MOONLIT FANGS

The Families finds out

News travels fast at Wraith Hollow University.

But news about the Alpha of the Calloway pack kissing the heir of the Vale bloodline? In front of the entire student body during the Full Moon Trials? That travels faster than fast.

It travels at the speed of gossip, which, as anyone who has ever attended a supernatural academy will tell you, is somehow quicker than the speed of light.

By sunrise, both families knew. Rhys found out exactly how bad it was going to be the second his grandmother called him.

Not texted. Called. Marion Calloway did not call unless something was either actively dying or about to start a war, and Rhys was fairly sure he still had a pulse."Alpha Calloway," his grandmother said.

She used the voice she always deployed when she was trying very hard not to yell, which was somehow infinitely worse than actual screaming.

"Would you like to explain to me why I received four separate calls last night informing me that you locked lips with a Vale in the middle of the arena?"

"Grandma—"

"I am not finished."

"You asked if I’d like to explain. That implies I get to—"

"Rhys Calloway, so help me."Rhys sank onto the edge of his bed, phone pressed tight to his ear, and stared at the ceiling like it might hold some divine advice. It did not."He's my mate," Rhys said finally.

There was no version of this conversation where lying salvaged anything. "I didn't choose it, okay? It just happened. The bond activated. I can't undo that even if I wanted to."

A suffocating silence stretched over the line. It dragged on so long that Rhys actually pulled the phone away from his ear to make sure the call hadn't dropped.

"Do you want to undo it?" his grandmother asked eventually. Her voice had dropped, quieter now, and the sudden shift made Rhys's chest tighten.

The anger was gone. In its place was something that sounded terrifyingly like fear.No," Rhys said. He surprised himself with how fast the answer came.

How entirely certain it was. "I don't."

Another agonizing pause. Then, finally, came a long, tired sigh—the exact sound Rhys had heard a thousand times growing up whenever his grandmother decided to fight a battle she already knew she couldn't win.

"Family meeting. Tonight," she commanded, her tone sharpening right back to business. "Video call, since you still refuse to come home like a reasonable grandson. And Rhys?"

"Yeah?"Do not let that boy anywhere near pack territory until we've spoken. Wolves do not respond well to vampires invading their land. You know this."

"He wouldn't even want to come to pack territory, Grandma. He'd probably complain about the smell."

"Tonight, Rhys."The line went dead. Rhys flopped backward onto his mattress and groaned so loudly that Milo, currently crashing on the couch in the next room, yelled at him to shut up through the wall.

Before he could even mentally prepare for the impending interrogation, his phone buzzed in his palm. A text.

Sebastian: My father wants to speak with me tonight. I assume your family has also caught wind of the situation.

Rhys: My grandmother called me. CALLED. Sebastian, she never calls. It’s always an angry text or a carrier pigeon. This is DEFCON 1.

Sebastian: My father sent an email. Formal. Three paragraphs long. He used my full name.

Rhys: Oh no. What’s the full name? Let me guess, something incredibly dramatic?

Sebastian: Sebastian Alaric Vale.

Rhys: Alaric. ALARIC. You’ve been holding out on me this whole time??

Sebastian: You told me your middle name is Bartholomew. I think we are more than even.

Rhys: THAT WAS A SACRED SECRET.

Sebastian: Nothing is a secret anymore, apparently. Welcome to the fishbowl. Rhys stared down at the screen, a small smile breaking through his dread despite the impending doom of a three-hour family meeting—one that would undoubtedly involve at least one aunt crying about "the old days." It was a tiny thing, trading stupid, normal texts like this, but it was the only thing keeping the panic in his chest from swallowing him whole.

Rhys: Are you scared?

A pause. The three little dots appeared, vanished, and appeared again. Sebastian was usually an instantaneously reply kind of guy, so the delay spoke volumes.

Sebastian: The Vale family does not do 'scared.' We do disappointed, profoundly disapproving, and occasionally, if truly desperate, mildly stern.

Rhys: That’s a vampire’s way of saying yes.

Sebastian: I suppose it is. Rhys typed his next response without hesitation, the weight of the pack, the trials, and the decades of bad blood fading into the background.

