and the steady rhythm of surf against rock.
Beckett stood on the deck, sleeves rolled up, eyes on the horizon. The morning light caught the scar on his jaw, a faint silver line that hadn’t quite healed. Elara came out beside him, barefoot, coffee in hand. She didn’t say anything at first. She just leaned against the railing until their shoulders touched.
“Still thinking about it?” she asked.
He smiled faintly. “About which part?”
“All of it.”
He nodded once, gaze still fixed on the water. “I keep replaying the sound of that explosion. The way it ended. I keep waiting for the next one.”
“There won’t be another—not here,” she said softly.
“Maybe not. But there’s always another fight somewhere.”
She set her cup down, slid her hand into his. “Then we face it when it comes. Together.”
He looked down at their joined hands, thumb brushing over her skin. “Together,” he echoed.
Behind them, laughter drifted from inside the house—Gage trying to teach River’s dog how to high-five, Oliver reading something out loud just to annoy Cyclone. The team sounded lighter than they had in years. Human again.
Beckett turned toward the noise, a rare, easy grin spreading across his face. “You realize they’re going to drive each other insane in about a week.”
Elara laughed quietly. “Then it’s a good thing we’re used to chaos. Why are they here so early?”
