MOONLIT FANGS

What She Knew

Sebastian had almost made peace with it. Almost.

Three days after his father's midnight confession on the floor of his childhood bedroom, Sebastian had finally reached something like acceptance a fragile, careful kind of peace, the sort you build when you decide grief doesn't have to mean losing everything else along with it. He'd packed his bag.

He'd written and deleted four different versions of what he wanted to say to Rhys when he saw him again. He was, for the first time in days, ready to go home to Wraith Hollow and try.

Isla found him in the garden the morning he was set to leave, sitting quietly on the same stone bench where they'd played as children, and something in her expression should have warned him before she even opened her mouth.

"You're really going back to him," she said, not quite a question.

"I am."

"Even knowing what you know now?"

"I know what happened, Isla. My mother and his father, both trying to stop the same fight, both dying because of it. It's tragic. It's not either of our faults."

Isla was quiet for a long moment, studying him with an expression that looked almost pitying.

"You don't actually know the full story yet, do you. His grandmother left something out."

Something cold settled in Sebastian's stomach. "What are you talking about?"

"My father was there that night, Sebastian. At Northridge. I've known the whole story since I was old enough to understand what it meant." Her voice had gone quiet, careful, deliberately gentle in a way that made the words that followed land even harder. "Your mother didn't simply die in the chaos of a fight that got out of control. Rhys's father killed her directly. And my father killed Rhys's father, moments later, in retaliation."

The world seemed to tilt slightly under Sebastian's feet. "That's not...Rhys's grandmother said they both died trying to stop the fighting."

"They did try to stop it. But your mother didn't die from some stray blow in the confusion, Sebastian. Rhys's father struck her down himself, in the chaos, mistaking her for a threat, or perhaps not mistaking anything at all. My father saw it happen. He avenged her on the spot before anyone could stop him. That's the part of the story both families have spent twenty years making sure neither of you ever learned properly."

Sebastian sat frozen, every careful piece of acceptance he'd built over the last three days crumbling instantly. "Why are you telling me this now."

"Because you deserve the truth," Isla said softly. "All of it. Not the sanitized version his family fed you to make this bond easier to swallow."

Sebastian confronted his father less than an hour later, storming into his study without knocking, voice shaking with a fury he'd never once directed at him in his entire life.

"Is it true," Sebastian demanded. "Did Rhys's father kill my mother directly? Not some accident in the chaos. Directly."

His father's face went pale, and the silence that followed was answer enough.

"Sebastian."

"IS IT TRUE."

"Yes," his father said quietly, finally, the word landing like a stone. "It's true. I'm sorry. I should have told you myself, properly, instead of letting you learn it from someone else."

Something in Sebastian broke entirely at that admission. "You knew. All this time, you knew exactly how she died, and you let me believe some vague story about a fight spiraling out of control. You let me bond myself to the family of the man who killed her."

"I didn't know, when the bond first activated, whether it was wise to tell you everything at once."

"You're a coward," Sebastian spat, the words tearing out of him before he could stop them. "You've spent twenty years hiding behind diplomacy and treaties instead of ever actually telling me the truth about my own mother's death."

His father's expression cracked, hurt flashing raw and sudden across his usually composed face. "I am not a coward," he said, voice rough now, some old grief finally surfacing. "I thought of the whole family, Sebastian, not just my own pain. I thought of you, growing up with an entire vendetta on your shoulders instead of a childhood. I thought of the treaty, of the peace that held because both families agreed to bury this rather than let one more generation inherit a war that had already cost too much. That is what a leader does. He carries the weight so others don't have to."

"I don't want to be a leader if it means sacrificing the people I love for the sake of everyone else," Sebastian said, voice breaking, tears finally spilling over. "I would burn the entire world down for the people I love, Father. I don't understand how you buried her death, buried the truth, and called it leadership instead of what it actually was a betrayal of her memory."

"Sebastian."

