Peter was reluctant to cross paths with the pack for the rest of that week, which made going out into town difficult. There was no telling where he might come across one or the other, and he hesitated to see any of them at all, to defend himself against… he didn't even know. Accusation he supposed, silent judgment of his fitness or the way he'd behaved when he didn't even fully know what had happened. The gaps in his memory were worrisome, especially considering the fact that he'd been taken so far out of commission by the slashing injuries to his side, but his pride hurt even more at the thought of crawling to anyone for the story.

History had taught him not to trust, that if he couldn't protect himself physically he needed his mind, to plan, to keep himself alive…

So for the time being, a scenic stroll through downtown Beacon Hills wasn't in the cards.

Unfortunately, staying in his apartment wasn't ideal now either.

It had been invaded, contaminated, the scents of his nephew and little Scotty, the Banshee too crisscrossing over his floors, past the threshold and into the kitchen, down the hall and even into his bedroom. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, made him paranoid, constantly turning to minute shifts and sounds, expecting his door to be rudely kicked in at any moment. It never happened of course, and he knew that he was being slightly ridiculous, but he couldn't shake the discomfort of having had others waltz into his safe haven unannounced, uninvited, unwelcome.

He considered moving.

Finding a new place, another bolt hole, somewhere he couldn't be found. A place that the pack didn't know about. Somewhere his wolf felt safe.

But that would be immensely inconvenient and was really a rash sort of thought, abrupt and impulsive, so in the meantime he did what he could - bleached down his floors and opened up the windows to get the air moving while he bagged up his ruined sheets and hauled them down to the dumpster. The mattress too was a lost cause, so he'd had a new one delivered that same day, exchanging a generous tip for the disposal of the old, bloodied one without question or police report. And yet all the while, mopping floors and wiping down surfaces, doing his best to get rid of the foreign scents lingering inside the apartment, he ignored the fact that he wasn't so bothered by Stiles' being there.

But now it was a full week later, days spent cooped up inside the flat that normally felt so spacious, but that now pressed in on him from every side, like the walls were moving inward an inch at a time so he could only suspect that they were, but couldn't prove it. Days since he'd spitefully finished off the thermos full of spicy chicken soup he'd found sitting on his counter, just because he knew that Stiles was pissed with him and probably would've taken it back if he'd had his way. It felt too much like backing down, too much like hiding for his taste, even if the gashes against his side still bled and wept around the neat black stiches holding them closed and his instincts were whispering to him to bunker down. It was about time he got his shit together and got out, hurt or not, and he couldn't stay in the apartment forever anyway. It was hardly self-sustaining or self-contained - his refrigerator was going bare and his injuries had only seemed to increase his appetite.

Pacing around his living room, irritable, jumpy, he snarled and muttered nasty things beneath his breath, dragging clawed hands through his hair.

Peter could not be called a true glutton.

Instead, he took all things in moderation, as an exercise in self-control. He indulged, well and often that much was true, in many things, but always with an iron-clad restraint that bordered on excessive. As a young wolf with far less reason or desire to be careful or responsible, he had been rather wild in his pursuit of gratification, but such experience played in his favor now. He knew his limits perfectly having crossed several lines to find them, and age and terrible circumstance had taught him patience, cooling the high fires of youth down to the simmering coals of adulthood that bred cunning and deviousness. Such was half the reason that he had been so great an asset to his sister, able to observe coolly and quietly from the shadows without apparent reaction until it was time to enact the tough decisions, the necessary decisions.

Falling onto his leather couch in a teenage-worthy sprawl, Peter scrubbed his hands over his face with a frustrated roar, only half-muted in deference to the neighbors below him. His heart was beating just a little too fast, his skin too hot and too tight, and he was hungry. The sensation wasn't one he had appreciated or enjoyed for years - being in a coma, a hospital for so long, he had all but lost his appetite entirely. He still woke up sometimes with the taste of a thin, cold, gruel on the back of his tongue, the poor facsimile of food he'd had forced down his throat day after god damned day. It was the reason he couldn't stand the sight of raw eggs or watching Derek guzzle down his watery protein drinks, the reason he was willing to open his wallet to spring for organic products and locally grown produce at the farmer's market.

Because when he did eat, when he did rake together enough of an appetite to do more than just shovel something down to assuage the base demands of his body, he didn't want MSG's, pesticides, or chemicals involved in the equation. He didn't share in the pack's greasy pepperoni pizzas or their massive orders of dim sum from the local Chinese tea shop. He didn't go in for processed junk food and the smell of fast food made him sick. Anything that hadn't been made by his own hand was looked on with suspicion, so he should have recognized the readiness with which he consumed anything Stiles brought with him.

And it wasn't like the kid was a damned gourmet either.

Until last week he'd made no special efforts to coax Peter's appetite.

