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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 said food.

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. Less Can I borrow a pencil and more Do 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 of freaked out in 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 was Scary . With a capital S ), 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 reasons he can’t keep a human-style thought in his head for ten minutes, some of it is just plain sus .

His fellow enigma isn’t hunting and foraging like a prehistoric person, oh no; he’s aggressive, defensive, and surprisingly good at minor acts of violence.

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.

He digresses.

At any rate, all the upheaval has Rowan craving Luca’s predictable, pants-loathing, constantly-singing beta behavior.

It helps that he and Nix are almost inseparable, like the cosmic-zodiac-twins they are.

Seriously.

They’d done some math and discovered they were born at the same minute, Luca in Nashville and Nix in Clearwater.

Maybe that’s why Rowan’s wolf likes him almost as much as he does Nix.

Not in the same chemically-dependent, constantly lustful way, but in a calm, comfortable, soothing way. Like the same, but opposite.

Rowan’s not sure that it makes sense, exactly, but it does to the wolf.

Or maybe it’s because he smells like Nix 99.99% of the time.

Yeah, maybe it’s that.

“What time is it?” Rowan inquires, suddenly struck by the position of the sun and Gideon standing in the kitchen with a flat, hard-plastic case no bigger than a small shoebox.

It must be time for Nix to wake up hungry, since the wolf had propelled him out of bed and into the kitchen for food. It’s been very reliable at predicting his omega’s needs for sustenance in the past sixteen weeks.

He eyes the box again and thinks it must be important if Gideon’s busy with it this early.

“What’s that?”

“Something for later. Don’t worry about it now, it’s almost 7:00 a.m.. I can make Nix something for breakfast?” Gideon quickly suggests, and Rowan feels like he’s missing something important, but he’s also grateful that he’s dodged a bullet from his rude behavior earlier, so he lets it slide.

Rowan has always been smart enough to choose the path of least resistance. Especially when it comes to Gideon Carnell.

“I suspect it won’t be the same as you foraging for it, but it’s got to be better than granola bars and yogurt.”

It won’t be the same, and Rowan has never hated his lack of expertise in the kitchen more than at that moment. He smells his own self-loathing in the sharp alcohol scent he’s leaking out in distress.

He almost misses Gideon’s nonchalant, “I could teach you? If you wanted?”

Learn how to feed his mate nutritious food? Grow his babies with more than cookies and granola? Yes, please. The wolf spins in circles with glee. “Yeah?”

“Sure. I know your mom showed you how to crack eggs. I’ll teach you how to cook bacon and make French toast. We can even have syrup and berries.”

He thinks for a minute about whether Nix will like the offered menu, but even once he receives a GO signal from the wolf, he hesitates.

“I don’t know…I don’t want to fuck it up.”

The anxiety is his own; he doesn’t want his pregnant mate to see him as incompetent.

“You can do it, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. Besides, if you fuck it up I won’t tell if you won’t. Get that baking sheet out from up there. Add some parchment paper and turn the oven on to 400°F.”

For the next thirty minutes, Gideon shows Rowan that he can make bacon in the oven, crack a dozen eggs, and add cinnamon to make French toast. He gets some of the spice up his nose, and it tickles his throat.

It reminds him of the sleeping Leo, who hadn’t left Finn once since they’d arrived. The others had been in and out, but not Leo.

“Gid?” Rowan asks as he moves the crisp bacon from the baking sheet to a paper towel-lined plate.

“Hmmm?”

“Will Leo be okay? His being angry when we got here…it makes my wolf feel off. ”

He doesn’t say that when his wolf feels off, he wants to get up in Jay’s grill again about shit, which Rowan knows would be a no-good-very-bad idea.

“Yeah, he’ll be okay.”

“Did you apologize?”

There’s a growl from the other alpha and a clanging of a fork hitting the plate.

“That’s a no, then.”

He can’t keep the disappointment from his tone. It’s weird to have that shoe on the other foot.

Maybe he can get the hang of this Dad thing after all.

“I am terrible at apologies.”

“Is it that you think you don’t do anything worth apologizing for?” Rowan isn’t accusing him—he really isn’t. He’s just genuinely curious.

As a person who apologizes for so many things every day—the hazard of being a growing, clumsy oaf, both physically and emotionally—it’s difficult to see why it would be so hard to say three simple words.

He turns to rest his lower back against the counter so he can see Gideon’s face.

Actor-handsome as always, but his perfect profile reflects his frustration…and sadness.

“No, of course not, Jesus. I’m a fuckup on a regular day.”

Gideon doesn’t turn around when he says it, and it hurts Rowan so much that his mate might really feel this way about himself. A lack of confidence would be the last thing Rowan would attribute to Gideon. It’s as unsettling as it is untrue.

“What? No, you’re not. Seriously, when I grow up, I want to be just like you and Jay. And Leo, too. Probably not Luca, though. I’m not cute enough for that. Maybe Grayson, but lately he’s scary, no?”

Rowan is rambling, his wolf moving from mate to mate in his mind.

“Rowan!”

Gideon throws a strawberry at his head to get his attention. It pings him right between the eyes.

“Stop it already. I get it. And as flattering as that is, do not choose me. ”

“What? Oh, come on. An amazing fuck, incredible cook, you are good at anything you set your mind to, and a genius.” He counts them off on his fingers.

“Yeah? Well, that’s nice, but not what counts, you know? Jay is a better choice.”

“You didn’t let me finish. Quiet, now. You always solve our problems, and who else cares about my wolf being a shit?

You spend hours making sure I don’t fuck up so bad that I lose you guys, or end up in an enigma holding cell.

Sometimes you spend hours and hours teaching me.

Not Jay or Grayson, my fellow enigmas. You.

“So if you’re going to talk shit about the guy I hold responsible for me even thinking I can maybe do this Dad-thing, then we’re going to take it outside.”

Spatula in the air, Gideon is staring at him, mouth open and—if Rowan isn’t imagining it—glassy-eyed.

Rowan nods at the slice of French toast on the pan, which has started to smell a bit overdone.

With a cough, Gideon goes back to his pan. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Turning off the stove and removing the pan from the burner, Gideon drops the spatula in the sink before moving into Rowan’s space. He leans in so his lips are almost touching Rowan’s, and he can feel Gideon’s breath.