"And Rhys's grandmother," Sebastian continued, fury and grief tangled together now, impossible to separate. "She sat there and told us a softened version too. Both of you decided, together, that we deserved half-truths instead of the whole painful reality. I'm disappointed in both of you. More disappointed than I have words for."

His father sat in devastated silence, offering nothing more to defend himself, and Sebastian turned and left without another word, grief and rage burning through him in equal, consuming measure.

He thought, distantly, of something his father had told him months ago — that their bloodline traced back to the very first vampire ever recorded, and that the heartbeat phenomenon had happened only twice before in two hundred years, always to the head of the bloodline, always paired with a true, complete bond.

What his father hadn't told him, not fully, not until this exact devastating morning, was that the very first time it had happened at all the true origin of it, centuries before even his grandfather's grandmother had been between the very first vampire of the Vale line and the very first Alpha of the Calloway pack.

Two founding bloodlines, linked at their absolute origin, long before either family existed as anything more than two ancient, solitary creatures who'd found each other against every impossible odds.

It should have felt like destiny. Standing there, grief-stricken and furious, it felt instead like a curse two hundred years in the making, one that had already cost both families their parents once, and Sebastian found himself wondering, for the first time since the bond activated, whether some ancient pattern was simply doomed to repeat itself no matter how much either of them wanted otherwise.

Students returned to Wraith Hollow the following week, the campus slowly filling back up with familiar noise and movement, and Rhys had spent the entire morning of Sebastian's expected arrival unable to sit still, checking his phone every few minutes, practically vibrating with nervous, hopeful energy.

He spotted Sebastian's car pulling into the lot from his dorm window and was outside before he'd even fully thought about it, crossing the courtyard at a near-run, relief and love and worry all crashing together at once.

"You're back," Rhys breathed, pulling Sebastian into a tight, desperate hug the second he was close enough. "I missed you so much, I didn't know what to do with myself, I.."

Sebastian yanked himself out of the embrace so hard and so fast that Rhys stumbled slightly, staring at him in complete, blindsided confusion.

"Sebastian? What's wrong, what..."

"Don't touch me," Sebastian said, voice cold in a way Rhys had never once heard directed at him.

"What happened? Talk to me, please, I don't understand..."

"I found out the truth," Sebastian said, and the words came out sharp and brittle, grief and rage bleeding into every syllable. "The real truth. Not the softened version your grandmother fed us. Your father didn't just die in some chaotic skirmish, Rhys. He killed my mother. Directly. With his own hands. And I've spent months falling in love with his son like an absolute fool."

Rhys felt the words land like a physical blow, his whole chest caving in around them. "I didn't know that. Sebastian, I swear to you, I never knew.."

"I don't care what you knew," Sebastian said, voice rising now, something ugly and wounded taking over completely. "I'm so tired of your kind pretending civility when underneath it, you're all just animals waiting for an excuse to tear something apart. That's what he was that night, wasn't it. Just a beast who couldn't control himself."

"Sebastian, please.."

"I hate this," Sebastian said, and the words tore out of him raw and reckless, aimed to wound. "I hate what you are. I hate that I ever let myself want a werewolf in the first place. I hate that some ancient bond decided I had to spend my life bound to the bloodline that killed my mother."

Something in Rhys's chest cracked wide open, and somewhere in the back of his mind, quiet and devastated, Fenn let out a low, wounded groan that Rhys felt more than heard, a grief so deep it barely had words, buried instinctively, unspoken, the way Rhys had learned to keep the worst of these moments to himself.

"I also lost a father," Rhys said, voice shaking, tears already spilling despite his best effort to hold them back. "I never got to know him at all, Sebastian. Not for one single day of my life. Whatever he did that night, I've carried the absence of him my whole existence, the same way you've carried the absence of your mother. Please. Please don't do this. Let me hold you. Let me.."

