Then his jaw cracked.
Not all the way. Not the full shift. But his canines lengthened past his lower lip and his fingers curled and the nails thickened into something that wasn't quite claws and wasn't quite human and a sound came out of his chest that Nero felt in his sternum,low and raw and involuntary, the lion surging up through five days of suppression like a breath held past the point of drowning. His eyes went full amber, the pupils narrowing to slits, and for two seconds the kid on the tailgate was something older and wilder and very, very angry.
Then it collapsed. The claws retracted. The teeth shortened. The sound cut off and Amani sagged forward, one hand braced on the tailgate, the other still pressed against his throat, breathing hard. The partial shift had cost him something visible. His face was gray under the brown and his arms were shaking and the effort of it, just that much, just teeth and claws and a sound, had burned through whatever reserve he had left.
But his eyes stayed amber for a long time after the rest of it faded. The lion was awake. Battered, exhausted, five days of silver, cages, and compliance behind it, but awake. Nero could see it looking out through Amani's face, assessing the night, the SUV, the men around it, deciding whether any of them were a threat. The predator's scan. Ancient and automatic and completely beyond Amani's control.
"Okay?" Nero asked.
Amani nodded. He didn't take his hand away from his throat. His canines had settled back to human but he ran his tongue over them once, checking, making sure they were still there. The gesture was small and private and Nero looked away because watching it felt like reading someone's diary.
Harold's face, when he photographed and cataloged the damage the collar had left behind, went tight and professional in the way that meant he was filing it all away. For the report. For the testimony. For the part of the job where they documented what was done to someone so that the documentation could do its own kind of justice.
Nero put Amani in the back seat of the SUV. The kid wouldn't let go of his arm. His fingers were locked around Nero'swrist with a grip that was surprising in someone so depleted, and his eyes were closed and his breathing was jagged and he was holding on to Nero the way you hold on to the thing that pulled you out of deep water.
"I need to put clothes on," Nero said gently.
Amani's grip tightened.
"I'll be right back. Thirty seconds. I promise."
The fingers loosened. Slowly. One at a time. Amani opened his eyes and looked at Nero. The look said everything that his voice couldn't.
Nero came back in twenty seconds. Dressed, badge on, gun holstered, looking like a cop again instead of a naked man who'd crawled through a window. He got into the back seat next to Amani and the kid's hand found his arm again immediately, the grip settling in like it belonged there.
Amani was quiet for a long time. Then, so softly Nero almost missed it: "A ferret."
He couldn't tell if it was a statement or a question or the beginning of an opinion that the kid was too exhausted to finish. It didn't matter. Amani's eyes closed and his grip on Nero's arm went slack and his breathing deepened into the rhythm of someone who had finally, after four days, found something safe enough to fall asleep against.
Harold got in the driver's seat and started the engine. The SUV pulled away from the ranch, and Nero looked through the rear window at the house shrinking behind them, the lit windows, the broken glass, the beautiful Spanish arches that had hidden something ugly, and then the desert swallowed it and there was nothing but the road and the dark and the stars and the kid asleep against his shoulder.
Doing his best to not wake Amani, he called Lady Leo.
"I have him," Nero said. "He's alive. He's hurt but he's alive. We're bringing him home."
The sound she made was not a word. It was something older than words, the sound of a lioness hearing that her cub is safe, and it lasted one second before she pulled herself together and her voice came back controlled and sharp and every inch the woman who ran an empire.
"How badly is he hurt?"
"His feet are in bad shape. He was collared with silver, we got it off him. He'll need a doctor. The rest I'll let him tell you."
"The man who took him?"
"Dead."
A pause. "Good."
Nero didn't disagree.
They drove through the desert in silence. Three and a half hours back to Vegas, the highway empty and the sky enormous and Amani sleeping in the back seat with his head against Nero's shoulder and his bandaged feet tucked under the blanket Harold had given him. Somewhere around the halfway point, the orange glow of the city appeared on the horizon, distant, warm.
Nero looked at the glow and then looked at the kid and then looked at the road, and he understood that this was not over. That getting the kid out of the desert was the easy part. That what came next, the healing, the testimony, the long slow work of rebuilding a person who'd been taken apart, would be harder than anything that had happened to that point.
He'd do it anyway. He didn't know why yet. He just knew.
The orange glow grew brighter, and the desert fell away behind them, and Amani slept.
Chapter Eleven
