MOONLIT FANGS

What he taste like

I'll walk to yours, Rhys texted back. Fenn says he approves of the coffee gesture, by the way.

He's decided you're the only vampire on campus he doesn't want to bite out of spite.

Sebastian: High praise, coming from him. Tell Fenn I'm flattered.

Rhys: he heard that. he says "obviously." he's insufferable now that he talks. I've created a monster.

Sebastian: You didn't create him. You've just finally started listening.

Rhys smiled down at his phone, grabbed his jacket, and headed out into the cool night air toward Sebastian's dorm, Fenn quiet and satisfied in the back of his mind, the whole ridiculous, complicated, family-drama-filled mess of his life finally, for the first time in weeks, feeling like it might actually work out.

Grier and his pack were still out there, still angry, still looking for round two. His family still had questions nobody had fully answered yet. But walking across that courtyard under a sky full of stars, headed toward the one person his whole life had told him not to want, Rhys Calloway had never in his life felt more certain of anything.

Rhys Calloway had moved approximately half of his belongings into Sebastian Vale's dorm room over the course of three weeks, and neither of them had ever actually discussed it happening.

It had simply happened, the way most things between them seemed to happen lately — one hoodie left behind after a study night, then a phone charger, then, somehow, an entire second pillow that Rhys swore he didn't remember bringing over but that had, undeniably, been sitting on Sebastian's bed for two weeks now.

"You have a toothbrush in my bathroom," Sebastian pointed out one evening, watching Rhys sprawl across his bed as if he owned it, which, at this point, he basically did. "You are aware of this."

"I'm aware."

"You live in the pack dorms. You have your own room."

"My own room doesn't have you in it," Rhys said, entirely unbothered, flipping through one of Sebastian's books without really reading it. "Also, your bed is better than mine. Also, you have good coffee. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, you smell incredible, and I like falling asleep in a room that smells like you. Sue me."

Sebastian, sitting at his desk with a stack of papers he was very obviously not reading anymore, let out a long, put-upon sigh that fooled absolutely nobody, least of all Rhys, who had gotten extremely good at hearing the difference between Sebastian's real annoyance and his fake annoyance.

This was fake annoyance. This was, if anything, Sebastian trying very hard not to smile.

He likes it, Fenn said quietly in the back of Rhys's mind. You can smell it. That little spike of happiness every time you say something like that. He's just too proud to say it back.

Rhys had learned, over the past few weeks, not to repeat everything Fenn said out loud anymore. It had taken exactly one deeply humiliating incident in the dining hall — where Rhys had blurted out "Fenn says you look nice today" in front of Talia, Milo, and a table of very confused freshmen — for him to realize that narrating his wolf's live commentary in public made him sound, to put it gently, unwell.

Now he mostly just listened, quietly, and let Fenn's opinions live in his own head where they belonged, only occasionally slipping when something was too good not to share.

"You're doing the listening face," Sebastian said, glancing over.

"What's he saying now?"

"That you like having me here. You're just too proud to admit it."

"He's very perceptive for a wolf who spent three years being scared of a latte."

"He was NOT scared of the latte; he was"

Rhys stopped himself, remembering, belatedly, that he'd sworn off relaying full conversations.

"Never mind. He says hi, though. And he's mildly offended that you called him scared."

"Tell him I withdraw the accusation. Slightly."

"He accepts your slight withdrawal. Grudgingly."

Sebastian finally abandoned the pretense of working and crossed the room, settling onto the edge of the bed beside Rhys, close enough that their shoulders touched, close enough that Rhys could feel the particular cool calm that radiated off him like a low, steady hum.

Three months into this bond and Rhys still hadn't gotten used to it, how being near Sebastian felt like coming down off some invisible, exhausting tension he hadn't even realized he was carrying until it was gone.

"You know," Sebastian said, tracing an idle line along Rhys's forearm, "I've been meaning to ask you something. And I want you to answer honestly, without turning it into a joke."

"That's a big ask for me."

"I'm aware. Try anyway."

Rhys sat up a little, sensing something more serious underneath Sebastian's usual dry tone. "Okay. Ask."

"Are you happy," Sebastian said, quieter now, some of his usual composure slipping away entirely, "with all of this? The bond, the family drama, the fact that half your pack still eyes me like I'm going to bite someone at dinner. I know you say you are. I want to know if it's true, or if it's just what you tell yourself because the bond doesn't give you a choice."

Rhys studied him for a long moment — really studied him, the careful way Sebastian was holding his shoulders, the small crease between his eyebrows that only ever showed up when he was genuinely, deeply worried about something.