He reached out, desperate, and Sebastian shoved him back again, harder this time, something wild and cornered in his expression that had nothing to do with the composed, careful boy Rhys had fallen in love with.

"Don't," Sebastian said again, voice cracking even as the cruelty in it held firm. "I can't. I don't know how to look at you right now without seeing him."

Rhys's breath started coming faster, shallower, his vision beginning to blur and narrow at the edges the way it had that day on the training field, panic climbing up his throat fast and merciless. His hands started shaking. He could feel it building, the same crushing tightness in his chest, and some distant, rational part of him recognized what was happening even as he lost the ability to stop it.

Sebastian, consumed by his own grief and fury, didn't notice.

"You people," Sebastian continued, voice still raw, still cutting, "always so certain love conquers everything. It doesn't. It didn't save my mother. It won't save this."

Rhys was openly crying now, shaking hard enough that he had to grip the low wall beside him to stay upright, and something about the sight of it, finally, cracked through Sebastian's rage enough to register properly.

He saw Rhys's tears. He saw the shaking. And even through everything the grief, the fury, the horrible things he'd already said something in his chest ached at the sight of it, sharp and undeniable.

But the anger was still louder. "The moon goddess," Sebastian said bitterly, more to himself than to Rhys at this point.

"binding the son of the man who killed my mother to me, and calling it destiny. She's a hypocrite. This whole bond is a cruel joke."

Rhys's eyes widened between shaking breaths, something in his chest finally, completely giving way not just grief now, but something older, more instinctual, a wolf's desperate need to flee somewhere his human self couldn't fully protect him from anymore.

Even through his own rage, Sebastian felt the first real flicker of fear. What if this actually broke something. What if he'd just said the one thing that couldn't be unsaid. The thought hit him like ice water, but before he could reach for it, before he could take any of it back, Rhys's whole body had already started to shudder with something far bigger than panic.

Rhys didn't decide to give up control. It simply happened, the way exhaustion finally overtakes a person who's been holding on too long past their limit some deep, wounded part of him reaching instinctively for the one thing that could carry this pain when the rest of him couldn't.

I've got this, Fenn said quietly, gently, taking the weight Rhys could no longer hold. Let go. I'll carry it from here.

The shift came fast and unbidden, more instinct than choice, and where Rhys had stood a moment before, a large, dark wolf now stood instead, chest heaving, eyes gold and wet and utterly wrecked.

He looked at Sebastian for one long, devastating moment not with anger, but with something far worse.

Disappointment. Grief. The look of something that had trusted completely and been hurt anyway.

Then he turned and ran, fast and desperate, into the treeline at the edge of campus, disappearing into the dark woods before Sebastian could say a single word to stop him.

Sebastian stood frozen in the courtyard, the silence crashing down around him louder than anything Rhys had shouted, the full, horrifying weight of what he'd just done finally, completely landing.

"Rhys" His voice cracked on the name, useless now, calling after someone who was already gone.

"RHYS!"

Nobody answered. The courtyard stayed empty and quiet, evening settling cold around him, and Sebastian sank slowly to his knees right there on the stone path, a broken, wrecked sound tearing out of his chest.

"No," he choked out, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. "No, no, I didn't mean...I didn't mean any of that, I was just so angry, I wasn't thinking, I..."

He drove his fist into the ground in front of him, hard, again and again, some desperate need to feel something sharp enough to match the devastation cracking open in his chest, until his knuckles split and bruised and his whole body shook with the force of what he'd just destroyed.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed into the empty courtyard, to no one, to everyone, to a wolf already gone too far into the trees to hear him. "I'm so sorry. Please come back. Please. I didn't mean it. I love you. I love you, I love you, please just come back.."

The woods stayed silent. The moon rose slow and indifferent overhead, and somewhere out in the dark, a wolf ran until his legs gave out beneath him, collapsing finally into the cold undergrowth, alone with a grief too big for either the boy or the wolf to carry by themselves.