Caution: this story is not meant to stand alone. The Beyond Happily Ever After stories are vignettes and outtakes showing the O’Kanes & other Sector residents in their daily lives, in between the adventures and often after their happy endings. These stories were written exclusively for readers and fans of the series, and will probably not make very much sense to anyone not familiar with the characters.

Home: 2019 Patreon Reward Story. Jyoti visits the Broken Circle, talks business with Mia & Six, and thinks about how nice it is to come home.
Timeline: Set after Ivan

Home

Jyoti had come to love the Broken Circle.

It wasn’t the sort of place she’d ever expected to fit into. Her entire life had been defined by the sort of luxury that belonged in a forgotten world, a contradictory blend of cutting-edge technology and handcrafted majesty. Lush fabrics, soft candlelight, delicate food, rare vintages of pre-Flare wines.

All of the cages that had shaped the boundaries of Jyoti’s life had been gilded to the exact edges of good taste. Some people, freed from the trap of such finery, rejected the gilt and luxury. Jyoti hadn’t.

The problem had always been the cage, not the gold. She loved the gold.

The Broken Circle was the opposite of a gilded cage. Even with an astronomical budget available, Dallas O’Kane had stuck stubbornly to his vision. With its rough brick and exposed metalwork, the bar was made of blunt challenge and hard edges, just like the man who’d dreamed it into being.

But there were touches of finer things. The lush leather that cradled them in the VIP section. The deep polish on the scarred wood, smooth under Jyoti’s idly tapping fingertips. The carefully cultivated decorations, ranging from recovered road signs to antique weapons.

Lex’s touches. Aesthetically pleasing, but always selected and placed with care to guide the eye where it was meant to go and tell a subtle story.

Jyoti wondered sometimes if anyone else could read the subtext as easily as she could. Probably not. She and Lex shared the dubious honor of being Cerys’s only protégées. Even Gia and Jared, trained as they had been by a rather notorious practitioner of the trade, lacked the final gleam on their sharpest edges.

They’d been trained to survive. Lex and Jyoti had been trained to rule.

Maybe that was why Jyoti could arrive in this aggressively steel-edged bar, a silk-clad butterfly in a sea of leather and denim, and feel as comfortable in the VIP booth as she did in her own office. That was the subtext of the Broken Circle, the story Lex had so carefully constructed.

As long as you wanted to be here, you were home.

“Hey, Jyoti.”  Six slid into the booth on Jyoti’s right, her perfect foil tonight. Where Jyoti was tall, curvy and clad in embroidered silk in emerald and silver, Six was short, lean, and dressed in her usual ripped denim. Her black tank-top showed off muscled arms and tanned skin traced in thin white scars.

Six had lived a hard life. The opposite of Jyoti’s in many ways. No luxury, no education. The odds had been against her living to see twenty. No one could have imagined she’d climb to the dizzying height she currently occupied as the leader of Sector Three.

She was a survivor, and Jyoti adored her. “Six. I’m glad you were able to make it. How’s the recycling factory going?”

Six snorted and accepted a beer from a shyly smiling waitress, a new girl Jyoti hadn’t met before. She handed Jyoti the glass of wine she’d requested–no doubt wine that she’d had to run upstairs to Lili and Jared’s opulent lounge to acquire.

When the girl had gone, Six took a deep drink.  “We blew all the fuses in the factory today. I don’t even know how. The solar generator was supposed to be producing enough power but…”

“It happens.” Jyoti lifted her wine and let it swirl in the glass.  “If you don’t have a specialist, I can ask Mad to go have a look. He’s good with that sort of thing.”

“I might.” A sudden, rare smile curved Six’s lips. “But after it blew, another old-timer showed up. Asshole grumbled a lot about how kids don’t know shit about voltage, but when I left he was working with the foreman to fix it up.”

It might have seemed like a modest victory, but Jyoti knew how hard Six had been struggling to win over the older community leaders in Sector Three. “Congratulations.”

“You and Lex were right,” Six said, relaxing back against the padded leather booth. “Words weren’t going to do it. But now that the first factory’s back online, they don’t want to get left behind.”

No, irrelevance would sting to men who had survived the Flares and then the strikes and fire-bombs in Sector Three. For decades, they’d been all that was left of the sector’s memory, their valuable knowledge and experience stagnating from neglect under the string of petty tyrants who’d seized control of the rubble.

Pride hadn’t let them fall in line behind Six, a young woman not even a third their age, with no leadership experience to speak of. But pride wouldn’t let them stand on the sidelines as the sector hurtled toward a bright future, either.

