The Gender End by Bella Forrest (the giving tree read aloud TXT) 📕

“Hey, Amber. I heard that you’ve recently upgraded to pirate status.”

Amber placed her hands on her hips and posed dramatically, like a heroine out of one of the graphic novels that were popular in Matrus, and I chuckled as I threw my arms around her neck, pulling her in for a quick hug.

“I’m so happy you’re okay,” I told her, and her arms came around my shoulders, hugging me tightly back.

“Same here with you, Violet. Don’t get me wrong—I love Ms. Dale, but she’s old, and Morgan has never been particularly fun. Of course, now I understand. She’s a Matrian princess, and it seems those girls are wound up tight.”

I snorted. I couldn’t help myself, but then I felt a pang of regret at my own humor. Morgan was a princess. Clearly she’d gone rogue or was against Elena, but for what reason? She’d killed her own twin, which meant she could be ruthless, and she was enhanced—likely with the same enhancement Tim had, given the skills she’d displayed last night. Still… I liked her, and she’d risked herself and her cover to help me track down Desmond at the water treatment plant, so whatever her reasons, I was willing to hear her out.

“Hey! Are we leaving yet? This place is really starting to creep me out.”

I broke away from Amber in time to see her roll her eyes and then suck in a deep breath as Logan Vox sauntered down the ramp. He was taller than I had realized. Amber’s head barely came up to his collarbone. And he was strikingly handsome. Not as handsome as Viggo, of course, but I was exceptionally, unapologetically biased, and maybe some people might have thought the comparison apt. Black hair, short at the back and fashionably long in front, was smoothed over to one side of the pilot’s face, and his bright blue eyes seemed to twinkle, as if he were in on some secret joke he wasn’t quite sharing with anyone. By the looks of him, he kept himself in good working shape. He looked like a swimmer, lean and athletic, but from how he moved, I could already see that he could be lethal if necessary.

Amber turned toward him, an exaggeratedly slow smile spreading across her face until it became the baring of teeth. “Logan, this is Violet, a very dear friend of mine, whom we are out here to rescue. Do you think you can just… retract the stick in your butt for one minute while I say hello?”

Her voice was saccharine-sweet but also filled with disdain—an unusual combination of the two that I’d never heard from Amber before—yet for some reason all it did was make Logan smile slowly and wink at her.

“Nope. I’m way too jealous.”

She sucked in a breath, opened her mouth as if to say something, and then gave an irritated tsk and stalked past him, reaching out and shoving him to one side as she went past.

“I’ll be in the cockpit,” she declared imperiously as he stumbled to one side, chuckling and rubbing his shoulder. He looked around, saw me looking at him, and shrugged before following her into the cockpit.

I looked back at Viggo, who was slowly climbing up the ramp behind me and shaking his head, already answering my unspoken question. “I’ll tell you about it later. They’ve been like that the entire trip. I had to put up with that for four hours. Four. So you better love me so hard right now.”

I laughed, reaching down and grabbing a fistful of his vest to pull him toward me up the final few feet of the ramp. “I really, really do,” I breathed, tilting my head up to him.

“I’m closing the ramp!” Amber shouted loudly, and then Viggo’s mouth was on my own, his tongue slipping past my parted lips in a burst of passion so heady I felt my innards become as gooey as the stuff in my new high-tech cast. The kiss ended with him drawing my lower lip in between his teeth, sending delicious shudders through my body, right down to my fingers and toes.

When we broke apart, I felt my eyes slowly open and a wide—probably dopey—grin break out on my face. “I love you,” I said.

“I love you too,” he replied. “Now let’s go grab a seat. Vox was Amber’s instructor at one point, and they, uh, tend to disagree on who should be in command. It got a bit rocky before, and we should really… get into a seat. With a seatbelt. Or twelve.”

I chuckled, probably too loudly. Maybe I was laughing at everything, even things that shouldn’t be funny, but it was uncontrollable: Viggo was here, we weren’t going to die… and now we knew there were people. Other people outside of Matrus and Patrus. And they were thriving. We weren’t the only humans left in the world after all. It was exciting, surreal. I was so tired I was probably delirious.

The deck under my feet shuddered as the high-pitched noise of the engines grew, and I moved toward the cockpit, taking a quick moment to check that Solomon was okay and strapped down for takeoff. He was, and some sort of… pink goo had been applied over the multitude of bullet holes in his gut, presumably by CS Sage. Yet his vitals were strong, and he remained unconscious.

I entered the cockpit in time to see the tower’s platform slowly growing smaller. The other heloship was pulling away, and I watched as they headed back down the river—back the way we had come.

“Are we going to follow them along the river to Matrus?” I asked. “Or fly via The Green?”

“The Green,” Amber replied, flipping some switches in rapid succession on the control panel, her eyes focused solely on the gauges. “It’s better. Elena is going to be pissed after what we did to her airfield, so I wouldn’t put it past her to have put any remaining