Rhys: For what it’s worth. Whatever happens tonight. I’m not changing my mind.

Sebastian: Neither am I. Try not to set anything on fire during your meeting. I know how your family gets when they're stressed.

Rhys: No promises.

The Vale family meeting happened first, at six o'clock sharp, because vampires were nothing if not predictable when it came to punctuality.

Sebastian sat across from his father in the family's private study back home—connected by a video call, since neither of them was willing to waste a six-hour drive on a school night.

He kept his spine perfectly straight and his hands folded calmly in his lap, presenting himself like a man defending a dissertation rather than his own heart. Alaric Vale Senior was a tall, elegant figure with silver-streaked dark hair and a heavy, quiet stillness that routinely made everyone else in the room forget to breathe.

He did not raise his voice. He never had to."A werewolf," his father said, stating it as an unshakeable fact rather than a question. "The Calloway Alpha, specifically.

"Yes."

"You understand the history there."

"I understand it," Sebastian replied, his tone smooth. "I have understood it since I was six years old and you first explained the mechanics of the Accord to me.

"Then you understand why this concerns me."

"With respect, Father, I don't think it actually concerns you. I think it bothers you because it is deeply inconvenient, not because you genuinely believe he is a danger to us."

His father fell silent for a long moment, studying him with an unreadable expression. It was a rare disconnect; Sebastian had spent two decades learning to decipher every minor flicker of his father's face.

" Is it a bond?" his father asked finally, his voice dropping an octave. "A true one. Not some passing infatuation."

"It's a true bond."

"You're certain?"I have never been more certain of anything in my life," Sebastian said. A sudden rawness slipped into his voice, surprising him. It was a vulnerability he rarely permitted himself, especially not under this roof.

"I fought it for weeks. I tried to convince myself it was nothing."

"It is very much nothing."His father exhaled a slow, measured breath. For the first time since the call connected, the rigid tension in the older man's shoulders eased, just a fraction.

"Vampires do not encounter true bonds often," he murmured. "Once in a generation, if that. You know the statistics.

"I do."

"Then I will not pretend to be pleased about the bloodlines involved. But I am neither a fool nor a tyrant, Sebastian; I will not stand against a true bond. I only ask one thing of you."What is that?"

"Be careful. Werewolves are not like us. They love with their whole chests—loud, messy, and entirely immediate. That boy is an Alpha, which means his instincts will be even less predictable than the rest of his kind.

If his family reacts the way I expect the Calloways to react, this will not be a quiet affair. "Are you prepared for the fallout?"

Sebastian immediately thought of Rhys—stubborn, loud, utterly ridiculous, growling at baristas over lattes, laughing far too hard at his own jokes, and looking at Sebastian like he was something worth burning the world down for. A deep, heavy warmth settled firmly behind Sebastian's ribs."I am."

His father studied him a moment longer, then gave a single, almost imperceptible nod."Then you have my blessing, for whatever it is worth against two hundred years of Calloway stubbornness," he said, and for a fleeting second, the ghost of an amused smile touched his eyes.

"Good luck. You will need it more than you think."

The Calloway family meeting was, by contrast, an absolute circus.

There were fourteen people shoved into the video call by the time it started—a detail Rhys had not been warned about—and every single one of them brought a loud opinion.

His grandmother sat at the head of the screen, her expression projecting pure regret over every life choice that had brought her to this moment. His mother kept obsessively muting and unmuting her microphone to say things like, "I just think we all need to take a collective breath," which everyone promptly ignored.

His uncle Desmond, who ran the pack's security detail and had never met a situation he couldn't turn into a tragedy, was already pacing off-camera aggressively. A Vale,"

Desmond barked for the fourth time, his face red. "Of all the wolves, of all the vampires, of all the schools in this damn country, our Alpha falls for a Vale."

"I didn't fall for him on purpose," Rhys snapped, his fingers gripping his phone so tightly the plastic casing groaned.

"It's a mate bond. I don't get a vote in the matter."

"Mate bonds can be resisted," Desmond countered.

'They really can't, actually," Aunt Bree cut in from her own digital square. "That's not how the biology works, and you know it, Desmond. You're just being dramatic because you still haven't gotten over the trade dispute from 2003."

