MOONLIT FANGS

Finding Him

Milo found Sebastian still kneeling in the courtyard twenty minutes later, hands bloodied and shaking, and it took exactly one look at his face to understand that something had gone very, very wrong.

"Where's Rhys," Milo demanded, already scanning the empty courtyard, dread pooling cold in his stomach. "Sebastian. Where is he."

"He shifted," Sebastian said, voice hollow, staring at his own ruined knuckles like they belonged to someone else. "He ran into the woods. I said, I said terrible things to him, Milo. I didn't mean any of it, I was so angry, and he was crying, and I just kept going, and then he shifted right in front of me and ran, and I don't know where he is, I don't know how long he's been out there, I.."

"Okay. Okay, stop. Breathe." Milo's voice had gone sharp and focused, all traces of his usual humor stripped away entirely. He pulled out his phone with hands that weren't quite steady either. "Talia, I need you at the east courtyard right now. Rhys shifted and ran. We need to organize a search before it gets fully dark."

Within the hour, half the Calloway pack had mobilized, spreading out across the wooded edges of campus in careful, coordinated search patterns, calling Rhys's name into the darkening trees, following scent trails that kept going cold in the increasingly bitter evening air.

Sebastian trailed behind them, useless and desperate, hands wrapped in a torn strip of his own shirt, unable to track by scent the way the wolves could, forced to simply follow and hope.

"This is my fault," he said quietly to Talia, who'd fallen into step beside him during a brief pause in the search. "Everything I said to him. I meant to hurt him. I succeeded."

"You can feel guilty about that later," Talia said, not unkindly, though her voice held none of its usual warmth toward him right now either. "Right now we need to find him before the cold gets any worse, or before something happens that we can't take back. Save the self-flagellation for after he's safe."

Sebastian nodded, throat tight, and kept walking.

Word reached the Calloway estate within the hour, and by the time full darkness had settled over Wraith Hollow, Rhys's grandmother arrived on campus herself, moving through the search efforts with a grim, focused urgency that made it clear exactly how seriously she was taking this.

"How long has he been out there," she asked Sebastian directly, the first words she'd spoken to him since the confrontation in her study weeks ago.

"Almost two hours now."

"In wolf form, distressed, in cold weather, with no clear destination." Her jaw tightened. "That's dangerous, Sebastian. An Alpha who loses himself to his wolf under that much emotional strain can wander for miles without ever finding his way back on his own. Do you understand what you've done?"

"I do," Sebastian said quietly, misery evident in every word. "I understand completely."

She studied him for a long moment, something complicated passing behind her eyes anger, certainly, but also, underneath it, a kind of weary recognition. "Isla Voss told you the rest of it. About her father."

"Yes."

"I should have told you myself. Properly. Both families should have, the moment the bond activated, instead of hoping the truth would simply stay buried." She sighed, old and tired. "I'm not excusing what you said to him tonight. But I understand, better than most, exactly how grief can make a person say things they don't mean to someone they love."

They found him just before midnight, nearly three hours after he'd first fled into the trees, curled in on himself at the base of an old, gnarled oak far past the edge of any marked trail, still in wolf form, shivering hard enough that his whole body trembled with it.

Milo reached him first, dropping to his knees in the frozen underbrush without hesitation. "Rhys. Hey. It's me, it's Milo, you're okay, we found you."

The wolf's eyes opened slowly, gold and exhausted, and a low, broken whine escaped him, more grief than fear.

"I know," Milo said softly, reaching out carefully to rest a hand against the wolf's side, feeling the ragged, uneven breathing beneath his palm. "I know it hurts. I've got you. We all do. Come on, let's get you somewhere warm."

The shift back to human form came slow and shaky, Rhys's body curling tighter against the cold the moment it happened, and Talia was there instantly with a heavy blanket, wrapping it around his shoulders while Milo helped him sit upright properly.

"Rhys," his grandmother said, kneeling in the frozen leaves beside him despite her age, despite the cold, taking his face gently in both hands. "You're safe. You're here. We've got you now."

"He hates me," Rhys whispered, voice wrecked and hoarse from hours of silence in the cold. "He said he hates what I am. Hates that he ever wanted me."

