by Kit Rocha
Table of Contents
Welcome to The Sectors
Ashwin
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Deacon
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Ana
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Grace
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Before You Leave the Sectors
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Copyright Information
dedication
for everyone who's ever felt not human enough
or too human
you're just right
Welcome to The Sectors
You're holding the very first book in Gideon's Riders, a new series from Kit Rocha set in the same post-apocalyptic world as their first bestselling series. The war between Eden and the Sectors (covered in the Beyond series) is over, but victory brings its own challenges…like deciding what their new society should become.
Enter: Gideon Rios, grandson of a prophet and leader of Sector One, and his fanatically devoted personal army—a highly trained group of warrior bikers known as Gideon's Riders. Sector One might believe in love, but someone has to fight and bleed to protect those who want to live in peace.
Dozens of Riders died in the war, battling for the right to build a freer world. Those who remain face the hardest choice of all: whether they're willing to keep dying for love, or if they want to start living for it.
Gideon's Riders
Book One, Book Two, Book Three
Ashwin
Lieutenant Ashwin Malhotra is a Makhai soldier—genetically engineered to be cold, ruthless. Unfeeling. His commanding officers consider him the perfect operative, and they’re right. Now, he has a simple mission: to infiltrate Gideon’s Riders, the infamous sect of holy warriors that protects the people of Sector One.
He’s never failed to execute an objective, but there’s one thing he didn’t anticipate—running into Dr. Kora Bellamy, the only woman to ever break through his icy exterior.
When Kora fled her life as a military doctor for the Makhai Project, all she wanted was peace—a quiet life where she could heal the sick and injured. The royal Rios family welcomed her like a sister, but she could never forget Ashwin. His sudden reappearance is a second chance—if she can manage to touch his heart.
When the simmering tension between them finally ignites, Kora doesn’t realize she’s playing with fire. Because she’s not just falling in love with a man who may not be able to love her back. Ashwin has too many secrets—and one of them could destroy her.
Chapter One
The sky was alive with stars.
Before coming to Sector One, Kora had never seen so many stars. The light rising from the city had always drowned them out. But here, behind the Riders’ barracks, with nothing but a bonfire lighting the night, they were resplendent.
She leaned back, bracing her hands on the wide rock bench, and tipped her face toward the sky. Each glimmer seemed to wink down at her, and the longer she stared, the more rhythmic the twinkle became, until it looked like the whole carpet of stars was throbbing in time with the music.
Kora shut her eyes. She could still feel those stars, pulsing on the other side of her closed lids like a heartbeat, and if she just reached out—
“Kora.”
She looked over as Gideon Rios sat down beside her. He was dressed as simply as the rest of his men, in leather pants and boots and a plain white T-shirt. But a closer look showed that the leather was the highest quality, not the stiff, badly tanned cheap stuff, and the shirt had obviously been tailored to fit him.
She slid over to give him more room. “Enjoying the party?”
“Enjoying the chance to celebrate.” He sprawled his long legs out and crossed them at the ankle, the perfect picture of a man at ease. But his gaze roved the clearing, marking each of the Riders in turn. “It’s been a good week.”
If Kora didn’t already know better, she never would have guessed that he owned and commanded everything around them. He carried himself like a leader, but not a prince—which he was, of course. The Rios name guaranteed that.
And if his name had comprised the full extent of his power? Well, it might have been easy to dislike him. But his Riders didn’t follow him because of his name. They followed him because of his beliefs, his goals. His actions.
Kora liked him very much. “So why aren’t you celebrating?”
Gideon slanted a look at her, one dark eyebrow quirked. “Who says I’m not?”
He was teasing her, but he wasn’t the only one who could answer a question with a question. “How long have I been here, Gideon?”
“Oh, eight or nine months now?” He went back to surveying the crowd. “Long enough for us to get used to having you as part of the family. I hope you’re not thinking about leaving. It would break Maricela’s heart.”
“Don’t change the subject.” She gestured toward the space around the fire, where Gideon’s baby sister was dancing with one of the Riders, her head thrown back in laughter. “Maricela is having fun. You, on the other hand, are brooding.”
His lips quirked. “Maybe brooding is fun for me.”
“I see.” He said it like it was a joke, but Kora had seen people react to what they perceived as Gideon’s displeasure. His family didn’t rule through force or even popular decision. Sector One’s citizens considered the Rios family a manifestation of their God on earth, and no one liked a pissed-off god.
Gideon’s smile grew. “Do you know who has the luxury to brood, Kora? Men who aren’t fighting wars. After everything we went through last fall, it’s nice to have the time to consider all my options before committing to a course of action.”
“Even if all you have to decide between is beer or whiskey?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.” He tipped his head toward Deacon, his second-in-command, who was watching them closely. “Has he talked to you about the security precautions for your clinic?”
