MOONLIT FANGS

Wounds

It was nearly three in the morning when Milo woke to a sound he'd never heard Rhys make before a sharp, choked gasp from the other side of the room, followed by frantic, uneven breathing that didn't slow down no matter how many times Rhys tried to steady it.

"Rhys?" Milo was out of bed instantly, flicking on the lamp, and what he saw made his stomach drop. Rhys was curled forward on his bed, both hands pressed hard against his chest, face gone pale and clammy, lips slightly blue at the edges, gasping like the air in the room simply wasn't reaching his lungs properly anymore.

"Can't.." Rhys managed, eyes wide and frightened. "Milo, something's wrong, this isn't like before, my chest, it actually hurts, it's not just tight, it hurts.."

"Okay. Okay, I've got you, stay with me."

Milo's hands were shaking as he grabbed his phone, dialing Talia with fingers that barely cooperated. "Talia, something's wrong with Rhys, it's not a normal panic attack, I think we need to get him to the healer right now, please hurry.."

Talia arrived in under five minutes, still in pajamas, and took one look at Rhys the pale, clammy skin, the labored breathing, the way his lips had gone faintly blue before her face went sharp and focused in a way that scared Milo almost as much as Rhys's condition did.

"We're not waiting for this to pass on its own," she said, already helping Milo get Rhys upright, supporting him between them. "Sick bay. Now."

The healer on night duty took one look at Rhys and immediately called for backup, hooking him up to a monitor that began beeping in an unsteady, irregular rhythm that made Milo's own heart pound just listening to it.

"His heart rate's erratic," the healer said, frowning at the readout. "This isn't presenting like a typical panic response. There's something underlying this that I need a second opinion on."

Talia was already dialing again, voice tight with barely controlled fear. "I'm calling his mom. And Sebastian. Rhys would want him here, whatever's going on between them right now."

Sebastian arrived less than ninety seconds after Talia's call ended, appearing at the sick bay doors in a blur of motion that left the air faintly displaced behind him, a speed he rarely allowed himself to use, the kind of raw vampire ability that came with a cost he usually preferred to avoid paying.

"Where is he," Sebastian demanded, already moving toward the sound of the beeping monitor before anyone could answer, and then he was there, at Rhys's bedside, and the sight of him pale, wired to machines, chest rising in short, uneven breaths hit Sebastian like a physical blow.

"What happened," Sebastian said, voice cracking, reaching for Rhys's hand without hesitation despite the tension still sitting between them from the last several weeks. "Talia said it was bad, tell me what's happening to him."

"We don't fully know yet," the healer admitted, checking the monitor again with a troubled expression. "His heart rate's been irregular for the last twenty minutes. This isn't a standard panic episode. There's something deeper happening here, something older than typical anxiety."

"Older how?"

"I mean that literally," the healer said carefully. "I'm sensing something in him that doesn't trace back to anything in this lifetime. I need someone with more authority than me to look at this properly. This requires the family elders. Both of yours, honestly, given how tangled his condition seems to be with something ancient."

Sebastian's grip on Rhys's hand tightened. "Both families? What does that mean?"

"It means," the healer said, "that I'd rather not speculate until people with more history and more standing are in the room. I've already reached out. His grandmother and his mother are booking the earliest flight out. It's the middle of the night the soonest they can arrive is morning."

Sebastian looked down at Rhys, at the pale, exhausted face, the erratic beeping of the monitor marking out each uneven heartbeat, and felt something helpless and terrified settle deep in his chest.

"He's been through so much already," he said quietly, almost to himself. "He's barely been in my life a year, and it's already cost him a panic attack, a family tragedy, a night lost in the woods because of me, and now this. What is happening to him?"

Milo, sitting slumped in the chair on Rhys's other side, reached over and rested a hand on Sebastian's shoulder, meant as comfort, though Sebastian could feel how badly Milo's own hand was shaking.

"We don't know yet," Milo said quietly, voice tighter than his usual easy tone. "But we're not leaving him. Either of us. Whatever this is."