"He was grieving," his grandmother said gently. "That doesn't make what he said acceptable, but it does mean it wasn't the whole truth of his heart speaking, Rhys. Grief says cruel things it doesn't mean, especially grief this old and this deep."

"It felt true."

"I know it did. That's what makes grief so dangerous." She helped him to his feet, steadying him carefully as his legs, still weak from hours of running and cold, threatened to buckle beneath him. "Let's get you home. Warm. Fed. We'll deal with everything else once you're not shaking apart from hypothermia."

Sebastian, who had trailed the search party this entire time, hung back at the edge of the clearing, afraid to get any closer, watching Rhys be helped upright with an expression of pure, devastated guilt.

Rhys's eyes found his across the small distance, and for a long, aching moment, neither of them said anything at all.

"I'm sorry," Sebastian finally managed, voice cracking. "Rhys, I am so sorry. I didn't mean any of it. Not one word."

Rhys looked at him for a long moment, exhausted and hollow, before turning away without answering, letting Milo and Talia guide him back toward the warmth of campus, leaving Sebastian standing alone in the frozen dark with nothing but his own devastating silence for company.

Rhys didn't speak to Sebastian for four days after that, and this time, it was Sebastian who understood, painfully, exactly what four days of silence felt like from the other side.

He didn't push. He didn't show up uninvited, didn't send desperate texts demanding forgiveness he hadn't yet earned. Instead, he did the only thing he could think to do, which was show up quietly, every single day, and simply wait outside Rhys's dorm with something small a cup of the coffee Rhys liked, a warm meal, once, awkwardly, an actual hand-written apology he'd rewritten six times before finally deciding none of the versions were good enough and delivering the messiest, most honest one instead.

On the fifth day, Rhys opened the door.

He looked tired, still healing from whatever the last week had cost him, but he opened the door, and that alone made something in Sebastian's chest loosen slightly for the first time in days.

"Can I talk," Sebastian asked quietly, "or would you rather I just leave the coffee and go?"

Rhys was silent for a long moment, studying him. "Talk," he said finally, stepping back to let him in.

They sat across from each other, careful and stiff, none of the easy warmth that used to fill every space between them anywhere in sight.

"I meant what I said about being sorry," Sebastian started. "But I know sorry doesn't undo any of it, so I want to actually explain, if you'll let me, not to excuse it, just so you understand where it came from."

"I'm listening."

"Isla told me the truth right before I came back. That your father didn't simply die in the chaos of that fight. He killed my mother directly. And her own father killed him in retaliation, moments later."

Sebastian watched Rhys's face carefully, saw the shock land there fresh, and realized, with a fresh wave of guilt, that Rhys hadn't known this part either. "I found that out an hour before I saw you. I hadn't processed any of it. I walked straight from that conversation into seeing you, and every ounce of grief and rage I hadn't dealt with, I aimed at you instead, because you were standing there, and it felt, in that moment, easier than sitting with it properly."

"You said you hated what I am," Rhys said quietly. "That you hated ever wanting me."

"I don't believe that," Sebastian said, voice breaking slightly. "Not one word of it was true, Rhys. I said the cruelest things I could think of because I was in so much pain I wanted someone else to feel it too, and you were the person standing in front of me, and I am so deeply ashamed of that, I don't have words adequate enough to explain it."

"You didn't even notice," Rhys said, quieter now, something raw surfacing. "I was panicking. Really panicking, the same way I did back before the holidays. You didn't even see it."

Sebastian's face went pale. "I didn't. I was too consumed by my own grief to see what was happening to you. I am so sorry, Rhys. That's unforgivable on its own, even setting aside everything else I said."

"I don't know if I can just forgive this and move forward like nothing happened," Rhys said, voice tight, the words clearly costing him something to say out loud. "I need you to understand that. What you said, it's going to sit with me for a while. Maybe a long while."

"I understand. I'm not asking you to pretend it didn't happen. I'm asking for the chance to prove, over time, that it wasn't actually who I am. That grief made me cruel for one terrible night, and I intend to spend considerably longer than one night making up for it."