“At length,” Kora answered flatly. “Would it kill you to remind him that I’m actually pretty familiar with the city? You know, seeing as how I used to live there?”
Gideon didn’t lose his easy smile. “You lived in Eden before the war. I think you’ll find the city you remember no longer exists.”
If she thought that was true, she’d have already been back. She wouldn’t have let memories and the very real threat of confronting her own ghosts keep her away from people in need. “The walls came down, Gideon, but there are some things that even war can’t change.” She matched his expression. “Your favorite lieutenant, for example. Deacon still underestimates me. He treats me like I don’t think about all the things that could go wrong. It’s...annoying.”
“It’s his job.” Gideon shifted to face her on the bench. The firelight gilded one side of his face and left the rest in shadows, and somehow it made him look stern. Distant. “I put Deacon in charge of the Eden outreach operation. Do you know what that means?”
“That he’s the boss?”
“That he speaks in my name. That I trust him to represent my sector and my ideals, to protect my people the way I would.” Gideon reached for her wrist and turned
it over, revealing the two bar codes tattooed on the inside. Her identification code over her pulse, and the higher one that had granted her special clearance. “Maricela has already declared you family, and that would be all the reason Deacon needs to wrap you in cotton. But you’re an invaluable resource, Kora. You’re going to have to become accustomed to being protected.”
Become accustomed to it? Her whole life had been a never-ending chain of protective custody. Even as a child, her father had rarely let her out of his sight, and she’d spent hours studying at her small desk in the corner of his office. Her medical training had been overseen by the city, and Eden always protected its investments. Then, when she’d gone to work as a doctor on the Base…
Guards. The one constant in her life, whether they were clad in fatigues, military police black, or expensive leather and tattoos.
“Don’t worry.” She tugged her wrist free of his grasp. “I won’t make any trouble for Deacon.”
Gideon released her without complaint, but his sudden grin shattered the illusion of the serious, stern leader. “Don’t go making any extravagant promises, Kora. Traditionally, my sisters excel at making trouble for Deacon.”
“If it happens that often, maybe it’s his problem, not theirs.” She hesitated, then corrected herself. “Not ours.”
“That’s right.” He patted her leg and turned back to the fire. “That’s one thing my grandfather got right, even if he didn’t always practice what he preached. In a world like ours, everyone needs family.”
“Even if it’s one we have to make ourselves,” she agreed.
Deacon approached them, a drink in each hand, though he offered them neither. “Are you talking about the clinic for the city refugees?”
“It came up.” Gideon reached out and snagged the beer from Deacon’s left hand. “Are you satisfied with the security detail?”
Deacon grunted. “Am I ever? But we’ve done all we can. Your assigned guard will just have to handle whatever comes up.”
“If anything comes up,” Kora stressed.
He just stared at her.
Idly, she wondered if Deacon didn’t like the situation, or if he didn’t like her. The likeliest answer was a combination of the two. He undoubtedly had better things for his men to do than babysit her. But he’d do it anyway, because Gideon had asked.
She’d known men like Deacon—soldiers whose dedication ran deeper than their current orders. Whether they pledged themselves to a cause or simply to the mission at hand, they let nothing stand in their way. Not even headstrong doctors.
Kora smiled despite the bolt of pain that shot through her. Yes, she’d known men like Deacon before—and at least one of them had died because of her.
The tense silence shattered when Zeke appeared and threw an arm around Deacon’s shoulders. The younger Rider was just as tall as Deacon, but his hair was spiky and blond rather than dark, and he wore a teasing smile instead of a glower. “You guys better not be discussing work.”
“What else?” Kora rose and held out her hand. “I hope you’ve come to save me. I make an excellent damsel in distress.”
“Damsels in distress happen to be my specialty.” Zeke slapped Deacon on the back and claimed Kora’s hand, but he still paused to look at Gideon. “Boss.”
“Zeke.” Gideon inclined his head. “Go enjoy the celebrations.”
Kora followed Zeke closer to the bonfire. “You missed all the fun. I was just irritating Deacon.”
“Everything irritates Deacon.” Zeke spun her in a dizzy circle before pulling her close enough to dance. “Only mildly, though. Mildly irritated is his default state.”
“No, it’s not him.” Something about Zeke’s easy manner invited confessions. “He reminds me of someone I used to know.”
“What, like one of the MPs?”
“Sort of. A soldier.”
Most of the Riders had been born in Sector One, but Zeke was like her—someone who’d grown up inside Eden’s shining walls. The bar code marking him as a city citizen was long gone, but she’d seen his lengthy criminal record—one he’d earned hacking Eden’s system to redistribute credits to the citizens who couldn’t afford to eat.
So she wasn’t too surprised when the next thing out of his mouth was a name most people wouldn’t have known existed. “Ashwin Malhotra?”