“Hey!” Mia slid into the booth on Jyoti’s other side, slim and elegant in a bright yellow dress that complemented her beautiful brown skin. Dark curls tumbled around her shoulders, and Jyoti’s heart nearly burst as Mia beamed at them with a glowing confidence Jyoti had once worried she’d never see again.  “Is this business or pleasure?”

“We’re O’Kanes,” Six retorted, sliding the bowl of pretzels toward Mia.  “It’s both. It’s always both.”

“Oh, good.” Mia rested her elbow on the table and propped her chin on her hand.  “I need both of you. We’re ready to move on renovations for the spa, which means I need building supplies and someone to run it.”

“What kind of supplies?” Six asked, and Jyoti hid her smile behind her wine glass as the two leaned closer, all business and excitement as they plotted how to open Sector Eight’s first totally indulgent destination.

Jyoti couldn’t have been prouder of Mia if the girl had been her own child.

Not that Jyoti was that much older than her. But ten years was enough when you were still as young as Mia was. Jyoti could remember the first day she’d met the girl. So young and serious, her brilliance a quiet flame easily overlooked.

Cerys had been disappointed in Mia, who’d never shown the flair for emotional manipulation that an Orchid needed to thrive. Not that Mia didn’t understand people and presentation. She was good at understanding the needs of the heart and how to soothe them. In the pre-Flare world, she would have been a brilliant diplomat, or perhaps a therapist, able to unburden the weariest soul.

But Mia didn’t savor following the twists and turns of a delicately layered political feint. Her thoughts traveled in straighter lines. She identified problems, ascertained the cause of suffering, and developed a plan to alleviate the pressure. She saw the clearest path to any goal, and could synthesize massive amounts of information on an instinctive level, teasing free answers most would never see.

She was a gem that Cerys had never properly appreciated, and Jyoti had come close to rebelling the day she’d found out Cerys had delivered brilliant, sensitive Mia into the reprehensible hands of a monster like Vaughn.

Jyoti sipped her wine, letting the sweet tartness wash away the bitter taste in her mouth. She had a dozen regrets from the years she’d served at Cerys’s side, but few as deep as what had happened to Mia. Vaughn had been a true believer, bloated with the puritanical hypocrisy that flowed so readily from Eden. He’d wanted the prestige of an Orchid, but not the reality of a woman he would scorn for provoking unholy desire in his supposedly pure soul.

Mia had been reticent with the truth of her time serving with Vaughn as her patron, but Jyoti knew enough. The fact that he’d never touched her didn’t matter. He’d done his damage with words, tearing at her confidence, doing his best to crush that light out of her. He’d come close. So close.

It was a small satisfaction that Mia’s escape from his estate had deeply damaged his reputation. When Eden had sent out warnings to their most valued connections inside Sector Two, Vaughn hadn’t received one. He’d narrowly survived the harrowing bombing of the sector, but he hadn’t survived the first six months of Jyoti’s rule. Disposing of him had been a distinct satisfaction.

None of the men who’d abused girls from the houses had. The few who had circumvented her vengeance had done so by fleeing. If they expected to find refuge in other sectors, they’d be sorely disappointed.

Most of the other sector leaders were in this bar. Two were at this table.

“Deal.” Mia thrust out a hand. Six smiled as she shook it. Then Mia’s bright eyes turned on Jyoti. “Your turn.”

“I have a couple of candidates in mind.” Jyoti settled her wine glass on the table.  “Do you remember Tamika from the River District spa?”

“Ohh, yes. She was amazing at hair.”

“She still is. She’s been working out of a makeshift salon she set up, but I think she’d relish the opportunity to flex the full range of her skills again.”  Especially as Sector Two had dozens of highly trained hair, nail and skin technicians in a sector that could barely support a single spa.

“What about employees?” Mia asked, but before Jyoti could open her mouth, she shook her head. “No, obviously if Tamika wants to take over, I let her choose. She’ll know who’s good–and who she can work with.”

“Exactly.” Jyoti smiled. “If she isn’t interested, the trainer from Lotus House who focused on cosmetics and hair might be. She’d probably want to train her apprentice as a replacement and then just stay on in semi-retirement, though.”

Concern wrinkled Mia’s brow. “How are the trainers adjusting to the new world?”

A thorny question. After Jyoti’s public execution of the first trainer caught pimping out drugged trainees, the next two who tried it had been more subtle.

Not subtle enough, though.

By the time Jyoti had personally shot the third one in the head, the message had echoed across Sector Two. You fell in line, or you just fell. No second chances. No exceptions.

