Bree has recovered from surgery, but we’re still scheduling these ahead as we work on a secret project! Mwahahahaha! This serial was originally posted (mostly!) on Patreon, and has been edited and finished to be posted live on our blog over the next few weeks. But for those who just want it NOW, or who hate reading on a blog and would like an epub… Well here is the epub!
Return to the world after the Beyond Series and meet the residents of Sector Three…
When Ashwin asks Six & Bren to take in an emotionally fractured Makhai soldier, there are a thousand things that could go wrong. But they are hard at work building their school and rebuilding their sector, and Sebastian is a genius who can fix anything. Anything. In return for his help, all they have to do is give him a safe place to find out if his emotional wounds can be healed.
Just one traumatized supersoldier in the middle of a school filled with former feral street kids, war refugees from exclusive brothels, and a few dozen kids who barely know what a school is.
What could go wrong?
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DISCLAIMERS: this is a serial meant for existing readers of the series. it contains full series spoilers for the Beyond Series and may not make sense if you haven’t read it.
It is also NOT erotic. This is the first part of a very very very slow burn romance between a broken Makhai soldier and an artist who escaped Sector Two after the bombings. There may also be a few other romances a brewing… consider this more like a TV show with multiple members of the cast up to hijinks, even if there are two main characters.
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“River’s holding out on us.” Blue thumped her mug of tea down on the teachers’ table in the courtyard. “You’re holding out on us.”
River glared over the rim of her coffee, still looking cranky at being out in the early morning sun. She always looked cranky before her second cup of coffee. “What am I holding out on you about this time?”
“The new guy, obviously.”
Callie looked up from pushing her eggs around her plate. As far as she knew, Sector Three’s newest arrival had been keeping a low profile so far. “You’ve already met him?”
“Oh, that.” River reached out to snag a donut. “Yeah, I spent a few hours with him last night. You should have seen the shit he was doing. He built a solar battery for my truck out of spit and prayers, and converted my engine to run on it. I don’t even think half of what he did is possible, but she runs like a dream now.”
“He fixed your truck already?” No wonder Six and Bren had opened their doors so readily, despite the supposed danger.
Blue rolled her eyes. “Forget about the truck. We want details.”
Speak for yourself. Callie didn’t say it aloud, of course, which was good, because she immediately regretted her momentary irritation. She was well enough acquainted with Blue to know there was nothing mean-spirited or small about her request for gossip. She was simply curious about their new, apparently brilliant colleague, and there was nothing wrong with that.
“Eh, Six wasn’t lying. He’s jumpy as hell.” River snorted. “Almost brained me with a wrench because I startled him. Make lots of noise if you’re coming up on him, I guess. He’s one of those.”
Blue grinned and reached across the table to nudge River’s arm. “You’re one of those.” Then she arched one eyebrow. “Is he cute?”
Callie stifled a sigh.
“Well, I can’t ask Six,” Blue protested. “You know she only finds Bren attractive.”
“So she finds one man attractive. She’s still ahead of me.” River finished her coffee and reached for the pot to refill her mug. “I mean, he’s a genetically engineered killing machine, Blue. He looks like what you’d get if you built a dude to be big and strong and deadly. I wouldn’t fuck with him in a dark alley.”
“Okay, but would I fu–”
“Have you tried the croissants yet?” Callie picked up the tray and held it out in front of Blue. “I think Kaz has just about perfected his technique. They’re just like the ones the cook used to bake at the House.”
Blue peered down at the tray, her eyes gleaming. “Really? That fancy?”
“Nothing fancy,” Callie countered. “Just flawless technique. Buttery, flaky technique.”
It worked. There was one thing Blue loved more than anything else–more than working in the greenhouse, more than leather boots, more than men.
“Carbs,” she purred, wiggling her fingers over the tray.
Leah passed by the table, then paused at the end of it with a frown. “Don’t you have an early class that started a few minutes ago?”
Blue glanced at her watch, then squeaked and grabbed two croissants. “To be continued!” she called over her shoulder as she rushed off. “I mean it!”
River eyed the croissants with suspicion before transferring the same look to Leah. “So you care about the times classes start and end suddenly?”
Leah gazed back at her with an expression that somehow managed to be innocent and amused, all at once. “Of course I do.”
“Uh-huh. Remember that next time you’re having a dance party.”
Leah’s gentle, vague smile didn’t waver as she spun around, her gauzy skirt swinging in a perfect arc around her, and walked away.
