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near the back. Socrates, who was a werehyena and an ex-cop with skin the color of coffee with a touch of cream, was there as well; his hair looked almost long compared to Ares’ and Bram’s military buzz. Most of the rest were wererats, then werehyenas. Clay and Graham were the only werewolf guards there. Stephen was a werewolf, but he wasn’t a guard. Bram, Gregory, and Nathaniel were the only wereleopards. Again, only one was a guard. Did we depend too much on the rats and the hyenas? Yes. Should we change it? Probably. I pushed the thought away. I was here to work out, that was all. It was all about moving the body. I’d found that exercise helped with the anger, and even helped tire the energy that made it harder to control the beasts.

I knew everyone by name, all the rats. Emmanuel was one of the few blue-gray-eyed Hispanics I’d ever met. His skin was almost a gold color, so that he had the same kind of exotic vibe going that Vivian, Stephen’s fiancée, had. The fact that Stephen was still here and hadn’t gone home wasn’t a good sign for them. I let that go, too. I couldn’t even fix my own love life—what the hell could I do for anyone else?

Dino was as dark as Emmanuel was light, but where the other man was five-eight and just nicely muscular, Dino was big. Not just six feet, but almost as wide as he was tall. He ran like a lumbering elephant, but I’d seen him fight and one of my goals was never, ever to have Dino hit me in the face for real. He was one of the few fighters we had who had exploded one of the new heavy bags designed to stand up to preternatural strength.

God’s full name was Godofredo. He was actually Fredo’s nephew, which made me speculate that Fredo might be short for the same name, but when asked Fredo had given a flat look that made everyone drop the subject. Fredo was slender, not that tall, and honed down to lanky muscle like the slender blades he favored. God was inches taller, broader, and packed on muscle so that the nickname didn’t seem funny when you saw him step into the practice ring.

“Hey, old man, aren’t you going to run with us?” God called.

Fredo paused in his weight lifting with a barbell packed with the body weight of most of the smaller men here. He didn’t put it back on the rack; he held it partway lifted and answered in a voice without any hint of strain. “When you can beat me in the practice ring, then you can call me old; until then, shut the fuck up.” He started doing reps with the bar.

God chuckled, and the sound matched the big chest. They liked each other, but it was guy liking, so there was a lot of cussing and good-natured jibes exchanged. Until I’d hung out with enough men I’d never realized that fuck you could be an endearment of the highest order.

I was stretched out. I stood up and everyone around me got up with me. Part of me wondered if they did it consciously or if there was some metaphysical reason for it. I let the thought go. I was here to run.

The guards who had come a little behind us didn’t stretch out as much as I did, but then they were less likely to pull a muscle, so we were all ready to run at the same time.

Ares said, “You’re running with us?” He made it sound doubtful.

“I’m using the track at the same time,” I said. I looked up all that height to meet his pale eyes in their desert tan.

He had that guy smile, the one I’d gotten most of my life because I was small and usually the only girl. “You can’t keep up with us, Anita.”

“If I were human, no,” I said.

“It’s not that.” He came to stand next to me. He pointed at where my hip hit his thigh. “Most of us have a much longer stride. We’re just going to be faster on the track.”

“I’m not trying to race, Ares, just sweat some shit out.”

He shrugged. “Just saying.”

I felt the anger like a warm wave flowing over my skin. It hit that place where the beasts lived, and I had to take deep, even breaths to still it all.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. His voice