"Come here," Rhys said instead of answering right away, tugging him closer until Sebastian was tucked against his side, head resting against Rhys's chest, right over his heartbeat.

"Listen. Just — listen for a second."

Sebastian went quiet, and after a moment, Rhys felt him relax slightly, clearly hearing exactly what Rhys wanted him to hear — the steady, calm, entirely unstressed rhythm of Rhys's heart, nothing like the anxious hammering it did whenever something was actually wrong.

"That's my answer," Rhys said softly.

"That's what happy sounds like. I'm not with you because a bond told me to be. I'm with you because you're the most insufferable, most brilliant, most stubborn person I've ever met, and somewhere in the middle of hating you, I fell in love with you instead, and I have exactly zero regrets about any of it. Bond or no bond."

Sebastian was quiet for a long moment, and when he finally spoke, his voice had gone rough in a way Rhys rarely heard from him. "I don't know what I did to deserve you being this certain about me."

"You didn't do anything. That's kind of the point. I just am."

Moon goddess, this one's soft when he wants to be, Fenn murmured, sounding uncharacteristically gentle. Don't tell him I said that. He'll get insufferable about it.

Rhys smiled against the top of Sebastian's head and, for once, kept that particular comment entirely to himself.

It was nearly two in the morning, three days later, when Rhys finally noticed the thing he'd apparently been too distracted to notice for weeks, he had never once seen Sebastian drink blood.

They'd had dinner together dozens of times by now, sat through countless late-night study sessions, spent whole weekends barely leaving Sebastian's room, and in all that time, Rhys realized, lying tangled together in the dark with Sebastian's arm slung loosely across his waist, he had never actually seen him feed. Not once.

"Hey," Rhys said, breaking the comfortable silence between them,

"random question. You're a vampire."

"I'm aware."

"Vampires need blood, right? To, you know, function. Not die. The whole thing."

"That is generally how it works, yes."

"I've literally never seen you drink any. Not once. Are you secretly starving yourself? Should I be worried? Do I need to start a GoFundMe?"

Sebastian huffed out a quiet laugh against Rhys's shoulder. "I'm not starving. I feed. You've simply never seen it because I do it privately, early in the morning, before you wake up. It seemed I don't know. Unappealing to witness, historically. Most people don't enjoy watching."

"I'm not most people."

"No," Sebastian agreed, "you're really not."

"So what do you even drink? Please tell me it's not, like, straight from some poor cow in a field somewhere. That feels like it would be a whole logistical nightmare."

"Animal blood, mostly. Some farms supply it ethically, collected the same way you'd collect milk, no harm done to the animal. It's not as satisfying as the alternative, but it sustains me perfectly well. And occasionally,"

Sebastian added, "human blood, from blood banks. Donated, screened, entirely consensual on the donor's end, though they don't know specifically where it ends up. It's a fairly mundane system, honestly. Far less dramatic than the old stories make it sound."

Rhys propped himself up on one elbow, genuinely curious now. "Okay, but be honest with me. All those old vampire movies. The garlic. The crosses. The whole 'burns in sunlight' thing. Any of that real, or is it all just Hollywood nonsense?"

"Sunlight is real, unfortunately. Extended exposure is genuinely unpleasant, though it takes considerably longer than the movies suggest and it's more of a bad sunburn situation than instant combustion. The rest," Sebastian said, mouth curve into that rare, private smile, "is almost entirely fabricated."

"Wait, so garlic doesn't do anything?"

"I ate an entire plate of your garlic bread three weeks ago. You watched me do it."

"Oh my god, you're right, I completely forgot that happened. Okay, what about crosses? Holy water? Please tell me at least one spooky myth is real, I need SOMETHING to hold onto here."

"None of it," Sebastian said, clearly enjoying himself now. "Every bit of that was invented centuries ago, deliberately, by early vampire councils working with human religious leaders. It was a peace treaty of sorts. Humans got to believe they had a defense against us, a symbol, a plant, something that made them feel safe and in control. In exchange, vampires got left alone instead of hunted. It was, put simply, a very convincing lie designed to let humans sleep at night."

Rhys stared at him, delighted. "That is diabolical. I love it. Your whole species just collectively gaslit humanity for centuries so they'd stop showing up with torches."

"When you say it like that, it sounds significantly less diplomatic than it actually was."

"No, it's genius, honestly. 'Here, hold this garlic, you'll be fine.' Absolute icons."

"I'm so pleased you approve," Sebastian said dryly, though the corner of his mouth was twitching again, clearly fighting a real smile.

Rhys settled back down against the pillow, quiet for a moment, turning something over in his mind before he found the nerve to actually say it out loud. "Can I ask you something else? And you have to actually answer, not just deflect with more vampire trivia."