Her eggs were getting cold, but Callie took another bite anyway. Anything to avoid watching River watch Leah. “When you were growing up, were there dangerous people in Three? People everyone knew not to mess with?”
“Sure.” River made an amused noise. “Most of them are dead now, thank God.”
“We had them in Sector Two, as well. They were called Orchids.” No hint of recognition, so Callie tilted her head. “Leah was one.”
River choked on her coffee. “You’re shitting me.”
Her surprise was almost comical. Just because Leah draped herself in flowing pastels and wore her shining blonde hair in artfully artless curls around her face, River thought she was soft. Worse, she thought she was weak.
River had fallen for the age-old trap that Orchids represented–with such pretty wrapping on a potentially lethal gift, almost no one bothered to peek beneath the paper until it was too late.
“I would never shit you,” Callie told her solemnly. “And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she’s a bad person. But when you look at her…”
“You see exactly what she wants you to see,” a voice said from next to them. Six swung a chair around at the head of the table and straddled it. “You of all people should know better than to underestimate someone based on how they look.”
River shoved the coffee pot toward Six, still looking rebellious. “You’re telling me the princess in the flouncy skirt who’s clearly never broken a nail is a stone cold killer of men?”
“I didn’t say that.” Six flipped over a mug and poured herself some coffee. “All the Orchids I know are pretty equal opportunity. Though I guess Jyoti isn’t technically an Orchid, is she?”
Callie pushed her plate away. “Jyoti trained at Rose House.”
River’s brow furrowed. “What does that even mean?”
Roses were trained to be hostesses and entertainment, estate managers and concubines. “It means perfection. I was a Dahlia. I had it easy. All I had to do was fake innocence.”
Except it hadn’t all been fake. The men of Sector Two had been cunning predators, creatures who could scent artifice from miles away. The only way to survive in Two, much less thrive, was to live the lie. You had to become the very thing they expected, wanted.
At least until you couldn’t do it anymore.
Six reached out to squeeze Callie’s hand briefly. Then she pinned River with a look. “Callie warned you. If you keep poking at Leah, don’t be surprised if she pokes back with a knife.”
“Hey, at least that’d make her interesting,” River said lightly. Then she grabbed a croissant and pointedly changed the subject. “Everyone wants to know if Sebastian’s hot,” she informed Six, gesturing with the pastry to the table where the newcomer had just taken a seat with Bren. “Pretty sure Blue’s going to fall in love with him. He seems like her level of brooding loner.”
“Blue’s smarter than that,” Callie said automatically, purely to distract herself from looking, but it didn’t work. Her gaze skipped across the distance between the tables, and she froze.
She had no idea what she’d expected. Perhaps big and strong and deadly, all the words River had used to describe him. They were apt, no doubt about that. He was obviously a trained soldier, a warrior. But he was also…
Beautiful. The word echoed through Callie’s soul. His face was finely carved, his features bold but still refined. It was a face meant to be rendered by the masters, outlined with aged oils and gazed upon with rhapsodic ecstasy.
Her fingers itched for a pencil, a piece of charcoal, even a fucking crayon or tube of lipstick. Anything she could put to paper at that very moment.
“Okay,” River murmured. “Callie thinks he’s hot.”
He wasn’t hot. He was art. Callie opened her mouth, the denial hovering on her tongue. Then, across the courtyard, Sebastian turned his head, his dark gaze locking with hers.
She forgot to breathe. It shouldn’t have been possible. The autonomic nervous system governed respiration, and looking into a pair of bottomless, magnetic eyes couldn’t change that.
But she forgot to breathe.
Six’s fingers tightened on Callie’s again. “Don’t forget he’s a Makhai soldier. They’re not exactly cuddly.”
As if she gave a damn. “Do you think he’d sit for me?”
“What, like naked?” River asked.
Her cheeks heated, but still she didn’t look away. “No, not naked. Look at his face.”
River propped her chin in her hand and stared at him. When Sebastian glanced at her, she lifted her other hand and gave him a cheerful wave. After a brief hesitation, he inclined his head and then turned his attention back to Bren.
“I guess it’s a nice face,” River conceded. “Can’t say I’d hang it on my wall, but I’ve been told I don’t properly appreciate art.”
“You do when it’s wrapped in a flouncy skirt,” Callie muttered.
River’s intense gaze swung back to her. “Not in a million fucking years,” she said, far too fervently.
Never say never. Good advice, words she herself should have taken to heart. After all, she’d been so determined to steer clear of Sebastian Montoya, and all it had taken to shatter that resolve?