Page 86 of The Wild Charge

Walsh’s look plainly said,We’re having adiscussion,you and I.

Before that could happen, he told Raven, “You’re the fashion expert, you tell me.” Then he leaned toward Eden and whispered, “We need to talk.”

~*~

Tenny might have been developing a certain brand of (grudging) respect for Ghost, but the man would never be able to empathize with the experience of having ahandler. Even Fox couldn’t do that. Only them – only Tenny and Reese knew what it was like to beownedby someone. Not to belong, not to have allies, but to exist as a creature without autonomy, only as worthy as their usefulness.

The last thing Tenny wanted to do was go to dinner. Fuck all of them.

Well…maybe not thelastthing. Because Reese was clearly in shock, and he felt more than a little helpless about it.

He pressed a glass of water into his hand and made him drink it. Picked out clean clothes for him, held out his cut until he took the hint and put it on himself, his movements slow and robotic.

Tenny knew he’d been making progress, slowly gaining layers of humanity, but he hadn’t realized how much progress until right now, seeing the vacant lack of light in his eyes, the slackness of his face. A machine at rest, a gun lying on a table, ready to be used. His expressions these days, his eyebrow lifts and hinted smiles, were all subtle things, easy to miss for anyone who wasn’t obsessed with his face.

Their absence now put a lump in Tenny’s throat.

“Come on,” he said, plucking at Reese’s sleeve. “Let’s go.” He grabbed the club truck keys on the way out, not trusting Reese to gather enough braincells to ride his bike.

The ride out to Briar Hall was silent. The worst part of it, Tenny thought, was the way, before he’d started to come alive, when they first met, Reese’s silences had at least been studded with narrow, slanted glances, and the sharp awareness of a wolf on the hunt. Now, Reese was just…floating. Drifting. The predator was gone, and in his place was this awful shell. Tenny wanted to scream at him.

He wanted to scream again when they trooped through Walsh and Emmie’s back door, and he rememberedwhyexactly he’d been dreading dinner so much.

He paused in the middle of the mud room, grimacing at the sound of the bright peal of laughter rolling down the hall out of the kitchen.

Ugh. Sisters.

He paused, while they were still alone, and turned back to Reese, who was trailing along behind him like an obedient pet, rather than the confidante, ally, and lover he’d become. His gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle distance, his mind far afield.

Tenny heard his own throat click as he swallowed. “Hey. Reese.” He reached to push an escaped lock of hair behind his ear, thumbing across his clean cheek – and finding a spot of grease paint he’d missed at his sideburn. Laughter rang out again from the kitchen, and he hated the idea of any of them seeing Reese like this: locked in his own head, compliant, and malleable, and trapped somewhere in the past.Don’t go down too deep, he’d said, and then he’d promised to wade in after him, and now he had no clue how to do that. He hadn’t expected tonight to unfold the way it had – who could have predicted the old handler being involved in all this bollocks? – and so he hadn’t really thought he’d have to play psychoanalyst and trauma therapist.

Here was one thing, finally, no one had ever trained him to do.

One thing he wasn’t sure hecoulddo.

He stepped in closer, and took Reese’s face in both hands. “Reese,” he repeated, firmer. He pressed beneath each cheekbone with his thumbs. “Listen to me. Focus. Just on me. Can you do that?”

Reese looked drugged. His lashes flickered, and his gaze latched onto Tenny’s after a few slow blinks. His pupils tightened, and Tenny was so relieved to see a bit ofhimcome back into his eyes that his stomach dropped like a stone. Blond brows furrowed. “Where are we?”

Shit. This was so much worse than he’d thought.

He tried to lever a little patience into his voice, a rare practice for him. “At the farm. At Walsh and Emmie’s. Family dinner, remember?” He made a face after he said it: God,family dinner. Kill him now.

Reese made a sound, a quiet little breath, and all of Tenny’s focus snapped back to him. It wasn’t the real thing, not even close, but it was a hint of that little, huffy,hehlaugh that wouldn’t have sounded like a laugh at all coming from someone else. One corner of Reese’s mouth twitched, andthank God.

Tenny gripped his face too tight, but knew he could take it; pressed their foreheads together. “I know I said I’d bring you back if you went too far under, but I have no idea how to do that, so you’ve got to help me here, love.”

He heard him swallow. “Okay.”

Reese wasn’t himself, still, not fully, when Tenny drew back, but he was better, and that was something. That gave him the nerve to pat him on the cheek, turn, square his shoulders, and march unto the breach.

Fox’s bike was outside, but he himself wasn’t here, he noted straight off; neither was Eden, so Fox was probably off telling her how fucked up the op had been somewhere. That left Albie and Axelle, who both nodded acknowledgements; Walsh, who was draining a wine glass and reaching for the bottle on the island; Emmie, who smiled and waved as if truly glad to see them: “Hey, guys, come on in. What do you want to drink?”

Cassandra, who was already making heart eyes at Reese even though he was behind Tenny.

And Raven, who sent him an eagle-eyed look over the rim of her glass.

Cassandra made him want to punch a girl teenager out of stupid jealousy.

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