MOONLIT FANGS

The beating heart

Milo Reyes had never in his life been more thrilled about a roommate moving out."I have the whole room to myself," Milo announced.

He sprawled dramatically across his bed like a man who had just won the lottery. In the doorway stood Rhys, an armful of the last few boxes balanced against his chest. "Do you understand what this means? I can leave my clothes anywhere. I can eat cereal in bed, and nobody's going to lecture me about crumbs. I can walk around in my underwear at three in the morning like the free man I was always meant to be."

"You did all of that anyway," Rhys pointed out. "I just complained about it."

"And now I don't have to hear the complaining! It's a whole new era, Rhys. A golden age. Historians will look back on this as the Reyes Renaissance."

"You're being ridiculous."

"I am being accurate," Milo said, sitting up with exaggerated seriousness. "As your beta, it is my sacred duty to support your happiness. And your happiness involves moving in with a two-hundred-year-old vampire who buys you coffee he doesn't drink. I fully support this. So much so that I have already redecorated half your side of the room."

Rhys paused. "You didn't."

"I put up a poster of a shark. It's very motivational."Rhys set the last box down with a heavy sigh.

Before he could fully straighten up, Milo bounded off the bed and pulled him into a hug so enthusiastic it nearly knocked them both over.

Milo had been Rhys's beta since they were kids, long before either of them understood what pack roles meant.

There was nobody on earth who could switch from ridiculous to genuinely sincere faster."I'm happy for you," Milo said, his voice dropping, muffled against Rhys's shoulder.

"For real. I know it's been a whole mess with the families, Grier, and everything, but you seem... lighter. Since him. It's good to see."

"Yeah," Rhys admitted, tightening his grip. "It really is good, Milo. Better than I ever thought it could be."

"Good. Now get off me, you're crushing my very fragile emotional moment," Milo said, shoving Rhys backward. He reached up and flicked Rhys’s ear. It was an old first-year joke back when Rhys had tried to pull rank as Alpha, and Milo had flicked his ear until they both dissolved into laughter.

"Hey!" Rhys yelped, batting his hand away. He lunged back with a playful pinch, and the whole thing devolved into an undignified scuffle across the dorm room floor.

They were laughing too hard to land any real hits.

"Okay, okay, truce, truce," Milo wheezed, pinning both hands up in surrender from underneath Rhys's arm.

"You win. You always win. You're the Alpha; it's completely unfair. I don't know why I keep trying."

"Because you never learn," Talia said from the doorway. She stood with her arms crossed, shaking her head.

"Honestly, the two of you. I leave for ten minutes to get snacks, and you're already rolling around on the floor like puppies."

"He started it," Milo said. You flicked my ear first," Rhys shot back.

"Semantics."Talia rolled her eyes, reaching down to haul Milo up by the back of his shirt.

"Come on, drama queen. Let the man finish moving his stuff in peace."

In the doorway, Sebastian stood watching them. The usual careful composure was gone, replaced by a quiet, warm look Rhys hadn't seen on him before. He had come to help carry the last box, but had apparently gotten thoroughly distracted by the show.

"You're staring," Rhys said from the floor, breathless and grinning.

"I'm allowed to stare," Sebastian replied.

"You're mine to stare at."

"Ohhh, he said the thing," Milo stage-whispered to Talia, delighted.

"The possessive vampire thing. I live for the possessive vampire thing."

"We don't really say 'mates' among vampires," Sebastian said, crossing the room to help Rhys up. He laced their fingers together naturally. "We call it linked. He's my linker."

"Linker," Rhys repeated, testing the weight of the word. "That's actually kind of nice."

"It comes from an old bloodline term. Two lives linked into one thread, tangled so thoroughly neither can be pulled free without unraveling the other."

Sebastian's mouth curved slightly. "Vampires have always been a bit more poetic about these things than werewolves. No offense."

"Some offense taken," Rhys said, "but I'll allow it because you're cute when you're being pretentious."

"I'm never pretentious."

"You just described your soulmate bond using the word 'thread,' Sebastian."

"That's poetry, not pretension. There's a difference."

Milo leaned over to Talia, speaking loud enough to ensure he was overheard. "I give it three more weeks before he starts writing Rhys actual poetry."

"I heard that," Sebastian said, entirely unbothered.

"You're not wrong."

That night, Sebastian sat alone at his desk. The room was dark and quiet; Rhys was staying late at a pack meeting.

Sebastian pressed one hand flat against his chest, listening to something that defied every law of vampire biology he had ever studied. His heart was beating.

It had started three weeks ago, the night he first tasted Rhys's blood. In the immediate aftermath, Sebastian told himself it was just adrenaline—a strange side effect of the bond settling into place that would fade within a day or two.

It hadn't faded. If anything, the slow, steady thrum had only gotten more pronounced. It picked up every single time Rhys walked into a room. It raced when Rhys touched him. It existed entirely and only in his presence.

Vampires did not have beating hearts. It was a foundational fact of their existence. Blood moved through vampire bodies by will, magic, and old instinct, not by a pulse. Sebastian had studied two hundred years of family history as a child, and he had never heard of a single vampire whose heart had started beating again.

