Chapter 42
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Mira
The Sanctuary looked nothing like I expected.
Maybe because the name itself sounded too clean for people like Havoc.
As the convoy finally passed through the rusted gates sometime after midnight, exhaustion weighed heavily on every inch of my body.
I found myself staring up at an old Catholic church, its silhouette rose from the darkness beneath flickering floodlights while storm clouds lingered low over the city.
Massive stained-glass windows stretched up the front facade, fractured in places by age and violence but still beautiful in a worn kind of way.
Stone gargoyles crouched along the roofline, blackened by time, while the large wooden cathedral doors stood thrown open wide enough for fighters and med teams to move rapidly in and out beneath them.
And underneath all the old church architecture sat Havoc.
Not hidden.
Claimed.
The second I stepped inside, the smell hit me first. Blood. Antiseptic. Sweat. Gunpowder. Old wood. Incense burned so long into the stone walls that it never fully faded.
Controlled chaos exploded across the lower level of the church while wounded fighters limped through makeshift triage stations built between old pews and industrial support tables.
Some people carried weapons. Some carried medical kits.
Others hauled damaged equipment or reinforced barricades toward the underground sectors beneath the church, where I knew the fight ring operated.
No one stopped moving. No one panicked.
That was the strangest part. This place functioned as if violence were ordinary here. Like surviving together was routine.
Aiden’s hand stayed carefully pressed against my lower back as he guided me further inside. I caught glimpses of fighters watching him as we passed, some bloodied worse than others, but visibly relaxing the second they realized he came back alive.
Ghost mattered here. Not because people feared him, but because he belonged here.
“MED BAY,” Eden shouted from somewhere ahead of us. “NOW.”
I nearly laughed from pure exhaustion at the fury in her voice.
The woman looked absolutely homicidal, standing near the converted infirmary setup beneath the church balcony.
Red curls tied messily back, surgical gloves already streaked with blood, medical trays spread across old altar tables while she pointed directly at Saint like she wanted to stab him personally.
“You got SHOT again?” she snapped.
Saint looked entirely unbothered by this accusation, even though blood soaked one side of his shirt. “Barely.”
“Barely?” Eden repeated incredulously. “Saint, there is literally a hole in your body.”
Reaper limped past us, carrying extra ammunition crates despite blood dripping steadily down one arm.
Eden wheeled toward him instantly.
“And you,” she barked. “What part of ‘don’t get stabbed’ sounds difficult to you people?”
“It was more of a slicing situation,” Reaper offered helpfully.
Eden looked one sentence away from committing murder.
Tank ducked through the med bay doorway next, his massive frame blackened with soot as he carried an injured fighter over one shoulder like the guy weighed nothing.
Eden pointed at him furiously, too. “Tank, sit your giant ass down before you collapse.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are actively leaking onto my floor.”
Somewhere nearby, Zeke burst out laughing before immediately regretting it and clutching his ribs. “Ow. Fuck.”
“Good,” Eden snapped. “Suffer.”
Despite everything that burned through my body physically and emotionally, despite the war we’d barely survived only hours earlier, something unexpected settled quietly into my chest. At the same time, I stood there watching all of them.
Not peace. Not yet. But something dangerously close to home.
I was halfway through letting Eden clean the cut along my collarbone while simultaneously threatening everyone else in the room with bodily harm when another voice drifted through the infirmary behind me.
“So, this is the girl who broke Ghost’s brain.”
I turned automatically.
The woman who stood near the back tech station looked younger than I expected.
Somewhere around my age, maybe, with short black hair tipped electric blue and sharp brown eyes that missed absolutely nothing.
One hand rested against the curve of her stomach beneath an oversized hoodie while the other balanced a laptop.
Pregnant. Definitely pregnant.
And somehow still radiating enough chaotic energy to rival the rest of Havoc combined.
“Vex,” Reaper warned immediately from across the infirmary.
She ignored him entirely.
“Hi,” she said to me instead as she walked closer and carefully wove around stacked med crates and discarded tactical gear. “I’m Vex. Resident cyber gremlin and unwilling babysitter for emotionally constipated men with violence problems.”
A startled laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Aiden stood near one of the support pillars, getting stitched up by Eden while pretending he didn’t need stitches, and looked deeply unimpressed.
“You’ll find that Eden and I are the only sane ones,” Vex clarified immediately.
“Bullshit,” Reaper muttered from the infirmary cot behind us.
Vex completely ignored him while shifting the laptop against her hip before turning back at me. “You okay?”
The question caught me slightly off guard because, unlike most people tonight, she asked it without pity.
“Define okay.”
“Fair answer.”
The laptop beeped loudly before a distorted male voice crackled through the speakers. “Fox, your encryption tunnel just lagged again.”
Vex rolled her eyes hard enough to qualify as a medical emergency. “Because somebody overloaded the harbor relay trying to brute-force six Syndicate backups simultaneously.”
“You say that like it was my fault.”
“It was your fault.”
I glanced at the laptop screen curiously and caught only the vague outline of a hooded figure amid scrolling code and surveillance feeds.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“A pain in my ass,” Vex answered immediately.
“Rude,” the voice replied through the speakers.
Aiden’s hand slid briefly against the small of my back as he joined me.
Vex shifted her laptop onto a nearby table to use as a workstation.
The entire setup looked absurd inside the old church.
Sacred stained-glass overhead. Ancient candles flickered near stone saints.
And a pregnant hacker woman argued with a faceless tech ghost over encrypted server tunnels.
Honestly? Somehow it worked.
Vex looked back toward me again after typing something rapidly across the keyboard. “So,” she said casually, “how long until you realize all the men here are emotionally constipated idiots?”