The former trainers of Sector Two had fallen into line with far more alacrity than the former patrons. Jyoti supposed the women were used to surviving under someone else’s rules. A purge of trainers hadn’t been necessary. Most of them had found a way to work themselves into Jyoti’s vision of a revitalized Sector Two with strong trading ties to the world beyond Eden.

“Some are doing better than others,” she admitted. “Gideon has helped me find a soft retirement for the oldest ones. Some are helping in the new nursing school, or training there.” A smile curved her lips.  “And more than one former Orchid has revived her patron’s trading connections. With far greater success, in most cases.”

“I’m not surprised,” Mia replied.  “We always understood the business better than they did.”

“Undoubtedly.”

The music shifted to something throbbing, and movement drew Jyoti’s gaze. Mad materialized out of the crowd grinding on the dance floor, his eyes glinting in a way that still made her heart skip a beat.

He prowled toward the table, bumped fists with Six, and then swept down to kiss Mia on the cheek. “Ladies. Reorganizing the world over here again?”

“Just our corners of it,” Mia replied with a grin.

“You three have some sizeable corners.”  He tilted his head toward Jyoti, both eyebrows rising.  “Can I steal her away? I’d promise to bring her back, but with the way the music’s bumping tonight…”

Six rolled her eyes and scooted out of the booth. Then she held out a hand to help Jyoti slide out. Unexpectedly, Six caught her in a one-armed, sideways hug as she passed–an abrupt gesture of affection that meant the world coming form Six, who so rarely offered them.  Jyoti patted her on the shoulder, resisting the urge to wrap her arms around the other woman, who was already pulling away.

Jyoti understood. Six wasn’t the only one with scars. But she was one of the few who never tried to hide them. In that, Jyoti had always envied her. It took a fearsome sort of courage to live with your vulnerabilities on the outside.

Her own scars were buried under layers of masks. She’d stopped castigating herself for that. She didn’t have to show the world her vulnerabilities, as long as she showed them to the people who mattered.

The man pulling her into his arms as they drifted into the dark anonymity of the dance floor was one of them. Mad knew all the fractures along which she’d broken, and all the secret bruises that had yet to fully heal.

He knew how to hold her. Tight against him, one hand at her hip, the other buried in her hair. His fingers curled tight as they swayed, teasing her with the softest edge of control. With promise.

Pleasure slid through her, melting her bones. She closed her eyes and let Mad guide them through the dancing, let him lead this private dance with the care and dedication she led her sector.

A door thumped open. The music grew softer. Jyoti opened her eyes just as Mad wrapped an arm around her waist and swung her around and pinned her to the door marked Staff Only, his hard body stretched all along hers.

Warm lips found her ear.  “Dylan’s still at the hospital, and Scarlet’s finishing up band practice. They’re both coming here when they’re done.”

“Is that so?”

“Mmm.” Mad’s clever fingers teased under the hem of her dress, stroking her thigh. “You’ve got two choices.”

“Only the two?”

“For now.” He kissed her earlobe. “We can have a little cuddle and kiss back here, and then go out and wait for our lovers to get home.”

She shivered. “Or?”

“Or I can do what Dylan told me to do if I caught you working when you promised us you’d take the night off.”

The shiver that rocked her this time was deeper. If she closed her eyes, she could conjure the delicious feel of Dylan’s fingers around her throat as he promised decadent punishments for disobedience. If Six and Mia hadn’t started a conversation on their own, she might have cornered Dallas and invented a trade issue just to break the rules.

“You wouldn’t want to disobey Dylan,” she murmured, grazing Mad’s jaw with her lips.  “Or maybe you do?”

“Later,” Mad rumbled. “I don’t want to divide his attention tonight.”

And with that, he hoisted her up over his shoulder and kicked through the door.

She did not squeal. Jyoti never squealed. But her breath left her in a rush, and she found herself clinging to Mad’s muscular back as he carried her out into the cool night.

Across the parking lot, Nessa broke into laughter, then raised her voice.  “Hey Jyoti, want me to kick his ass?”

She lifted her head and smiled at Nessa. “No, I’ll deal with this later.”

“Bite him somewhere uncomfortable,” Nessa shouted after them, flashing Jyoti two enthusiastic thumbs up.

Mad’s shoulder trembled under her from laughter. “That girl has no respect for the mood I’m going for here.”

“What, conquering barbarian?”  Jyoti patted the closest thing within reach–Mad’s ass.  “You’re doing wonderful. I feel very conquered.”

His shoulder shook under her again, his warm laughter filling the night, and that was the reason Jyoti would always come home to the Broken Circle. Pleasure edged in laughter, sex twined with love.

Joy. in spite of the madness of their world, in spite of the work still to come. Unrelenting, aggressive joy.

It was good to be home.