Chapter 188: What Kai Won’t Forgive

Chapter 188: Chapter 188: What Kai Won’t Forgive

The hardware store’s shelves had already been half-cleared by the time the group finished their sweep of the first two aisles, and Erik was midway through directing the second wave toward the back storage room when the shouting started.

"That’s our haul! We saw it first!"

A cluster of five men emerged from the loading dock at the rear of the store, weapons raised, faces gaunt with the particular hollow desperation that had become common enough across the flooded city that none of them fully registered the danger fast enough.

"We didn’t see any markers claiming this place," Erik said, already positioning himself between the men and the rest of the group. "There’s enough here for both parties if we’re reasonable about it."

"We don’t want reasonable," the lead man snapped, gesturing his group forward. "We want what we came for."

They came fast, and not stupidly — five men who’d clearly survived this long by learning to fight dirty, spreading wide across the narrow aisle instead of bunching together, forcing the group to split their attention in three directions at once.

Erik met the first two head-on, ice crackling across his knuckles, but the aisle was too narrow for him to fully commit to either strike without exposing his flank, and a third man used the opening to drive a length of rebar hard into his ribs before he could pivot away. The blow drove the air from his lungs, and he staggered back a step, lightning flaring wild and undirected as he fought to recover his footing.

"Erik!" Penelope’s blade cut the rebar-wielder down before he could press the advantage, though the effort left her exposed just long enough for a fourth attacker to close in from her blind side.

Killian’s hand shot out, atoms unraveling through the man’s knife before it ever reached her, but the disarmed attacker didn’t stop — he barreled forward anyway, tackling Killian bodily into a shelf of paint cans, both of them crashing down amid a spray of shattered plastic and spilled color.

"Killian!"

"I’m fine — deal with the others!" Killian’s voice came muffled from beneath the wreckage, already twisting to drive an elbow into his attacker’s throat.

Kai and Ben had taken the fifth man together, axe and crowbar working in tandem, and for a moment it looked contained — until the lead man, the one who’d started the confrontation, produced a second weapon from his belt and lunged past Kai’s guard entirely, aiming not for Kai at all but for Ben, still mid-swing, unable to fully reset his stance in time.

"Ben, watch—"

The warning came too late. The blade caught Ben across the ribs, deep enough to draw an immediate, wet gasp of pain, and he crumpled, dropping his crowbar, blood already soaking dark through his shirt.

"Ben!" Kai’s voice tore through the chaos, something raw and immediate replacing his usual easy tone entirely.

Everything after that moved in fragments.

Kai’s axe found the man who’d struck Ben before the blade had even fully cleared the wound, the strike brutal and absolute, and when the last standing attacker — the one Erik had been struggling to contain — surged forward to press whatever advantage remained, Kai turned on him with the same merciless speed, no hesitation at all, the fight in him having shifted instantly from defense into something closer to pure, unthinking retribution.

Erik, finally regaining his breath, caught the man’s arm and drove lightning through him at close range, dropping him convulsing to the flooded floor before Kai’s second strike ever landed, though Kai swung anyway, the axe burying itself in the already-dead man’s shoulder with enough force to crack the floor tile beneath.

Killian finally freed himself from the wreckage of the paint shelf, blood trickling from a shallow cut above one eyebrow, and finished his own opponent with a single, controlled application of his ability, the man’s weapon disintegrating in his grip a half-second before Penelope’s katana ended the fight entirely.

The lead man — the one whose blade had found Ben — hesitated for one fatal moment, staring at the carnage around him, and Kai closed the distance before he could turn to run, the axe finding him with none of the restraint Kai usually showed even in the heat of combat.

Silence fell over the store, broken only by Ben’s ragged, pained breathing and the drip of spilled paint pooling slowly across the tile.

"Ben." Kai dropped to his knees beside him instantly, axe forgotten, hands hovering uselessly over the wound like he wasn’t sure where it was safe to touch. "Ben, hey, look at me, stay with me—"

"I’m here," Ben managed, though his voice came out thin, strained, blood already pooling beneath him on the wet floor. "It’s not — it’s not that deep, I think—"

"It’s deep enough," Kai said, voice cracking, pressing both hands hard against the wound despite Ben’s wince of pain. "Stay awake. Stay with me."

Erik pressed a hand against his own bruised ribs, breathing hard, surveying the wreckage of the fight with grim, exhausted clarity. Five dead. Ben bleeding. Killian favoring one side where the fall through the shelf had clearly done more damage than he was letting show. It hadn’t been clean. None of them had walked away from this one untouched.

Vanya was already crossing the distance, Persephone and Harold close behind, having caught up from the far aisle where they’d been clearing shelves when the fight broke out.

"Move," Vanya said, dropping to Ben’s other side without waiting for permission, already assessing the wound with quick, clinical precision.

Kai’s hands eased back automatically, some old trust in her already established from the day’s travel together, though confusion flickered across his face as she pressed her palm flat against the wound. "What are you doing?"

"Healing power," Vanya said simply, not looking up, focus entirely on the wound. "Give me a moment. This isn’t instant, but it’s close."

