Page 178 of The Wild Charge

The waiter returned, puff of minty breath across Ian’s face. “Mr. Waverly would like you join him in his personal box,” he said.

Ian stood, hand tight around the head of his cane.

~*~

Fire. Reese’s whole body was on fire. That was his first thought upon waking. The pain came from so many places that it all merged together until he was one solid bruise, laced all over with sharp, electric crackles of more acute pain. His head throbbed in time to his pulse, in time with his ribs, and his knees, and his feet. What had happened to his feet while he was out cold? Only one of his eyes would open, the other tender and pulsing, swollen shut.

He blinked and blinked, but his vision wouldn’t clear. Everything seemed to tilt and sway around him. He couldn’t feel his arms; wasn’t sure they were even still attached.

Someone was talking in a low, furious voice. Hunter. “…the fuck is wrong with you?”Smack. “What good is he if he walks with a limp the rest of his life? What if a broken rib punctures his lung? He’ll suffocate before I can get him intubated! Was there even one goddamn thought in your head while you were doing this?”

“I–” That was Jax, voice small now, uncertain. He fell silent against the crack of another slap.

“Gear up. Both of you. The alarm system got tripped.”

“Dad–” Gray started.

“Go. See if you two fuckups can keep from getting killed by his friends. I want them dead, and I want it twenty minutes ago. We have to leave.”

Friends. Tenny? Fox? Were they coming? Reese’s heart lurched, and the pain swelled up, white-hot and awful, until he thought he might swoon again and had to breathe carefully, shallowly through his mouth until the wave of black spots faded from sight.

Leave. If they left here, Tenny would never find him.

Plastic crinkled, and a door closed. Then it was quiet.

Reese closed his one good eye, and when he opened it, Hunter’s blurry face hovered in front of his own. Reese was past the point of being startled; everything hurt too much for him to find shock in the soundless way that Hunter had moved to stand in front of him.

Not justHunter.

Dad.

His father.

It seemed to take minutes to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Why?” he croaked, and even that hurt.

Hunter cocked his head to the side.

“Why…do you…want me back?”

Hunter studied him a long moment, before his gaze slid down his body, stopping somewhere along his legs. Reese wondered if the knife was still lodged in his thigh; he couldn’t feel whether it was or not.

“I made mistakes,” Hunter finally said, lips compressing, gaze flicking back up. “With these two. Gave them too much rein – allowed them too much…personality.” He made a face, as if the word tasted foul. “They fear me, but they don’t value what I have to teach them. You can change that. You can show them.”

Each breath sent pain like knives through his torso; the fractured ribs plucked at nerves like guitar strings. “I won’t.”

“Oh,” Hunter said evenly, unsmiling. “You will.”

“They’ll…they’ll stop you.”

He shook his head. “In about ten minutes, they’ll be dead.”

~*~

Tenny clicked his rifle over into full-auto. Ahead of him, black-booted feet appeared on the upper landing, shins clad in black tac pants like his own.

He opened fire.

“Christ,” someone hissed behind him.

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