Brownies and cookies were the typical offering, sugary pastries left around Derek's loft in heavy Tupperware containers, and he'd been known to have a taste though he never attacked the stuff the way the others did. A casserole here, a pot of chili there, it was only family recipes or cheap cookbook adaptations, served family style to the pack he seemed to feel it his duty to feed. He'd even brought a batch of bagels once, an experiment that had gone terribly wrong but that the wolves had choked down anyway, Peter and Stiles both snickering at their self-sacrifice to save his sensibilities.

Nothing special.

So it didn't make sense, the way things tasted on his tongue, felt in his belly when they came from Stiles' hand. Didn't make sense in the way it made him want to reciprocate, made him feel the need to drop something warm and red and squirming at the boy's feet.

Growling low with disgust, Peter showed his teeth and shoved himself upright, into a more acceptable sitting position. His stomach rumbled quietly as he did, shooting a hot flash of annoyance through his veins.

Six days, seven, and he was having actual cravings.

Hot wings, Denver omelets, chocolate ice cream - things he hadn't wanted in years, and that he told himself he didn't actually want now, and yet at the strangest times, in the middle of brushing his teeth or flicking through the sports channels at four am, he wanted.

Christ, if his plumbing weren't all wrong you'd think he was preg…

Fuck.

Peter's claws bit into the arm of the couch as he froze in place his throat closing and his chest suddenly unbearably tight.

His mate, Sarah, had been pregnant with his cubs when she'd died in the Hale House fire. Twins, their first, and he'd been so proud of that, in love from the first moment. She'd been anxious when she'd learned that they were to have two daughters, sure that he would have preferred a son, and while Peter had assured her that he would treasure any cub of theirs, it was his secret that he'd always hoped for girls, a secret he'd only ever whispered in the middle of the night as he pressed kisses to her rounded, swollen belly, careful not to wake her. Girls that would have her hair and her eyes, his cunning and determination. Girls whose boyfriends he could threaten and who would have him wrapped around their little fingers and would know it.

Peter swallowed hard, clenched his eyes shut against the memories but they held on, clung to his skin like smoke and refused to let him go.

Sarah had gained weight rapidly with the double pregnancy. Almost from the day she'd conceived she had become a little bit moody, and quite a bit self-conscious about her size. Subsequently, for the following seven months Peter had done his inexperienced best to lavish another person with all the affection and reassurance she could wish for, to the point that for some weeks he became the butt of several pack jokes. Despite his well-known pride, however, nothing had stopped him from giving his wife everything she could wish for and more.

And carrying twins meant that she had wished for a lot.

The cravings had started innocently enough.

One or two nights a week she might ask him to pick up something from the store so that she could make a particular meal, or she would mention desiring a certain snack in passing before moving on to other things.

That didn't last long.

Soon she'd started eating twice as much as he did, something that they'd laughed together about good-naturedly until her hormones wrought such havoc on her that even a chuckle out of him could elicit tears. At that point he'd often handed her off to his sister Talia and run, but he had quickly learned to deny her nothing, no matter how ridiculous the craving.

At the time he hadn't understood how she could wake up wanting fresh scallops for breakfast, or how she could throw a tantrum like a five year old one night when she'd discovered they didn't have any peanut M&M's in the house.

Now, sitting on his couch hurt, hungry, and thinking about his long-dead wife and children, he wondered if maybe this wasn't how she'd felt sometimes.

Like she was losing her damned mind.

Her favorite had been dill-pickle flavored potato chips and cubes of well-chilled watermelon, fruit that Peter scoured the farmer's markets for on weekends.

At the thought of the sweet, light flesh of the melon, deeply pink and aromatic, his mouth began to water and his stomach clenched, his abdominals rippling beneath his t-shirt.

Snarling around a mouthful of fangs, he shoved himself up off the couch and headed for the door, snatching up his jacket on the way.

XXX

It had been a week since Stiles had stormed out of Peter's apartment, a week since he'd heard from him, and if he weren't so pissed with the wolf in the first place he might be a little worried. But damn it, he wasn't worried, he was mad - that was his story and he was sticking to it!

Muttering under his breath, annoyed that he was thinking about the stupid jerk at all, Stiles shrugged the hood of his sweatshirt up around his ears against the unseasonably cool weather, the chill rain coming down in drizzles uncommon to California in July. Normally on days like this he would hole up at home, invite Scott over to play video games or maybe bake a little. He wasn't feeling it today though, too irritable for anything repetitive, too distracted to settle down with anything. And besides, Scott was out with Kira and Liam both, doing who knows what and leaving Stiles to find his own amusements.