"That trade dispute cost us the entire eastern territory!"

"It cost us four acres of dense bush that we didn't even use!"

"IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF IT!"

"Everyone," Rhys's grandmother said. The low, sharp edge of her voice cut through the digital static like a blade, silencing the call instantly.

Fourteen boxes of Calloways went utterly dead quiet. She stared through the lens at Rhys for a long, heavy moment. Rhys braced his shoulders, preparing for the worst.

"I don't like it," she said plainly. "I want to be honest with you, Rhys, because you deserve the truth, not corporate pack politics. I grew up hating the name Vale. My mother did too. That kind of deep-seated blood feud doesn't just evaporate because the universe decided to be difficult."

"I know, Grandma."

"But," she continued, her gaze softening just enough to notice, "I am also not going to sit here and pretend I don't remember what happened to your Uncle Desmond's cousin, Wren. She fought her bond for six years because the family disapproved. To this day, she is one of the hollowest, saddest women I have ever seen. A broken bond breaks the wolf inside you, Rhys. It isn't a clean punishment. It’s a wound that stays open forever."The entire call remained silent.

Even Desmond had stopped pacing."I will not do that to you," his grandmother said firmly. "I don't have to like this arrangement, but I will not stand between you and your mate. That is my decision; it is final, and anyone on this call who wants to object can take it up with me directly." She shot a pointed, lethal look at Desmond’s box. Desmond immediately looked away from his camera.

Rhys felt a sharp crack in his chest, a massive wave of relief flooding his lungs so fast it made his eyes hot. "Thank you."

"There will be conditions, obviously," his grandmother added, destroying the tender moment instantly. "He meets the pack properly. In person. Formally. And Rhys—you will control your temper around him in front of the family. No territorial growling at your own blood relatives because they looked at him the wrong way. I know how young Alphas get."I do not growl at—"

"You growled at your own mother for standing too close to your plate last Thanksgiving."

"That was different, that was deep-fried turkey!"

"Rhys."

"Fine! Fine. I'll behave."His grandmother's mouth twitched, the tiniest, most reluctant hint of an amusement showing through. "We'll see."

Two weeks later, the restrictions officially began. Rhys quickly discovered that nothing—not two hundred years of blood feuds, not a full council of anxious relatives, and certainly not a stern vampire father with an email full of formal warnings—was going to stop them from finding ways to get exactly what they wanted.

The rule, hammered out during an agonizingly tense joint phone call that Rhys and Sebastian had been forced to sit through in agonizing silence, was basic: supervised meetings only, on neutral campus ground, until both families could "properly assess the stability of the bond." Which, translated from parent-speak, meant: we don't trust you two to keep your hands to yourselves, so we're making this as frustrating as possible.

It backfired spectacularly."You know," Sebastian murmured, a week into the lockdown. He was currently pressed into the dark, narrow gap between two bookshelves in the abandoned wing of the university library, where absolutely no supervision existed. "I believe our families have accidentally made this situation significantly worse.

"Worse how?" Rhys asked, his voice a low, rough growl. He already knew the answer.

He was currently standing far closer than any "neutral meeting" allowed. One of his hands was planted on the dark wood beside Sebastian’s head, close enough that the cool, intoxicating scent of winter air and expensive cedar radiating off the vampire was making his inner wolf pace.

"They told us we couldn't be alone together," Sebastian said, his dark eyes tracking the movement of Rhys's throat as he swallowed.

"And now, it seems, it is the only thing either of us can focus on."

"That's a pretty big assumption. Maybe I just really like ancient literature."

"You've been holding that volume upside down for ten minutes, Rhys." Rhys glanced down. He had, in fact, been gripping a leather-bound history text completely upside down.

He didn't flip it right-side up. It was a matter of pride now."Fine," Rhys muttered, shifting his weight forward, deliberately letting his chest brush against Sebastian's coat. "Maybe I just want to be close to you. Sue me."

"I don't need to do that. I could simply inform your grandmother that you snuck away from the library's designated study hall."

"You wouldn't dare."

"I might."

