The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

I followed Amber as she sat me down at the table, Viggo holding my chair out and then settling into the chair next to me. “This wasn’t how I imagined our wedding night starting,” he murmured right in my ear, sending shivers down my spine.

I looked over at him, my face flushing beet red, and if anything, it only seemed to make the hunger in Viggo’s eyes grow. “I think I can be patient enough for about an hour,” he added, and I felt my face grow even redder, if that was possible, the heat spreading across my cheeks until I thought they would burst into flames.

Amber sat something down in front of me, and I looked up, trying to focus on the world that wasn’t just me and Viggo, to see a mug filled with something vaguely resembling urine. I looked up at her, questioningly.

“Apple cider,” she said. “Still warm and filled with cinnamon. It’s an Ashabee family recipe.”

I hesitated. “You made this?”

Amber managed to look wounded as well as affronted. “Hey, I can cook some stuff, you know. Besides, this is from a cask recovered at the house. All I did was heat it up.” She winked, and then moved back to the food table, presumably to grab a plate of food. My stomach growled when I saw a basket of bread rolls, and I turned to Viggo, preparing to ask him what he wanted.

“Oh no you don’t,” he announced. “I’m now your husband, which means I provide for you. What do you want from the table?”

“Bread, and whatever that stew is. It smells divine.”

He leaned forward to drop a kiss on my lips and then pulled back. “Your wish is always my command,” he whispered, standing up.

I wasn’t left alone long. Owen found me soon, taking a seat at the table, Morgan next to him, looking unsure but excited in the atmosphere of the party. Ms. Dale and Henrik sat down across from me, and Tim took up the seat Viggo had been sitting in, immediately resting his head lightly on my shoulder. I reached over and took his hand, resting my cheek against the top of his head, and he sighed.

“Different now,” he said, a touch sadly.

I looked at him, and then adjusted so I could wrap an arm around his shoulder, taking care to share my warmth but only barely brush his skin. “Why do you say that?” I asked, curious.

He shrugged under my arm, and then smiled up at me, his gray eyes still stormy. “You gone. Married. No room for—”

“You stop right there, Tim,” said Owen softly. I looked over at him, and he shifted nervously, pulling on the sleeves of his sweater. “I was an older sibling too, and believe me… there’s always room for your brother. Nothing’s going to change. Your sister’s never going to abandon you, and you will always be loved—by her, by Viggo, and by everyone in the room.”

I heard the pain in his voice as he spoke, and started to reach for his hand, but stopped when I saw Morgan already doing so, her hand going over Owen’s and squeezing. The blonde man looked up, his blue eyes rimmed with red, and then slowly pulled his hand out from under hers, standing up.

“I’m, uh, going to check out the food situation,” he mumbled, before moving off. Morgan followed his movement, her brows furrowing together as her green eyes tracked him, and then she leaned back in the chair with a look of disappointment on her face.

Ms. Dale and I exchanged looks, and Henrik softly announced that he could also use some food and got up. I looked at Ms. Dale, who gave me a shrug, sipping her own mug of tea, and I sighed. Clearly this was for me to handle.

But before I could say anything, another voice beat me to it. “You really shouldn’t take it personally, Morgan,” announced Amber, manifesting from seemingly nowhere with a plate filled with—heavens, it was fresh vegetables. My mouth watered when I saw the pile of cherry tomatoes, and I looked up at her questioningly as she sat down in the chair Owen had just evacuated. She nodded, and I grabbed one, popping it between my lips and crunching into it, the fresh, distinctive sweetness almost causing me to moan with happiness.

Amber watched my display with an odd smile, and then turned back to Morgan. “By the way, since when do you have a crush on Owen? I’ve known you both since I arrived with the Liberators, and I never picked up on that.”

“Because you never saw us together,” muttered Morgan, picking at some lint on the tablecloth—and I noticed she didn’t try to deny Amber’s realization. “Owen and I never really… got to spend any time together. He was Desmond’s number two, remember?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t really answer the question, does it?” Amber teased. “Go on, when did you realize you liked him?”

Morgan shifted slightly in her seat and then gave Amber a direct look. “The first day I met him,” she replied tersely. “The first day I was in the Liberator base. I was scared and… and angry. Desmond didn’t tell me what was going on, I’d been stuck in that stupid workhouse for over a year, and then suddenly I wasn’t anymore. It threw me. Anyway, he was running the training the first day I was there, and I didn’t want anything to do with it, or him. He comes over, and before he can even say anything, I grab him and throw him across the room.”

“You didn’t!” Amber gasped, a wide smile on her lips.

“I did,” Morgan replied dryly. “I thought he’d get up, scream at me, say something horrible, hate me forever, but instead he held out his hand to me and said, ‘You going to be a lady and help me up?’”

I laughed around a mouthful of tomatoes. That sounded like Owen. Good-natured ribbing that helped to defuse difficult or awkward interactions was his specialty. Or it had been, at least. After his brother died, he’d been so different… but even now, I could see peeks of the Owen we knew coming back once in a while, and I knew he was healing, if slowly.

“After that I guess I was curious. I’d never been around anybody who could defuse a situation like that. My family, we’re—well, I just told you. Everybody turns small problems, these simple little things, into gigantic arguments with pitfalls that are, by design, meant to make you angry and shoot off at the mouth. Then they’d turn all that around and hold it over you, bear slow-burning grudges, before bringing it up in some new argument weeks, even months, later, to repeat the damn cycle all over again. I’d never been just forgiven like that before.”

Her expression turned deeply inward as she talked, and I could only imagine how much something like that had meant to her. I’d grown up with a lot of the same kinds of expectations, actually—but Morgan’s had been multiplied by her unusual family situation and her sisters’ enhancements. Morgan’s face turned rueful.