Moonbound to the Alpha

His Eyes

Elmridge High had not changed. It was the same worn red-brick building, the same narrow lockers painted a dull shade of green, and the same heavy smell of floor wax and old paper hanging in the halls.

When Rhea pushed through the front doors, her boots sounded loud against the floor. Students gathered in clusters near the office, but as she walked past, conversations died down in a slow ripple. Heads turned. Eyes tracked her every move.

"That’s her," a girl murmured near the vending machines. "The Calderon girl."

"I thought they moved away after her brother went missing."

Rhea did not look at them. She kept her chin up, her shoulders back, and stared straight down the corridor. She was not here to hide, nor was she here to give them a reaction.

The front office clerk handed her a class schedule, a map of the building, and a faint smile. "Welcome back, Miss Calderon."

The word felt heavy, dragging up memories she had spent five years trying to bury.

She found her assigned locker, worked the dial, and pulled the metal door open. It gave a stiff squeal. She shoved her extra notebooks inside, snapped the door shut, and headed down the hall toward her first class, ignoring the subtle stares that followed her into every room.

The morning dragged. Every class felt identical—teachers stumbling over her name during attendance, classmates casting curious sideways glances, and an underlying tension that made her neck itch. People did not see her as a new student. They saw a ghost story.

At lunch, she skipped the crowded noise of the cafeteria and walked out to the courtyards behind the gym. A few groups of kids sat on the concrete benches, but she found a quiet table near the edge of the lawn, right under the shadow of the pines. She pulled her sweater tighter against the wind and opened her bag, not because she was hungry, but because she needed something to do with her hands.

Then the air around her seemed to settle into a cold quiet.

She looked up.

A guy was walking across the grass toward the tree line. The twelve-year-old boy she remembered was gone. In his place stood someone taller, broader across the shoulders, moving with a controlled, easy stride that drew attention without trying to. He wore a dark jacket over a gray shirt, his hands jammed into his pockets.

Lucci Reyes.

He stopped a few feet from her table. His eyes were a striking amber color, clear and intense under the midday sun.

Rhea stood up from the bench, her fingers gripping the edge of the wood. "Lucci?"

He stopped, his jaw setting as he looked at her. "Rhea."

His voice was deeper than she remembered.

"You've grown up," she said, the words slipping out before she could check them.

"So have you."

They stood in silence for a moment, the wind rustling the dry grass between them. Rhea searched his face for any sign of the boy who used to share popsicles on her back porch, but his expression was grim.

"You shouldn’t have come back here, Rhea," he said quietly.

She folded her arms over her chest, leaning back slightly. "My mom took a job at the hospital. I didn't get much say in it. Besides, why shouldn't I be here?"

Lucci glanced past her shoulder, his gaze fixing on the dark wall of trees bordering the athletic field. "Things are different now. Elmridge isn't the same town you left, and people here don't like old history being dug up."

She narrowed her eyes. "I'm not digging anything up. I just live here again."

"Just stay out of the woods," he said, turning his amber eyes back to hers. "And don't go looking for answers that aren't there."

Before she could ask him what that was supposed to mean, he turned on his heel and walked toward the gym doors, leaving her alone under the pines.

That night, sleep came in fits and starts.

When she finally drifted off, the forest from her childhood bled into her mind. She was running down the dirt trail behind her house, the branches reaching out like fingers. Lucci was standing in a clearing under the moonlight, his features blurring between human and something wilder, those same bright eyes tracking her every breath.

Then Eli’s voice echoed out from somewhere deep in the brush, cold and distant: Rhea, don't forget.

She sat up with a start, her lungs burning, her t-shirt damp with sweat. The room was pitch black.

The next morning at school, Lucci acted as if the conversation in the courtyard had never happened. He passed her in the main hallway between second and third period without so much as a glance. Yet every time he was within twenty feet of her, her skin prickled with a strange, static heat.

Third period was biology. Rhea sat near the back, hoping to fly under the radar, but the teacher cleared his throat and looked down at his clipboard.

"For the remainder of the term, you'll be working in pairs on the ecosystem lab," the teacher announced. He began reading off names. "Reyes and Calderon."

Rhea stiffened.

Lucci walked down the aisle without a word and pulled out the chair next to hers. He set his notebook down on the black lab desk, his expression unreadable.

"We don't have to talk about anything outside the assignment," she whispered, keeping her eyes on the whiteboard.

He opened his notebook to a blank page. "Good."

"Is that how you treat old friends?" she asked, a small edge creeping into her voice despite herself. "You act like I committed a crime by moving home."

Lucci tapped his pen against the paper, his mouth setting into a thin line. "Old friends stay. They don't disappear for five years without a word."

He caught himself, letting out a slow breath through his nose. He looked down at the desk. "Forget I said that. That wasn't fair to you."

"No," Rhea said softly, staring at his hands. "It's fine. It's honest."

They spent the rest of the period filling out the lab worksheet in low, careful tones. But the quiet between them felt charged, like a storm building outside a closed window.

Rhea kept her focus on her paper, trying not to notice the faint scent of pine wood and rain that seemed to cling to his jacket.

As the bell rang to end the period, Lucci gathered his papers. He didn't stand up immediately. He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping so low only she could hear it over the noise of shuffling chairs.

"I saw you at the old park last night," he said.

Rhea stopped mid-reach for her backpack. "That was you in the trees."

"I was checking the area," he said. "You shouldn't be wandering around out there after dark. It's not safe."

"Why?" she demanded, looking straight into those amber eyes. "What's in those woods, Lucci? What actually happened to Eli?"

His jaw tightened, and for a split second, she saw a flash of genuine frustration—or maybe fear—crack through his calm exterior.

"I don't know where he is," Lucci said. "But I know he didn't just run away. And whatever took him is still out there."

He stood up, slung his bag over his shoulder, and walked out the classroom door before she could say another word.

That night, the house was dead silent. Her mother was working an overnight shift at the clinic, leaving Rhea alone in the dark upstairs bedroom.

She lay on her side, staring at the windowpane. Outside, the trees rustled softly in the midnight breeze. The wood of her old bedroom floor creaked, settled, and grew quiet again.

Then she saw them.

Past the low wooden fence at the back of the yard, two bright amber points of light burned in the pitch-black shadows of the trees.

Rhea pulled the blanket up to her chin, her pulse thumping in her ears, but she didn't look away.