Unfortunately, despite the liberal application of his ADHD medication, he felt twitchy and oddly panicked, too big for his skin and with a rare surplus of energy so great that it finally forced him out the door and into the cold for a long, pounding run around the outskirts of town. As he ran he made sure to steer clear of the Preserve and the Hale House, unwilling to be flagged down and dragged into any mythical BS that was certainly overdue.

What, it had been a quiet week, and everybody knew that old saying about the calm before the storm.

Shaking his head, growling with frustration, he put on a burst of speed to take him down to the end of the street before finally slowing to a walk, shoving his hood back and stretching out his arms as he cooled down. He paused minutely as he looked around, realizing with a jolt that he'd run all the way over to what he now considered Peter's neighborhood. He was still a safe mile and a half from the wolf's apartment, instinct and anger keeping him away from there even without paying attention, but he was well within the werewolf's territory. He could feel it.

But there was no way in hell he was going to slink off with his tail between his legs just because he'd found himself in the middle of Peter Hale's stomping grounds.

Scanning the storefronts on the street opposite him, he started for the last one on the far end, a family-type sort of tea and coffee place. Digging into the pocket of his shorts, he shuffled his phone and his keys around looking for the loose change he'd grabbed on his way out the door. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up as he got closer to the shop but put it down to the chill in the air, ignored the distinctive feeling of being watched as best he could. Unfortunately, or perhaps luckily for him, years of honing his survival instincts meant that he couldn't stop himself from scanning the surrounding area, checking every face passing on the street.

Stepping inside, the door chiming a bell over his head, he moved towards the counter, slowly, carefully, the feeling intensifying with each second that passed, so much so that it had his hands creeping down to his sides, a blind search for a weapon that he didn't have. There weren't many people inside the small store but the atmosphere still seemed warm, homey, and it clashed violently with the warnings jangling along his nerves. Moving slowly toward the counter, walking half backward and half sideways, he kept a careful watch on the street through the large glass windows. He might not be willing to run from Peter but that didn't mean he wouldn't avoid him if he could.

He wasn't sure that he wouldn't start a fight if he did bump into him.

So of course bumping into him was exactly what he did.

Turning around towards the cheery greeting of the barista behind the counter, he collided with a broad, solid chest, an apology halfway out of his mouth as he staggered backward before he realized exactly who he'd crashed into.

Peter Hale was less than a foot away, looming over him like a shadow, feeling twice as big as he really was and making Stiles feel like he was cowering beneath him in comparison. His face was emotionless, completely unreadable, and he was watching Stiles intently with empty eyes that didn't blink, didn't look away, ghost eyes that made a shiver run down his spine. Taking one careful step back, he instantly froze when Peter's eyes went ice blue and he too took a hard, proprietary step, pulling him up into Stiles' space, mere inches separating their chests.

He could feel the heat, the wide, solid presence of the wolf, and it sent sparklers up and down his nerves of more than just warning, more than just fear. There were other things there too, things that were dark and beckoning and that made him want, though what exactly he wasn't quite sure.

All he knew was that it pissed… him… off.

"What?" he snarled under his breath, unnerved by Peter's silence, the flat stare that somehow still needled at him like a laser.

The only response he got was a growl, low and long rumbling up out of the depths of Peter's chest, luminescent blue eyes flaring, and Stiles darted panicked glances left and right but the few customers surrounding them all seemed to be looking carefully away.

"Dude, what the hell?" he hissed under his breath, giving Peter a short, sharp shove low on his ribs, immediately pulling his hands back when the wolf jerked and sucked in a breath, doubling up just a little as he raised one hand to his bad side.

Shit.

"Ok, ok, shit, stay calm," he murmured quietly, his hands moving to light on Peter's shoulders, just barely touching, but the werewolf jerked away, drew up to his full high and oh hell, this time he really was looming, that familiar deadly anger on his face. The blue of the wolf had faded from his eyes but that didn't mean Stiles or anyone else in the immediate vicinity was safe - Peter looked absolutely possessed, and the dull roll and rumble of thunder just outside didn't make him feel any safer.

"Keep it together man," he hummed between gritted teeth and a forced smile, again scanning his perimeter from the corner of his eye. "We're in public."

Peter narrowed his eyes, the corner of his mouth drawing up in a sneer and Stiles wondered if he wasn't about to die, but then the sound of his name seemed to break the older man's concentration, snapped his fixed gaze away from Stiles and turned him toward the counter.

"Frozen watermelon-lemonade for Hale!"

Stiles blinked, confused, but then Peter was grabbing a tall plastic cup off the counter and was shouldering roughly past, sending him staggering back to crash his hip into the sharp edge of an empty table. Striding for the door, he turned and sent a death glare back over his shoulder, one that was far too chilling given that the werewolf was sucking up a ridiculous pink slush from a green straw, and then he was gone, disappearing out into the rain without a word, the chime above the door the only sound to follow him out.