Page 28 of Catnip

Most Alphas muttered with their seconds, and she saw dozens of themnod.

“Okay, so what’s theplan?”

She winced, knowing Coveney was going to freak out. Bigtime.

* * *

“Ishould purchase a private jet.Awfully convenient,” Knox remarked, looking out the small plane’swindow.

Ava disagreed. In actual fact, if she never got into a flying metal tube ever again, it would be soon enough. She would have snorted if she wasn’t too busy attempting not to throw up, her head stuck between her legs as she breathedfast.

The only other person who seemed to realize that planes were evil was the Wyvern Alpha’s son, who had cried at the top of his lungs from the moment they’d takenoff.

“There, there,” Ace cooed, rocking him in herarms.

The baby wasn’t having any ofit.

“MayI?”

Rye, Coveney, and Jas, the short-haired, kick-ass Wyvern female she’d just met for the first time, as she’d been patrolling during the entire duration of her stay, stared at the First Wolf like he’d lost his goddamned mind. They gasped in unison when their Alpha female got up and just handed him her kid. Ava would have laughed, but, well, that probably meant vomiting on her shoes. And she liked hershoes.

Ace rolled her eyes at hermate.

“He isn’t going to eat him,” she said. Rye seemed to think that wasdebatable.

But it turned out, the wolf wasn’t a baby eater as much as a baby whisperer. After two minutes of baby talk, at most, the child was doneyelling.

“There’s a good boy,” the wolf praised him, tickling histummy.

Little Zack shifted in the wolf’s arms, and Knox stared inwonder.

“Kitten,” he breathed, tightening his grasp like he half expected the kid to try to breakfree.

But, instead, it extended its little paws andstretched.

The wolf growled low. “I need one ofthese.”

Most of the pride laughed; the child was pretty damn hard toresist.

Ava might have found it sweet if she didn’t recall their previous conversation. Knox obviously liked babies, and wanted one, too, but he had none of hisown.

Had he tried modern medicine? Was there some sort of workaround? He’d been born somehow, the process couldn’t be that hard toreplicate.

A smartly-dressed flight attendant wearing red and gold walked back in. “If you could please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts, we’re about to start landing. It’s seven o’clock, and the temperature currently is seventy-four degrees in Rome. Rome is nine hours ahead of California; may I recommend you attempt to go to bed in good time this evening in order tominimize…”

The woman carried on going on about trivial things as the metal tube tilted towards the ground and started vibrating like someone was shakingit.

Typical. She was going to dieflying.

Rome

Coveney was a basic,overly excited American tourist and he wasn’t even sorry aboutit.

“Look at this!” he exclaimed, dragging Ava from one ruin to the next, and she playedalong.

He winced, recalling she was born here - or anyway, some hidden valley not too far from here. “Sorry if I’m boringyou.”

She beamed. “Not at all. I actually haven’t often come to Rome. I find the Forum fascinating. See there? These little holes on the old part of the building, the ones that weren’t renovated and reinforced? That’s an indication that the walls were covered with marble, a while back. They fitted it in that way. Sometimes, you can still see some stone stuck inthere.”

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