He picked up his phone and called his father before he could talk himself out of it."Sebastian." His father's voice was calm, unhurried the same steady tone he used for family finances or the end of the world.

"This is later than your usual call."

"Something's happening to me," Sebastian said, skipping the pleasantries. On the other end of the line, the silence turned sharp and attentive. "My heart. It's beating, Father. It has been for three weeks now. I didn't want to say anything until I was certain it wasn't my imagination, but it's real. It only happens around him."

There was a long pause. Sebastian checked his screen to make sure the call hadn't dropped."Around your linker," his father said finally.

"Yes."

Another pause. When his father spoke again, his voice carried a careful, measured weight.

"Sebastian, do you know the story of our bloodline? The true one, not the sanitized version they teach children."

"I know we descend from one of the oldest vampire lines in existence. You've told me that since I was young."

"Not oldest," his father corrected gently.

"First. Our bloodline traces directly back to the very first vampire ever recorded not turned, not made, but born from whatever ancient magic first split blood and shadow into something that could think and want and love. Every other vampire family descends from someone who was turned, generations removed from that source. We are the only line that never diluted.

It matters, because it means certain old magic runs truer in us than in anyone else alive."

Sebastian sat very still, absorbing the words. "What does that have to do with my heart?"

"The old stories say the first vampire was born already grieving something," his father said. "Lonely in a way no other creature has ever quite understood powerful, eternal, and entirely alone.

The stories say the only thing that ever eased that loneliness was a bond so complete it defied even vampire nature itself. A linker whose presence alone could make a heart beat that biology said should stay silent forever."

"You're telling me this is real. That it's happened before."

"I'm telling you it is rare beyond rare. In two hundred years of our family's recorded history, it has happened exactly twice before you. Both times to the head of our bloodline, and both times with a linker whose bond ran true in the oldest sense of the word.

Your grandfather's grandmother experienced it. The stories say his own heart went quiet again the day she died, and never beat once more in the four hundred years he lived after her."

Sebastian's chest tightened. "That sounds like a warning."

"It's not a warning," his father said. For the first time, something almost gentle crept into his cool voice.

"It's an explanation, Sebastian. You are not dying, and you are not broken. You are finally fully known by someone, the way our particular bloodline was always meant to be known. Your heart beats because your life, quite literally, has color in it now. That is not a malfunction. That is the entire point of what we are."

Sebastian let the words sit in the quiet room. His throat felt tight. "I was frightened. I thought something was wrong with me."

"Nothing is wrong with you," his father said. "Something, for the first time in our family's long history, has finally gone right. Cherish it, Sebastian. Protect it fiercely. And for the love of every old god still listening tell him. He deserves to know what he means to you, in numbers as literal as a heartbeat."

Grier of the Ashford pack had a secret he would die before admitting to a single living soul: he had been in love with Rhys Calloway since the first week of first year.

Every single fight he had ever picked was just a twisted, desperate excuse to be close to him. It had started small.

A rivalry in first-year combat trials that felt like genuine competition.

But somewhere along the way, the fighting stopped being about winning. It became the only way Grier could feel Rhys's hands on him, even in violence the only reason to think about him constantly without anyone questioning why.

Nobody knew what Grier actually was underneath the loud, aggressive Alpha posturing. He was an Omega. It was the rarest, weakest classification among werewolves, the kind other wolves were taught to protect rather than fear.

He had spent years perfecting the walk, the deep voice, and the unprovoked aggression. The alternative being seen as soft, low in the hierarchy, and easily dismissed felt like a death sentence.

His bedroom told the real story. No other pack member was ever allowed inside. Dozens of photographs of Rhys, collected over three years from every angle Grier could manage without being caught staring, lined the space.

Hidden away was a shirt stolen months ago from a locker room after training. Grier still pulled it out during his heat cycles, to breathe in the faint, fading trace of Rhys's scent.

He had never expected Rhys to want him back. Omegas didn't get Alphas like Rhys Calloway. Grier would have settled pathetically, if he was honest with himself for whatever scraps of attention he could get through rivalry.

He just hadn't prepared for a vampire to come along and take even those scraps away."He's not even one of us," Grier muttered. He stared at the small shrine of photographs.

"Cold-blooded. Bloodsucker. Doesn't even have a heartbeat, and somehow he gets to touch him whenever he wants."

It wasn't fair. Grier had ached painfully for three years, only for some vampire prince to show up and claim everything without even trying.

He couldn't fight Sebastian directly. A vampire from a proper bloodline would tear through an Omega pretending to be an Alpha without breaking a sweat.

But he could hurt him. It had to be quiet and clever—something to send a message without triggering a full diplomatic incident or collapsing the treaty. Grier pulled out a silver-forged blade. It worked on vampires the same way silver burned wolves.

A quiet ambush in an isolated spot would be enough to hurt him. Enough to scare him off, maybe, and make that cold bloodsucker understand the risk of taking something that had never belonged to him.

As Grier tucked the blade into his jacket, he told himself this was about pride. It was about pack honor. It was about proving he wasn't the weak thing everyone would see if they knew the truth. He didn't let himself think about how much of it was simply the agony of watching Rhys love someone else.