The Gender War (The Gender Game #4) by Bella Forrest (read novel full TXT) 📗

I stood up abruptly, attracting surprised attention from everyone in the room. “I’m going to the shed,” I announced. “Check to see if there are any supplies we might need before we go.” I focused on Ms. Dale. “You got him?”

She nodded and turned back to the king, who was beginning to look like he had swallowed something bitter. I couldn’t even summon up the good humor to have a laugh at that, so I just left, heading toward the small shed.

The key was under a nearby rock—it wasn’t the most secure place to leave it, but few people bothered coming up my track. The key was there when I picked up the rock, and I quickly slipped it into the padlock and pulled the door open.

The first thing I zeroed in on was the tarp covering my motorcycle. I pulled it back, smiling as the familiar gleaming black and chrome lines came into sight. I ran my hands across the soft leather seats in reverence as I walked past it, heading to my workbench. When I’d left to find Violet, when I’d still had the king’s guarantee of funding whatever supplies I needed to track her down, I’d used his orders to instruct one of the wardens I distrusted least to take the bike back here after I left with Alejandro. It might have been a selfish impulse and a waste of the king’s money—but I was glad of it now.

I had also told him to hide the keys to the bike in one of a group of mason jars screwed to the underside of a shelving unit. They were filled with little odds and ends—scraps of metal and loose screws and bolts—all neatly organized so I could find them more easily. Unscrewing one after another, I found it in the third jar from the right on the back row, sifting through the nails and other items until the keyring emerged. At least one thing in my life had gone just as I had planned it.

I carried it back over to my bike and straddled the seat, inserting the key into the ignition. I held my breath for a moment and then hit the starter button with my thumb.

It turned over easily, as if I had never left, the low roar soothing in its familiarity.

“It still works?” came Violet’s voice, barely audible over the sound of the engine.

I turned around and saw her standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with one arm crossed over her chest.

“Yeah.”

She nodded, a little smile playing on her lips. “I’m glad.”

I shut the engine off and leaned against the bike, turning to face her. “What’s up?” I asked.

Her face grew concerned. “I’m sorry. Did you want to be out here alone? I just… It seemed like you wanted to talk.”

I recoiled for a moment, trying to process why she would think that, when it occurred to me that I had indeed left the cabin rather abruptly. I shook my head.

“No,” I chuckled. “I was just frustrated by the situation with Maxen… and dealing with a moral dilemma. But I’d love to talk to you.”

She smiled then and crossed over to the bike, carefully leaning against it and studying me. “What’s the moral dilemma?”

I nodded toward the cabin. “Maxen. I just… I wonder what good will really come from this. I mean, suppose we help him raise an army and take back the capital. He’s someone who’s never going to change things. He’s still treating you and Ms. Dale like crap, and you are doing everything in your power to save him.”

“It wasn’t until you and Henrik said anything that he even started to consider it,” she said.

“I know.”

“But he is who he is,” Violet went on. “We are who we are. I don’t think we should try to stop doing the right thing just because he’s an unmitigated ass. That would be something he would do, if he even bothered to help someone in the first place… We’re different.”

“Better?” I asked, genuinely curious about her take on it.

Violet shrugged. “I can’t say we’re better or worse—I mean, who am I to judge? I’ve done some horrible things to stay alive. Things that I can’t take back, even if I wanted to.” Her face darkened for a moment. “Maxen’s never had to face what we have, so how can we hold him up to our level, or even compare him to ourselves?”

I blinked. I had honestly never looked at it like that. “You never cease to amaze me,” I said. “Even in the face of an ‘unmitigated ass’, you still defend him. Does that extend to Elena, Desmond, or Tabitha, I wonder?”

“Oh no—they’re evil,” she deadpanned, and I laughed. “But, in all seriousness,” she continued, “I honestly can’t tell you that. Don’t get me wrong—if it came to me against them in a life or death situation, I would not hesitate to fight back or kill one—if not all—of them. But… if we managed to capture them, or they surrendered, then I think I would let their people decide what to do with them.”

I nodded, realizing I felt the same way. “All right then, I guess I can cut Maxen some slack. But that guy is an utter tool.”

“Agreed,” she said drolly, and I smiled at her. It was great to see her unguarded like this—not holding a gun, not running, not half-asleep, or… or bleeding. God.

I realized I’d stopped talking and started staring when she leaned next to me, her body touching mine at hip and shoulder, her gray eyes warm.

“I loved riding on this,” she said, and I smiled, drawn back into the memory of her small hands clinging to me as we’d ridden through the streets of Patrus more times than I could count. Each time she had touched me then, I had been forced to remind myself that she was married to another, to keep my forbidden attraction to her to myself.

I could still barely