Rhys was quiet for a long moment, studying him. "Both our families lied to us. Both of them decided we deserved half-truths instead of the whole story. I keep thinking about that. About how much easier this might have been if we'd just known everything from the start, instead of finding out in pieces that kept breaking us apart every time a new piece surfaced."

"I've thought about that too," Sebastian admitted. "I confronted my father. Told him he was a coward for hiding it. He said he did it because that's what a leader does carries the weight so others don't have to. I told him I don't want to be a leader if it means sacrificing the people I love for the sake of everyone else."

"What did he say to that?"

"Nothing, actually. I think it's the first time in his life I've ever seen him without a response ready." Sebastian's mouth twisted, something bitter and tired in the expression. "I'm still angry at him. And at your grandmother, honestly, even though I understand her reasoning better now. I think I'm allowed to be angry at all of them and still choose you, at the same time. I don't think those things have to cancel each other out."

Rhys nodded slowly, something in his shoulders finally easing slightly. "I lost my dad too, Sebastian. Before I even existed. I've spent my whole life carrying an absence I never got to properly grieve, because nobody would tell me anything real about him. Finding out he killed your mother, that he's the reason you grew up without yours, that's not easy for me to sit with either. I don't get to just forgive that because I love you. I have to actually carry it, same as you're carrying it about your own father's silence."

"Then let's carry it together," Sebastian said quietly. "Not perfectly. Not without more hard days like the last week. But together, instead of letting two centuries of buried grief keep deciding things for us the way it decided things for our parents."

Rhys studied him for a long, careful moment, something in his chest finally, slowly beginning to soften, though the hurt was still clearly sitting close to the surface. "I need time," he said finally. "Real time, not just an apology and a cup of coffee. I need to actually trust that you won't turn on me again the next time grief gets loud."

"Take whatever time you need," Sebastian said. "I'll be here. Not pushing. Just here, for as long as it takes."

It took three full weeks before something in them finally settled back into place, weeks filled with careful, deliberate conversations, small acts of trust rebuilt slowly instead of all at once, and by the time both families finally called a joint meeting to address what had happened, Rhys and Sebastian stood together again, side by side, though the ease between them still carried the faint, careful weight of everything they'd survived.

"This cannot happen again," Rhys's grandmother said to the assembled families, voice firm, addressing both sides of the room at once. "Twenty years of silence nearly cost us both children a second time. Isla Voss's choice to reveal a painful truth in the cruelest possible manner, at the worst possible moment, was reckless and deliberate, and it will be addressed separately. But the deeper failure is ours. Both families decided silence was safer than truth, and silence very nearly finished what that night at Northridge started."

Sebastian's father, seated stiffly across the room, nodded slowly. "I agree. I told my son I was protecting him by staying silent. I've realized, this past month, that I was protecting myself instead — from having to face what happened that night, from having to explain my own failures as a leader who couldn't stop it from happening in the first place."

"Then let's actually finish this properly," Rhys said, stepping forward, Sebastian's hand finding his without hesitation. "No more half-truths. No more protecting the peace by hiding from the people it's supposed to protect. If our families are going to keep intertwining — and given everything that's happened, I think it's pretty clear we are, then it starts with actually telling the truth from now on. All of it. However uncomfortable."

The room was quiet for a long moment, and then, slowly, both elder generations nodded in agreement, something shifting finally, fully, after two decades of carefully maintained silence.

Outside, as the meeting broke apart and families began filing out into the cold evening air, Sebastian pulled Rhys aside for a moment, just the two of them, quiet amid the dispersing crowd.

"Are we okay," Sebastian asked softly.

"Actually okay, not just performing okay for the room."

Rhys considered the question seriously, the way he'd learned to over the last three weeks, refusing to just say yes because it was easier. "We're getting there," he said finally, honest. "Not fully healed. Not back to exactly where we were before. But getting there."

Sebastian squeezed his hand, something achingly grateful in his expression. "I'll take getting there. For as long as it takes."

Fenn approves, Rhys thought quietly to himself, keeping it private this time, warm and certain in a way that finally, after weeks of careful rebuilding, felt like solid ground again beneath both their feet.