A faint, warm light gathered beneath her palm, soft and golden, and Ben’s ragged breathing eased almost immediately, the pained tension in his face smoothing out as the wound beneath her hand began, visibly, to knit itself back together.

Penelope watched, stunned, as the bleeding slowed and finally stopped entirely, the wound closing into something that looked, within minutes, like it had been healing for days rather than seconds.

"That’s incredible," Erik said quietly, crouching nearby despite the ache still radiating through his ribs, watching with the same careful attention he gave everything he didn’t fully understand.

Vanya finally sat back, some visible exhaustion crossing her features now that the effort had passed. "It’s not perfect. He’ll still be sore, and he shouldn’t push himself for a day or two. But the wound itself is closed. He won’t bleed out."

Ben, blinking up at all of them with dazed, grateful relief, managed a weak laugh. "Remind me to thank you properly once I can actually breathe without it hurting."

"I don’t fully understand the extent of it myself," Vanya admitted, though something in her tone suggested that wasn’t entirely true.

Harold crouched beside her, checking her over with obvious, immediate concern, entirely uninterested in the wound itself now that the danger had passed. "You pushed too hard. You always push too hard."

"I’m fine, Harold."

"You’re never fine after you do that." Harold’s jaw tightened, something protective and stubborn settling into his young face. "This stays between us. All of it — the healing, everything. We don’t know these people well enough to be handing out information about what you can do."

"Harold—"

"I mean it, Nya." He glanced toward the group, apologetic but unmoving. "I’m sorry. I know you just helped your friend. But we don’t advertise things like this. Not to anyone. Not even people who seem trustworthy."

Vanya studied him for a long moment, something faintly exasperated crossing her expression, though underneath it sat something warmer, something she’d never quite admit to out loud — the particular, stubborn devotion of someone who’d decided, somewhere in these past weeks, that protecting her mattered more than his own comfort. She’d spent longer than she cared to examine without anyone in her corner quite like this. It was, she privately admitted, not the worst thing in the world to have earned.

"Understood," she said simply, and let it go.

"We’ll keep it quiet," Erik said, already understanding the weight of the request without needing further explanation. "You have our word."

"Thank you," Vanya said.

Kai, still kneeling beside Ben, finally looked up, something raw and unguarded crossing his face — gratitude, relief, and underneath it, the last, lingering tremor of the fear he hadn’t fully processed yet. "Thank you. I mean it. I thought—" He didn’t finish the sentence, jaw working, unable to voice the specific horror of what he’d thought for those few seconds Ben had been bleeding out beneath his hands.

"He’s going to be fine," Vanya said, gentler now. "You don’t have to finish that thought."

Kai nodded, throat tight, and helped Ben carefully to his feet, one arm braced under his friend’s shoulder despite Ben’s protest that he could manage on his own.

"I can walk."

"I don’t care. I’m helping anyway."

Persephone crossed to Vanya’s side once the immediate crisis had settled, and without a word of warning, pulled her into a fierce, tight hug.

"You’re the best," she said, muffled against Vanya’s shoulder. "I mean it. Officially, unequivocally, the best person I know."

"You’re exaggerating," Vanya said, though something almost like a real smile tugged at the corner of her mouth despite herself.

"I’m really not."

Penelope approached next, something warm and grateful settling into her expression. "Thank you. Truly. I don’t know what we would’ve done if that wound had been worse and we hadn’t had you here."

"You’d have managed," Vanya said. "You always seem to. But you’re welcome, regardless."

They finished clearing the store’s remaining shelves in quieter, more subdued efficiency after that, the earlier chaos of the fight settling into grim, practical cleanup — Erik still favoring his bruised ribs, Killian wiping a smear of dried paint and blood from his temple, supplies gathered and split evenly between the two groups, Penelope and Vanya quietly overseeing the division without drawing attention to exactly how each portion disappeared the moment it left the shelves.

"That’s a fair split," Vanya said, surveying the final tally.

"More than fair," Penelope agreed. "Thank you for today. All of it."

"We’re stronger together," Vanya said simply. "That’s not sentiment. That’s just accurate."

By the time they made their way back toward the boats, the day’s violence had settled into something quieter, more exhausted — Ben walking steadily now under his own power despite Kai’s continued hovering, Persephone still riding the high of gratitude and adrenaline in equal measure, Erik and Killian trading quiet, assessing glances about the five men who now lay dead in the hardware store behind them, one more grim, costly addition to the growing list this drowning city kept demanding.

"We should head home," Erik said finally, checking the fading light. "Before dark makes the water worse than it already is."

Nobody argued. They loaded into Vanya’s boat together, the whole group quieter now than the outbound trip had been, though something steadier had settled between the two families regardless — trust, tested and proven in the worst possible way, holding solid despite the cost it had taken to earn it.

Kai kept one hand resting lightly on Ben’s shoulder the entire ride home, as though needing the physical confirmation that his best friend was still, genuinely, breathing beside him, and Ben let him, understanding exactly what the gesture meard without either of them needing to say it aloud.