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“Hey, whatcha doing, Ro?”

Rowan startled at the voice directly behind him, and he totally would not admit to anyone at a later date that he squeaked like a mouse surprised by a sharp-toothed cat. He’d been so focused on his food gathering that he hadn’t heard a thing.

Belatedly, he realizes that he probably looks like an idiot on all fours in the safe house’s kitchen.

He is wearing his new uniform of cargo shorts, with their pockets bulging full of Nix-worthy snacks. Which, if Rowan has anything to say about it, are seriously lacking. It’s like whoever stocked the kitchen didn’t know how important butter cookies and cranberry granola bars are to a pregnant omega.

For five days now, Rowan has been forced to forage these ridiculously supplied cabinets, and nothing ever magically appears that he hadn’t seen the day before.

At this stage of the game, it’s just rude.

“You okay down there?” Gideon asks, voice distinctly amused.

Sighing, he gets to his feet and dusts off his hands before opening the fridge.

“Yeah. Just hungry.”

He isn’t hungry, exactly, and he won’t be; not until Nix has had his fill.

It’s weird, he knows this, but he can’t explain it. Since the time before Nix ended Hayes, Rowan’s wolf is only happy when it’s finding food for his omega, hoarding food for his omega, and eventually feeding his omega saidfood.

Of course, now he knows it has everything to do with his pup. His sweet grass-scented pup. Yup. He is sure that underneath the baked bread and vanilla-sex is the faintest whiff of summer grass. And if Rowan lends credence to Frankie’s divine prescient knitting habits, this baby will be a tiny little girl with her father’s eyes, a bow-shaped mouth, and his mischievous attitude.

What does he know about baby girls?

Oh, he’s had friends at school who were girls. But surely having one of your own is different. LessCan I borrow a penciland moreDo these ruffles go on the back or the front of the diaper-pants?

She can’t even see them back there, so what would be the point of them anyway?

“Rowan?” Gideon asks again.

“What! Gideon, what?” He sighs, annoyance and no small amount offreaked outin his tone.

Gideon cocks his head to the side and narrows his eyes.

Well, shit.

Usually, that look precedes time on Rowan’s already ancient-feeling knees.

“I’m sorry. Honestly. My wolf is…off.”

It’s weird to say, because join the fucking club, right?

Everyone’s wolf is having a fucking crisis.

Starting with Finn’s super-rut, Leo blowing a gasket about his mom (which he missed out on, thank the Goddess, because Rowan has never seen his sweet mate angry—and to hear tell of it from Luca, it wasScary. With a capitalS), and then Jay and Gideon talking casually about murder.

Then there is Grayson.

Grayson has been weird for a while, and with all the stuff going on, it’s like the others have just gotten used to it. And while Rowan knows some of it must be because of the same reasonshecan’t keep a human-style thought in his head for ten minutes, some of it is just plainsus.

His fellow enigma isn’t hunting and foraging like a prehistoric person, oh no; he’s aggressive, defensive, and surprisingly good at minor acts ofviolence. It makes Rowan a teeny-tiny-itsy-bitsy bit worried, because in the past, he’d been an ice prince. This Grayson is a fiery, easily provoked beast.

In every meaning of the word.

Maybe the knocking-Hayes-unconscious-kerfuffle in court had poked a hole in the dam that was Grayson’s ironclad control over his wolf.

Maybe this is the tip of the Ice Prince iceberg.