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    Danielle eased into a lope as they strode away from Carl's new home and onto the street. During the past few weeks of final exams, detailed briefings on the situation in Dallas, and endless bureaucratic paperwork as the courts transferred Carl into her herding, she hadn't had a decent workout. Her body ached from the lack.
    She snuck a glance at Carl to see how he was holding up.
    Looking was a mistake. He seemed to be holding up fine. Lean muscled legs that had been discreetly hidden beneath prison coveralls were now on full display. His running shorts showed off tight-muscled buns. If he hadn't been impaired, he would have been sexy as anything. Fortunately, her stepfather had cured her of that kind of attraction forever.
    She upped the pace and tried to keep her attention on the dangers of the Dallas Zone. Here there be monsters , she reminded herself. More quotes from the Academy.
    The zone was deceptively quiet. Male and female impaired wandered the streets, apparently going about their business. Few gave Danielle and Carl a second glance, as if a jogging Were and his keeper were part of their daily life.
    The impaired might be dealing in illicit drugs, hiring out murders, plotting the overthrow of the human government, and exchange of forbidden books, but to Danielle, things looked deceptively normal. As if these were ordinary humans. A child almost ran into her, then flitted up on wings that beat as fast as a hummingbird's, and it hit Danielle with a flash that she was alone in a zone, unmonitored, beyond the range of backup. She became hyper-aware of the relative silence, the occasional wings, tails, and pointy ears she caught glimpses of, the small shops dealing in who knew what contraband. Suddenly the run took on a more ominous air.
    "Are you warmed up yet?” Carl asked, breaking into her thoughts. “We can pick up the pace if you're ready."
    His tone was smug, superior. So he was in decent shape. Well, he hadn't just spent four years in one of the most grueling training regimes humankind had invented. Time to let him see that he couldn't compete with her, that she would be the dominant one in their, hopefully brief, relationship. Time to rub his canine nose in it.
    "Fine,” she told him. “Let me know if I'm going too fast."
    Her instructors at the Academy had drilled it into her head that the impaired would always test her, always press her limits. She needed to keep a reserve hidden for his inevitable challenge. In a moment of frank honesty, though, Danielle realized that her sudden surge of competitiveness had nothing to do with Were and herder. It had everything to do with wiping the smirk off Carl's smug face.
    She lengthened her stride, settling into a brisk five-and-a-half-minute mile.
    Carl adjusted, looking at her with what appeared to be renewed respect.
    Danielle savored the slap of the concrete under her feet, the moist Dallas air in her short hair, and the flow of blood through her muscles. She let a mile slip past, then another, finally turning toward Carl with a smile on her lips. “Ready to really crank it up?"
    She expected to see him blowing at least a little. After all, he had been locked in prison for six months. While he could have managed isometrics, she didn't think he'd been running any marathons inside the Lew Sterrett Justice Center.
    To her surprise, Carl nodded. “Let's do it."
    She upped the pace to an all-out, sub-five-minute mile. Until now, she had been drawing on her body's natural abilities. To run at the faster pace and to sustain it over any distance, she needed to tune into her warder training, consciously flushing out the buildup of lactic acids from her muscles and filtering oxygen directly from the air to increase her lungs’ capability.
    Carl settled beside her, lengthening his stride and taking advantage of his longer legs. After a mile, though, he was gasping. After two miles, he started to lag.
    "What's the matter?” she demanded. “I thought you were going to