"I make no promises, but go ahead."

"Do you ever think about what my blood tastes like?"

The room went very still. Sebastian's whole body went tense beside him, and for a long moment, he didn't answer at all.

"Yes," Sebastian said finally, voice low, rough in a way Rhys had never quite heard before. "Constantly, if I'm being honest, which you specifically requested that I be. Mates' blood is different, from what I understand. More potent. More — personal. I've thought about it more than I'm entirely comfortable admitting."

"Why haven't you asked, then?"

"Because it's an enormous thing to ask of someone. Because I don't fully trust myself around it. Because mate-blood is supposed to be — overwhelming, for a vampire. I don't know what happens to my control once I actually taste it, and I would rather never find out than risk hurting you."

Rhys reached over, slow and deliberate, and pressed his wrist against Sebastian's lips, feeling him go rigid with restraint immediately.

"Then let's find out together," Rhys said quietly. "I trust you. Completely. I need you to trust yourself too."

Moon goddess help us both, Fenn muttered, sounding equal parts nervous and thrilled. This is either going to be the best decision you've ever made or a genuinely terrible one. No in-between with you two.

Sebastian's control lasted approximately four seconds after his teeth broke skin, and then it did not last at all.

Rhys felt it the second it happened — a sharp, bright sting at his wrist that bled almost instantly into something else entirely, something warm and electric that rolled up his arm and settled low in his chest, in his stomach, in every single nerve ending he had. He'd expected pain. He'd braced for pain, actually, some distant animal part of him ready to flinch. Instead, what came was a wave of heat so intense it knocked the air clean out of his lungs.

Sebastian made a low sound against his skin — something rough and helpless and entirely unlike the composed, controlled boy Rhys had spent three years learning to read — and pulled him closer, one hand fisting in the front of Rhys's shirt like he needed something to hold onto.

"Sebastian," Rhys breathed, and it came out shakier than he meant it to.

Sebastian's whole body had gone taut, drinking slow and deep, and Rhys could feel the exact moment restraint gave way to something far more instinctual — the grip on his shirt tightening, a low sound building in Sebastian's throat that vibrated straight through Rhys's skin.

"I need to stop," Sebastian said against his wrist, voice wrecked, barely audible.

"Rhys, I need to stop, I can't, I don't trust myself to"

"Don't stop," Rhys said, and the words came out as much moan as sentence, his whole body arching toward Sebastian instead of away, every instinct in him screaming the opposite of what any reasonable person would feel about someone drinking from them.

"Don't you dare stop."

Fenn went utterly silent in the back of his mind — not gone, but hushed, watchful, some deep ancient part of the wolf recognizing exactly what was happening between them and choosing, for once, to simply witness rather than comment.

The heat kept building, spreading from Rhys's wrist through his whole body in slow, dizzying waves, each pull of Sebastian's mouth sending another wave crashing through him until he could barely tell where the pain ended and the pleasure began, until they weren't separate things at all anymore, just one overwhelming, consuming sensation that had him gripping the sheets, gasping Sebastian's name like it was the only word he still remembered.

Sebastian's free hand slid up his side, cool and reverent, and Rhys felt him trembling actually trembling, this composed, controlled, always-put-together boy shaking apart just from the taste of him, just from being this close, this connected.

"You feel incredible," Sebastian gasped against his skin, sounding wrecked, sounding like every careful wall he'd ever built had come crashing down all at once. "I've never... nothing has ever felt like this, I didn't know it could feel like this"

"Sebastian...." Rhys's voice broke entirely, his whole body pulled taut like a bowstring, everything narrowing down to the warmth of Sebastian's mouth and the racing thunder of his own pulse and the low, desperate sounds neither of them were even trying to hold back anymore.

When it finally crested for both of them, at nearly the same overwhelming moment the whole room seemed to go quiet and loud at once, Rhys's whole body shuddering through it while Sebastian gasped against his throat, both of them clinging to each other like the only solid thing left in a world that had just tilted sideways.

Sebastian pulled back at last, breathing hard even though he technically didn't need to breathe at all, eyes wide and stunned, staring at Rhys; he'd just seen something he had no framework for.

"Are you alright?" Sebastian asked, voice still rough, hands shaking slightly where they rested against Rhys's ribs. "I lost — I've never lost control like that, I need to know you're alright, I need—"

"I'm perfect," Rhys said, laughing breathlessly, still coming down off whatever that had been, his whole body loose and warm and thoroughly wrung out in the best possible way. "I'm better than perfect. Come here."

