Page 3 of The Wild Charge

He pulled out his wallet and slipped it inside. Took out the old ID, the Benjamin Ruse one. “Do you have scissors?”

Ratchet handed over a pair. “You don’t want to keep it, just in case? I mean, neither of them are, like, legit, state-issue or anything.”

Tenny didn’t answer; didn’t want to explain that yes, he knew it would be incredibly practical to keep a spare ID, one with an alternate identity. Personal experience had taught him that resources weren’t to be wasted. But he didn’t want to keep it. This felt important, somehow, to destroy it. He loathed the idea of trying to put that into words, and so he took the scissors, and snipped the ID neatly in half. Picked up the halves of it, and tossed it in the wastebasket beside Ratchet’s desk.

“Thanks,” he said, as he stowed his wallet, and handed the scissors back.

Ratchet looked baffled, poor lamb. “You’re welcome.”

The clubhouse door opened, and footfalls trooped in.

Tenny knew an unnatural urge to flinch, and hide; like he’d been caught out doing something wrong.

Human feelings – sentiment – were so very, very bothersome.

He turned around to face the incoming group, pulling one of his assorted masks into place over his features. This one was Posh Boredom.

Ghost entered, with Mercy, and Walsh, and Aidan – and everyone, really. Reese hovered behind Mercy, his usual, quiet shadow – one that glowed like neon in Tenny’s eyes. Reese had been crafted to be the most perfect, expressionless, easily-overlooked operative, and maybe that was why he’d captured Tenny’s attention so irrevocably from the very first. Like recognizing like. The ping ofwe’re the same, you and me, deep in his breast.

Or maybe it was because Reese was beautiful.

He felt his chest swell and his stomach flutter at sight of him now; a dizzy loop-de-loop sensation in his head, like free-falling through empty air.

Love was bollocks.

Undeniable, though.

“We’ve got church,” Ghost said, raising his voice to include all of them, as more and more Dogs filed into the common room. “Two minutes.”

Murmurs of assent.

Tenny moved to sit on the edge of a table.

Without making it look purposeful or too-obvious, Reese wound up beside him. He didn’t sayheythe way one of the others might have. Didn’t even make eye contact. But Tenny felt his greeting in his proximity, and in the quick drum of his fingertips against the table edge.

Tenny elbowed him in the ribs, lightly, and earned a faint huff of breath through Reese’s nostrils; near-silent amusement.

“You two,” Ghost said, turning to them. “I want you in the chapel, too.”

Tenny lifted his brows. Mild Interest. “To mop the floor?”

“Ha,” Ghost deadpanned, unimpressed – even if a certain glint in his eye had always told Tenny that he appreciated the sass on a purely personal level. “No. Move your asses.”

Tenny shrugged, and stood, affecting disinterest.

Reese stood with the grace of the assassin he was, and none of the affectation.

To be honest, that was one of the things Tenny found most charming about him – though he was afraid it was also what might get him killed one day. When he wasn’t busy being invisible on an op, he stuck out, hopelessly, and that was a liability in a dozen ways.

They filed into the chapel with the others, and took up their places against the back wall. There were extra chairs in the corner, and room could have been made at the table for them, but that wasn’t how this worked: prospects, on the rare occasions they were invited to attend church, had to stand. The table was for Dogs; for brothers. Those who had served their full prospect year and then been voted into the ranks of official, fully-patched Dogs.

Tenny propped a boot back against the wall, and surveyed the bikers who pulled out chairs and settled with cigarettes, and a few with drinks. Walsh was sipping coffee, and Ghost’s mug, he knew, contained a few generous slugs of whiskey.

There were a few – his own brothers, he admitted grudgingly – who had the smarts, the nerve, and the ingenuity to make for good outlaws. Assets to their club, rather than hangers-on and dead weights. But then there were the Aidans, the Tangos, the RJs. Brothers who were loved, and listened to, fully-patched, and with seats at the table – despite having little of any real talent to contribute to the cause. That had baffled him from the first. How could an organization concerned with amassing wealth and power, outspokenly outlaw, and working in flagrant disregard for the law, afford to take on members who could do nothing more than flesh out the ranks? Without any specialized skills or knowledge?

Walsh had stared at him, when he’d asked – asked with a sneer, of course, because that was Tenny’s greatest armor – and said, his tone very flat, “You don’t understand anything, do you?”

Afamily, they kept calling it. Yes, well, families were things a person was born into – some people. He didn’t see afamilyas being the best means to rule the criminal underground.

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