He didn’t need her confirmation, so she focused on the ribbed collar of his gray T-shirt instead of answering. There were some things that would always be impossible to confess, because you couldn’t even explain them. The feelings refused to solidify into anything as pedestrian as words, so you just had to try and make some sort of silent sense of them.
She’d always known that her patients at the Base didn’t process things like human bonds and friendship the way most people did. They’d been engineered to divert their energies to more mission-oriented skills. Most of the time, she’d had no trouble remembering that. But with Ashwin…
She’d let down her guard. She’d forgotten to maintain a professional distance, all because there had been a few moments when Ashwin had looked at her with something approaching interest. And now he was gone.
Tears pricked her eyes, and she closed them against Zeke’s pity. “You know too many things you’re not supposed to know.”
“Yes.” He rubbed a soothing circle between her shoulder blades. “I can’t regret it, though. Poking my nose where it didn’t belong is how I ended up here with Gideon. And this is a good place to be.”
He seemed so determined to convince her that she couldn’t help smiling. “Since I’ve practically been adopted by the Rios family, I have to agree.”
“Don’t forget the Riders.” He grinned and spun her around again. “You keep putting us back together. I haven’t lost many brothers since you showed up, so I’ll give Deacon hell all night long if it’ll keep you smiling.”
“Deal.” Kora would keep smiling—because she had precious few reasons not to, compared to others who had lived through the war between the city and the sectors. Because she’d found a good life here, with friends and a chance to heal those in greatest need.
Because the only thing she’d lost had never really been hers to begin with.
Chapter Two
The Riders were heading into an ambush.
Perched on the roof of a two-story warehouse, Ashwin Malhotra watched through his binoculars as three motorcycles rumbled down the dusty road toward Sector One’s central temple. The smooth purr of the engines reached him, joining the idyllic sound of the temple’s dozens of wind chimes dancing on the late-afternoon breeze.
All three men were dressed in leather and denim. Helmets obscured their identities. Of course, who they were wasn’t as important as what they were.
Gideon’s Riders.
Holy warriors. Sainted heroes. Outside of Sector One, the Riders were more myth and legend than anything, a band of highly trained, dangerously lethal soldiers whose loyalty was unswerving and absolute. Here, they acted as the voice and hands of the god-king himself, Gideon Rios. Each one was empowered to act as judge, jury, and executioner, a position of ultimate trust and considerable power.
To Ashwin, they were a curiosity. He’d synthesized every scrap of data available—every bit of history, every dossier, every mission report or rumor to come out of Sector One. He even fleshed out his analysis with a limited number of personal encounters, but the Riders still made no sense.
The whole of One was like that. Its citizens stubbornly subsisted almost completely off the power and network grids that crisscrossed the other seven sectors and the city. Even now, in the wake of a revolution Gideon Rios had helped plan, they remained insular and close-mouthed.
They offered aid to the needy, shelter to refugees. They provided food and clothing and medical care to the hundreds displaced by war. They smiled and preached love and swore by pacifism, leaving any necessary violence in the hands of the Riders. They gave much and asked for little.
In a world that had been broken
decades ago, they were an equation that didn’t add up, no matter how many times Ashwin shifted the variables around.
Power. Greed. Influence. Faith. They were all difficult concepts that allowed plenty of room for the full range of human folly. Ashwin preferred the reliability of things that could be quantified. Things that could be counted.
Like money.
He swung his binoculars toward the temple. The warehouse he’d chosen as his perch was simple adobe, but the temple’s marble face caught the last rays of sunlight and sparkled.
Over the last four decades, the Rios family had preached love and peace. But they’d also trained the people of Sector One to purge their sins from their souls through labor. To give until they had nothing left—and to love doing it. Inside the temple, a month’s worth of donations from the faithful sat securely in a basement vault. Credits, cash, valuable possessions—based on Ashwin’s best estimates, a small fortune awaited the Riders.
That wasn’t the only thing waiting for them.
The motorcycles roared into the courtyard, drowning out the wind chimes. One by one, they pulled to a stop and cut their engines. As they removed their helmets, Ashwin matched their faces to surveillance photos in the dossiers he’d studied.
Fernando Reyes was tall, with brown eyes, golden skin, and black hair that brushed his collar. As the eldest son of Sector One’s second most powerful family, he’d been the subject of extensive interest on the Base. Though the analysts had highlighted his family’s ambition as a potential entry point to undermining Gideon Rios, Ashwin had seen enough loyalty to recognize a hopeless cause. Reyes would repudiate his family before he betrayed his leader.
The man on the right was also from a powerful family. Hunter West had darker brown skin and hair buzzed close to his skull. His sister had married into the Rios family, and his parents were fanatically devoted to Gideon. The Base’s file on them had been brief and to the point—if replacing Gideon became a priority, the entire West family would have to be removed as well.