Page 4 of Subduing the Shark

Jack knelt there for a moment longer, glass in his palms, and Harold watched the confusion settle into stillness. Not understanding. Not yet. But the beginning of a question Jack didn't know how to ask.

They cleaned up the glass together. Harold went back to his post. Jack finished his shift.

At midnight, Jack went to the locker room and came back in his street clothes. They hung on him. Harold noted the way he paused at the edge of the main floor, looking out at the crowd, looking at the bar where Amani was laughing at something Rezahad said while Nero watched them both with the quiet attention of someone who'd learned how to be present without hovering.

Jack left without saying goodbye to anyone.

Harold watched the elevator doors close and turned to find Nero beside him.

"Well?" Nero asked.

Harold ran his hand over his jaw. "He's terrified the entire time he's here and he doesn't let any of it show on his face. He takes hits from strangers without a word. When Amani stood up for him, he looked like he'd never seen anyone do that before."

Nero was quiet for a moment, watching the elevator door like he could still see Jack behind it. "He acts like someone who's been trained not to have boundaries."

The words landed in Harold's chest and sat there. "Yeah. That's exactly what it looks like."

"Amani is watching him," Nero said. "More than I expected."

"Is that a problem?"

Nero shook his head slowly. "Amani chose this. He wanted Jack here. I trust his reasons even when they worry me." He paused. "The question isn't whether Amani can handle having Jack in the room. He can. The question is what we're going to find out about that shark once he stops performing and lets something real show through."

Harold didn't answer. He was thinking about the way Jack had said I've taken worse, with no inflection at all, like it was just weather. Like pain was just the forecast and you didn't complain about rain.

He was still thinking about it two hours later when the club closed and he drove home alone

Chapter Three

The walk back to the shiver house took forty minutes. Jack didn't have money for a cab and he wasn't about to ask anyone at the club for a ride. The Las Vegas streets were bright and loud at midnight, tourists stumbling between casinos, the neon reflecting off everything until the whole city felt like it was made of colored glass. Jack kept his head down and walked fast. Most people couldn't tell a shifter from a human on sight, but other shifters could. The last thing he needed was to run into a shark from one of the other shivers while he was alone and smelled like Kinky Kritters.

His legs ached. Three hours on his feet in those shorts, carrying trays, cleaning tables, bending and lifting while people watched, touched, and grabbed at him like he was part of the entertainment. His hip still felt wrong where the drunk had pulled at his waistband. Not injured, just the ghost of unwanted hands. He was used to that feeling. The shiver had given him a lifetime of practice at carrying the memory of hands that didn't ask.

What he wasn't used to was someone putting a stop to it.

Amani on the bar. The hoodie, the jeans, the voice that cut through a packed club like everyone in the room owed him money. The lion had looked furious and completely in control of that fury, which was more frightening than the anger itself. Jack knew angry. He'd grown up with angry. Angry was predictable. What Amani had done was something else. He'd seen a problem and he'd fixed it, publicly, without hesitation, and the problem had been people hurting him.

Jack couldn't make that fit anywhere in his head. He'd kidnapped Amani. He'd held the ropes. He'd driven the van toGrainger's ranch and watched Amani get pulled out of the back by a man Jack knew was a predator in every sense that mattered. And on his first night working the club, Amani had stood on his own bar and told a room full of shifters not to touch Jack.

He turned off the Strip and headed south into the residential blocks where the shiver houses sat in a quiet row. Three houses, one street, sixteen sharks split between them. The houses looked normal from the outside. Stucco with tile roofs and small dry yards, the same as every other house in the neighborhood. Nothing that told anyone the people inside had made their living hurting others for years.

The porch light was on at his house, which meant someone was awake. Jack slowed his pace. Months in holding. Months of silence, of meals through a slot in the door, of lying on a cot staring at a ceiling and wondering if Amani would ever say yes. He'd thought about that moment constantly in holding. Coming back. Facing them. He'd imagined it going a dozen different ways, most of them bad. He'd avoided the moment all day, spending his time on the strip and avoiding coming back. But he couldn't stay away forever.

He opened the front door and walked in.

Dresden was on the couch watching television. He looked up when Jack came in, and for a long moment neither of them said anything. Dresden was only a few years older but he'd always carried himself like the house was his. He was the one who managed the money, who decided the chore rotation, who chose which jobs the four of them would take. He wasn't the leader of the shiver. That position belonged to the elders in the other houses. But in that house, Dresden was the closest thing to authority Jack had ever known.

"So, they let you out," Dresden said.

Jack closed the door behind him. "The lion said he was ready."

"The lion." Dresden snorted and turned back to the television. "Sit down. You look like hell."

Jack sat in the chair across from the couch. Not on the couch, never on the couch. Dresden's seat. "Where are Lichen and Rashe?"

"Rashe is sleeping. Lichen went out." Dresden studied him with the flat attention that all sharks seemed to share. Gray eyes that reflected light without absorbing it. "You been at the club all night?"

"Three hours. That's the deal. Three hours every night doing whatever Amani tells me." Jack kept his voice steady. Reporting in. That's what this was. He came home to the shiver and he told them where he'd been and what he'd done because there were no secrets. That was the rule. "I cleaned tables and ran drinks."