MOONLIT FANGS

The bridge

Isla found him twenty minutes later, still tense, jaw tight, staring blankly at a book he clearly wasn't reading in the corner of the east library.

"You look like you're about to set something on fire," she observed, sliding into the seat across from him.

"I'm fine."

"You are very obviously not fine. Talk to me."

Sebastian hesitated, then, against every instinct telling him to keep it to himself, told her what he'd seen — Rhys and Grier, close together, soft-faced, deep in some conversation Sebastian hadn't been part of.

Isla's expression shifted into something careful, something that Sebastian, in his current state, was too distracted to properly read as calculated. "I did warn you this would happen eventually," she said quietly. "Wolves don't stay loyal the way we do, Sebastian. It's not in their nature. They run in packs for a reason — pack loyalty shifts, bonds get complicated, and you're always going to be the outsider they tolerate rather than the one they truly choose. I've seen it before. It never ends well for us."

Something about the certainty in her voice, the easy way she folded his fear into a whole worldview he'd never actually asked for, made something in Sebastian's chest snap.

"Enough," he said, sharper than he meant to, sharp enough that Isla actually flinched. "You've done this since the moment you got back. Every comment, every little warning about wolves, about how they'll never really accept us, how this bond is doomed, how I should have known better. I'm tired of it, Isla. I didn't ask for your opinion on my relationship."

"I'm trying to protect you—"

"You're trying to be right," Sebastian snapped. "There's a difference. I love him. I don't need you circling this the whole semester waiting for it to fall apart so you can say you told me so."

Isla went very still, something flickering across her face — shock, and underneath it, something darker that she quickly smoothed away. "I didn't realize I'd overstepped that badly."

"You have. Repeatedly." Sebastian stood, gathering his things, still too raw and unsettled to sit still. "I need to think. Alone."

He left her sitting there, stunned, and did not see the way her expression shifted the second his back was turned — hurt curdling fast into something colder, something that looked, for just a moment, a great deal like resentment aimed squarely at the werewolf she'd never even properly gotten to know.

Rhys found out about the fight between Sebastian and Isla secondhand, from Milo, who'd heard it from someone in the library, who'd heard it from someone else, the whole story warped slightly by the time it reached him.

What he knew for certain was that Sebastian had gone cold and distant sometime that afternoon, had barely spoken two full sentences to him all evening, and had, when Rhys finally asked directly what was wrong, simply said "nothing" in a tone that very clearly meant something.

"He's being weird," Rhys told Milo and Talia later that night, sprawled miserably across Milo's bed since apparently he wasn't welcome in his own shared room at the moment. "I had this whole holiday planned. The cabin, all of it. And now he won't even look at me properly."

"Did you do something?" Talia asked, not unkindly.

"I don't know! That's the whole problem, I genuinely don't know what I did. One minute everything's fine, we're planning this whole trip, and the next he's giving me one-word answers and won't explain why."

"Maybe it's the new girl," Milo offered.

"Isla. I heard she and Sebastian had some kind of blowup this afternoon."

"That doesn't explain why he's mad at ME."

"Rich people problems," Milo said solemnly. "You two probably had a whole silent argument through vibes alone. It's very on brand for both of you, honestly."

"This isn't funny, Milo."

"It's a little funny," Milo said, though he softened it with a gentle nudge to Rhys's shoulder. "Look, whatever it is, you'll figure it out. You always do. He's obsessed with you, Rhys, in a way that's honestly a little unsettling if I think about it too long. This is probably just a misunderstanding blowing up bigger than it needs to."

"I had plans," Rhys said miserably, staring at the ceiling. "Good ones. The whole semester's been such a mess and I finally had something to look forward to and now it feels like it's falling apart for no reason."

Talia settled beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. "For what it's worth, watching you like this is honestly kind of wild. Three years of you pretending nothing could touch you, and one grumpy vampire boyfriend has you flat on Milo's bed looking like your whole world's ending."

"I don't look like that."

"You look exactly like that," Milo said, grinning despite the moment. "You know, it's actually kind of beautiful, watching you turn into a regular disaster over someone. I always figured Alpha Rhys was immune to this stuff. Guess love really does make idiots out of all of us eventually."

Before Rhys could respond, his phone buzzed with a text from his grandmother, summoning him home for the weekend for what she called "a family conversation long overdue," and Rhys groaned into the pillow, wondering exactly how much worse this particular week was planning on getting.

The Calloway estate, when Rhys finally arrived that weekend, was quieter than usual, his grandmother waiting for him in the study with tea already poured, his mother seated nearby with a warm, smile she always wore when she suspected something was troubling him.

"You look tired," his grandmother said with a frown. "Trouble with your vampire?"

"Something like that. I don't even know what happened. He's just — shut down. Won't talk to me." He said hugging his mother and grandmother.

"Relationships are rarely simple," his grandmother said, settling back in her chair. "Especially ones built across as much history as yours. You're going to hit more of these moments, Rhys. Misunderstandings. Old fears surfacing at the worst times. That doesn't mean it's failing. It means it's real."

"That's actually helpful, Grandma. Thank you."

"I have my moments." She studied him for a long beat. "You love him."

"I do."

"Then don't let pride keep you from asking him directly what's wrong, instead of guessing and stewing about it for a week. You Calloways are terrible at that. Stubborn to a fault."

From the doorway, Uncle Desmond appeared, arms crossed, wearing the particular expression of someone who'd clearly been listening for longer than he should have. "I did warn everyone," he said, unable to resist. "Vampires. Cold-blooded, the lot of them. Bound to freeze him out eventually. I knew there'd be trouble."

"Desmond," Rhys's mother said warningly.

"I'm just saying. Nobody wanted to hear it, but here we are."

"There's a difference," Rhys said, more tired than annoyed at this point, "between a relationship having a hard week and a relationship being doomed, Uncle Desmond. I'd appreciate it if you saved the told-you-so's until you actually know what you're talking about."

Desmond raised both hands in mock surrender, though he didn't look remotely convinced, and Rhys's grandmother shot him a look sharp enough to send him retreating from the doorway entirely.

"Go fix it," she said to Rhys, gentler now. "Whatever it is. You've fought too hard to get here to let one bad week undo it."

Rhys nodded, already pulling out his phone, already typing out a message to Sebastian that he deleted twice before finally settling on something simple.

I don't know what happened, but I miss you. Can we talk? Whatever it is, I'd rather know than guess.

He stared at the screen for a long, anxious moment after hitting send, waiting, hoping, having absolutely no idea that across campus, Sebastian was staring at his own phone with the exact same message half-typed and unsent, finally starting to understand just how badly he'd let one afternoon of fear cost him something he wasn't willing to lose.