“I heard that,” Reaper called from across the room.
“Good.”
I snorted quietly and immediately regretted it when pain flared through my ribs.
“See?” Vex pointed at me triumphantly. “Already fitting in.”
Reaper finally pushed himself partly upright from the cot only to immediately fix his attention on Vex instead of the conversation itself. “Why are you standing?”
“Because I have legs.”
“You’re supposed to be resting.”
“And you’re not supposed to get shot every other Tuesday, yet here we are.”
A fighter nearby choked, trying not to laugh. Reaper glared at him instantly. The guy looked away so fast it almost gave me whiplash.
But underneath the sarcasm and chaos and exhaustion that filled the church, I caught the way Reaper’s eyes kept tracking Vex constantly. Every movement. Every shift in posture. Like some part of him stayed permanently aware of her now without even trying.
Protective.
Instinctive.
Human.
And watching all of it while the Sanctuary buzzed around us in violence and recovery and absolute dysfunction, I realized something strange. These people were insane. But they genuinely loved each other anyway.
The deeper into Sanctuary the night carried us, the more the place stopped feeling like an underground empire and began to feel like a scarred family trying very hard to survive together.
Fighters patched walls while others carried wounded teammates toward sleeping quarters upstairs.
Someone brewed coffee so strong it could probably dissolve metal in the kitchen area near the old confessionals.
Mouse nearly fell asleep standing up while still trying to help Eden organize medical supplies until Brick finally shoved him toward a couch with a blanket and a muttered order to knock the hell out for a few hours.
Nobody here pretended to be innocent.
That was the difference. Sanctuary wasn’t clean. It wasn’t soft. Violence lived in the walls of this church, just like incense and candle smoke. But underneath it all sat something else, too.
Protection.
A place built by broken people who understood exactly what happened when nobody came to save you.
Saint approached quietly sometime after Eden finally stopped threatening bodily harm against half the room. Exhaustion carved sharp shadows beneath his pale eyes while fresh bandages poked out from beneath the cuff of his black shirt.
He stopped in front of me for one long second. No interrogation or suspicion. Just calm observation before his gaze shifted briefly toward Aiden standing nearby. Then back to me.
“You staying?” he asked.
Something tightened painfully in my chest. Because somehow that question carried more trust than any dramatic speech could have.
I looked around the Sanctuary again. At the wounded fighters. The repaired pews. The exhausted people who were still moving through the old church despite everything they had survived tonight. Then back at him.
“Yeah,” I answered quietly.
Saint nodded once as if that settled it.
Reaper barely looked up from where Eden stitched his arm before muttering, “Told you she would.”
Aiden went very still beside me after that. Like some part of him still didn’t fully know how to believe someone would choose to stay once they saw all the darkness attached to him up close.
The staircase to Ghost’s room was steep and narrow, polished smooth over years of worshippers climbing up the mountain that had since been altered for new purposes. Every step I took sent another wave of pain coursing through my injured body, but Aiden didn’t release his firm grip on my lower back.
His bedroom matched my expectations—minimalistic décor, a made bed, and a clear desk devoid of personal touches, except for the imposing four-poster bed and an old photo of us on the nightstand.
We were younger then, smiling from a time when we believed we’d last forever, before he became Ghost and I learned that people could vanish.
He watched me gaze at the picture, silent as he closed the door, blocking out the rest of the Sanctuary. Quiet sounds drifted up from downstairs—murmurs, distant metal clanging, and the steady rhythm of an unyielding organization.
“I kept it,” I muttered, running my thumb along the frame.
“I kept everything,” he replied gruffly.
There was a painful weariness to his voice that spoke of everything that had happened tonight – the years spent apart, his killing so many to protect me, the blood drying on his hands.
He didn’t pull away from me like he knew he could.
Instead, he stood as still as the ancient mountain itself and allowed me all the time in the world to push him away.
I gripped his arm tighter.
Slowly, he brushed his thumb against my cheek and dragged his fingertips down my jawline worshipfully like I would’ve never imagined Ghost to be capable. “I thought I lost you this time.”
“You didn’t,” I replied as I pressed into his palm. “Not again. I’m right here.”
It was enough. After everything he had maintained so perfectly, his control shattered with me, and I saw him unravel before my eyes. The cold, hard killer who had sliced through bodies to keep me alive softened into the person I used to love.
His lips pressed against mine, chaste and hesitant at first, before shifting to needy gasps as he pulled me flush against his chest. His hands roamed possessively over my back and hips as if he, too, was scared that he might wake up and none of this was real.
We tore at each other’s clothes, slowly, greedily taking in everything we hadn’t had in years.
His fingers brushed over the long gash down my collarbone, which Eden had cleaned, his touch light as feathers.
My hands roamed up his back, tracing over every callous on his fingertips, old scars along his spine, and the makeshift bandages covering fresh wounds.
Nothing about this was rushed. We’d spent too long in the fast lane to rush something like this. This was about taking everything in, letting our fingers remember how it felt to be wrapped around each other, and praying we could pick up where we left off.
God, it felt good to be home.
Lying together in his ridiculously large bed after, his warmth pressed up against me, and his steady heartbeat thrumming in my ear, I felt something inside of me unclench that I didn’t know was there. He carded his fingers through my hair soothingly, still breathing heavy.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he murmured into the dark. “How to just… be with you like this.”
“I can see that.” I teased, rolling closer to his chest until my nose nestled into his hair. “Neither do I.”
He pulled me closer and wrapped his arms possessively around my waist. Tilting my face upwards, he pressed a chaste kiss to my lips.
“It’s going to be okay,” I vowed, not taking my eyes away from his. Maybe broken things didn’t always stay broken.