"You're a sadist."

"I'm efficient," Sebastian said, and there it was—that small, private smile that Rhys had quickly realized belonged entirely to him.

The one Sebastian only wore when the rest of the world wasn't looking. "Besides. If I expose your indiscretion, I expose my own. I have far too much self-preservation for that."

Rhys leaned in another inch, his lips brushing against the cool shell of Sebastian’s ear, his voice dropping into a rough whisper that traveled straight down the vampire's neck. "You know, for someone who talks so much about dignity, you're awfully comfortable letting a wolf pin you against a bookshelf."

"I am not being pinned," Sebastian replied, his breath hitching just slightly despite his perfectly calm, composed delivery. "I am merely permitting this."

"Permitting it?"

"Yes."

"So you're saying you're just letting me win?"

"I'm saying," Sebastian whispered, tilting his chin up, his gaze dropping to Rhys's mouth with a deliberate, heavy heat that made Rhys's entire body spark, "that you seem to enjoy the illusion of being the one in control here. I find it rather endearing. I see no reason to correct your delusion."

Rhys's Alpha pride flared instantly, hot and demanding. "I am in control."

"Of course you are."

"I mean it, Sebastian. I could walk away right now."

"You could," Sebastian agreed, his body entirely still, not looking remotely threatened by the posture. "Go ahead then. Walk."Rhys did not walk away. Instead, he lost his temper, closed the remaining distance, and slammed his mouth against Sebastian's. It was a hard, possessive, slightly desperate kiss, one of his hands fisting into the collar of Sebastian’s crisp shirt as if he could physically lock the vampire into the space.

For one glorious, triumphant second, Rhys felt the thrilling rush of breaking that infuriating composure as Sebastian let out a low, dark sound against his lips. Then the tables turned.

Sebastian's hand slid up Rhys's chest, slow and entirely unhurried, his cool fingers wrapping firmly around the back of Rhys's neck.

With an effortless, steady pressure, the vampire completely hijacked the momentum. He turned the frantic, biting kiss into something deep, heavy, and thoroughly intoxicating. Sebastian took his time, his tongue sliding past Rhys's lips with a slow luxury that made Rhys's knees go completely loose.

Rhys had to grip the edge of the wooden bookshelf just to keep his balance as his head spun from the sheer, unfiltered taste of him. When Sebastian finally pulled back, just barely enough to breathe, he was wearing that rare, genuinely wicked smirk that made Rhys's stomach do a violent flip."You were saying something about being in control," Sebastian murmured against his lips.

"...Shut up."

"I didn't say a word."

"You're saying it with your face. Your face is smug. It's incredibly smug right now."

"This is simply my natural expression," Sebastian countered, throwing Rhys's own words from the training field right back at him. Rhys let out a breathless, defeated laugh, his forehead dropping heavily onto Sebastian's shoulder.

He gave up entirely on pretending he held the upper hand in any part of this dynamic. He would tell Milo later, of course, that he had completely dominated the encounter. Milo wouldn't believe him. Talia wouldn't believe him. Even Rhys, in the quietest corners of his own mind, knew it was a lie.

But Rhys Calloway had never in his life conceded a loss gracefully, mate bond or not."Same time tomorrow," Rhys said, straightening his posture and trying—and failing—to look like his entire reality hadn't just been turned upside down by a single kiss. "Same broken rules. Same terrible hiding spot."

"I was thinking somewhere with a door next time, actually," Sebastian said, his tone entirely too casual as he watched open satisfaction flare when Rhys's throat and ears flushed bright red.

"You cannot just say things like that out loud."I can. I did. Your scent just spiked, by the way."

"I hate you."

"You really don't," Sebastian whispered. He reached up, his thumb gently tracing the line of Rhys's jaw before tucking a stray lock of dark hair behind his ear. The sheer tenderness of the gesture completely erased the teasing weight of his words.

And Rhys, despite the families, the ancient blood feuds, the stifling rules, and the two centuries of historical baggage neither of them had asked to carry, felt the final pieces of his life slide perfectly into place."No," Rhys admitted, his voice quiet, his eyes locked onto Sebastian's. "I really don't."