He tugged Sebastian down against his chest, both of them breathing hard, hearts pounding in that same mismatched, mate-bonded rhythm they always seemed to find eventually, and for a long moment neither of them said anything at all, just held on, letting the aftershocks settle.

"That," Sebastian said finally, voice muffled against Rhys's shoulder, "was not what I expected."

"Good different or bad different?"

"Good different. Extremely good different. I may need a moment before my brain resumes normal function."

"Take your time," Rhys murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, feeling entirely too fond and entirely too wrecked to form a more coherent sentence. "I'm not going anywhere."

The next morning, Rhys walked into the campus dining hall still floating somewhere just above the ground, feeling equal parts exhausted and thoroughly, ridiculously happy, and immediately ran directly into Talia, who took one look at his face and grinned like she'd won the lottery.

"You," Talia said, pointing a fork at him accusingly, "look like a man who got absolutely wrecked last night."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Rhys. Your neck. You're wearing a scarf. It is eighty degrees outside."

Rhys clutched the scarf a little tighter and said nothing, which, judging by Talia's delighted cackle, was answer enough.

"I'm happy for you," she said, softer now, settling into the seat across from him.

"Genuinely. You deserve this, after everything. After the families, after Grier's nonsense, after three years of you being an absolute disaster about your feelings."

"Thanks. I think."

"As your beta," Talia added, straightening a little, some of her usual teasing dropping away into something more serious,

"I need you to know I've got your back. Whatever happens with the succession stuff, whatever Grier tries next, whatever your grandmother decides about all this — I'm not going anywhere. Pack's pack. That includes Sebastian now, whether the old guard likes it or not."

Something warm settled in Rhys's chest at that, steady and grateful, and he reached over to squeeze her hand briefly.

"That means a lot. Really."

She's a good one, Fenn said quietly. Solid instincts. Your grandmother's not wrong about her, you know. She'd make a fine leader someday, if it ever came to that.

"Fenn says you'd make a good leader,"

Rhys said out loud, deciding this particular comment was worth the exception to his new no-narrating rule.

Talia went very still, fork halfway to her mouth. "Your wolf said that?"

"He did. He's usually right about people, for what it's worth. He clocked Sebastian as trustworthy back before I'd even admit I liked him."

Talia was quiet for a moment, something thoughtful crossing her face, before she shook it off with a small laugh. "Well. Tell Fenn I said thanks. Even if it's terrifying to think about."

"He heard you. He says you're welcome, and also that you should stop putting so much hot sauce on your eggs, it's genuinely concerning."

"Tell Fenn to mind his own business."

Later that night, lying tangled with Sebastian again, warm and quiet and thoroughly content, Rhys found himself turning the whole day over in his head —

Talia's steady loyalty, the memory of the night before still humming warm under his skin, the slow, steady progress his family seemed to finally be making toward actually accepting all of this.

You're worrying again, Fenn said quietly. I can feel it.

Not worrying, exactly. Just — thinking. About all of it. Grier's still out there. The succession thing isn't settled. There's a lot that could still go wrong.

There's always a lot that could go wrong, Fenn said, and his voice had gone unusually soft, unusually solemn, none of his usual sharp humor in it at all. That's true for every wolf who's ever lived, mated or not. But you found your mate, Rhys.

Against two hundred years of history telling you it was impossible, you found him anyway, and he found you right back. That's not an accident. That's not just biology doing what biology does.

What is it, then?.

Trust the moon goddess, Fenn said simply. She doesn't make mistakes. She didn't bind you to him by accident, and she's not going to abandon either of you now, not after bringing you this far.

Whatever's coming — Grier, your family, all of it — you'll get through it. Together. That's the whole point of a bond like this. You're not supposed to face any of it alone anymore.

Rhys let that settle, warm and steady, curling closer against Sebastian's side, feeling the quiet, even rhythm of his mate's stillness beside him.

"You're thinking loudly again," Sebastian murmured, half-asleep, one arm tightening around him. "What did Fenn say this time?"

"He said to trust the moon goddess," Rhys said quietly. "That whatever happens next, we'll get through it together."

Sebastian was quiet for a moment, and then, sleepily, he pressed a kiss to the top of Rhys's head.

"Your wolf," he murmured, "has excellent taste in advice."

"Don't tell him that. He's already unbearable."

"Some things," Sebastian said, smiling against his hair.already drifting toward sleep, "are worth being a little unbearable about."

Outside, the campus lay quiet under a sky full of stars, Wraith Hollow's old towers standing dark and watchful against the night — and somewhere across campus, in the Ashford pack's dorms, Grier was already awake, already planning, already deciding that talk had gotten him nowhere and it was time, finally, to do something about it.