The night stretched long and agonizing, the two of them keeping vigil on either side of Rhys's bed while the monitor beeped its uneven, worrying rhythm into the quiet dark. Rhys drifted in and out, exhausted and pale, occasionally squeezing Sebastian's hand weakly whenever the discomfort in his chest spiked, never once letting go of it even in his half-sleep.

"I keep thinking," Sebastian said quietly, somewhere around five in the morning, mostly to himself, "about everything that's happened since we bonded. The attack. The truth about our parents. What I said to him that night. And now this. It feels like the universe keeps testing exactly how much we can survive."

"Or it feels like the universe's been trying to tell you something you haven't figured out yet," Milo said, quieter than usual, watching Rhys's chest rise and fall unevenly. "I don't know. I'm not a philosopher. I'm just really scared right now, if I'm honest."

"Me too," Sebastian admitted.

By the time morning light finally crept through the sick bay windows, Rhys's grandmother arrived first, moving with a speed that belied her age, his mother close behind her, both women's faces tight with fear the moment they saw him hooked to the monitor.

"How long has he been like this," his mother asked, already at his bedside, smoothing his hair back with a trembling hand.

"Since roughly three this morning," the healer answered. "His condition has stabilized somewhat, but the underlying cause remains unclear. I called for you specifically because what I'm sensing in him isn't something modern medicine or ordinary pack healing can address."

Not twenty minutes later, Sebastian's father arrived as well, having caught an emergency flight the moment Sebastian called him, moving immediately to his son's side rather than questioning why he'd been summoned at all.

"I came as soon as you called," he said quietly, resting a steady hand on Sebastian's shoulder. "How is he?"

"Stable, for now. I don't know what's happening to him, Father, and it's terrifying."

His father studied Rhys's pale face for a long moment, something old and thoughtful passing behind his eyes. "Let the healer finish her assessment," he said gently. "I have a feeling this is going to require more than modern answers."

The healer returned an hour later with an older woman Sebastian didn't recognize, introduced simply as a prophet someone who saw, the healer explained carefully, not just illness in the body but the deeper threads a soul carried with it across lifetimes.

"I need everyone's full attention," the prophet said, once both families had gathered close around Rhys's bed.

"What's happening in him isn't new. It's ancient. Older than either of your bloodlines as they exist today."

Rhys's grandmother went very stil.

"Explain."

"Your grandson," the prophet said, meeting her eyes steadily, "carries the soul of the very first true Alpha, the original wolf from whom your entire bloodline eventually descended. And your son," she said, turning to Sebastian's father, "carries the soul of the very first Vale, the founding vampire of your line. The moon goddess has given them another chance. This bond between them isn't a coincidence, or even simply fate repeating a pattern. It's a continuation."

The room went utterly silent.

"There's more," the prophet continued, gently but without softening the weight of it. "In that first life, before the true Alpha died, his mate also a Vale, by blood, the very first rejected him. Betrayed him. There was infidelity involved, a cruelty that broke something in him long before his body finally gave out. He died alone, desperate, believing until his final breath that the one person meant to stand beside him forever had chosen someone else instead."

Rhys's grandmother's hand flew to her mouth, tears springing instantly to her eyes as she gripped Rhys's hand tighter.

"That heartbreak," the prophet said quietly, "left a wound that carried forward, lifetime after lifetime, settling into the heart itself. It's why his heart reacts the way it does under emotional strain now. It's not simply anxiety. It's an old, deep scar, reopening whenever love feels uncertain or threatened. The panic. The irregular rhythm. All of it traces back to a heartbreak centuries old, carried in his soul long before this current life ever began."

Sebastian felt the blood drain from his own face, the memory of his own cruel words in that courtyard suddenly landing with a devastating new weight. He had, without ever knowing it, echoed the exact wound that had once killed the soul Rhys now carried.

"He must never be made to feel that betrayal again," the prophet said, quiet but firm, looking directly at Sebastian now. "Not in this life. His heart, quite literally, cannot survive a repeat of what broke it the first time. Whatever happens between the two of you going forward, that is the one thing that must never happen again."

Sebastian's throat tightened, tears finally spilling over as he looked down at Rhys, still pale and resting in the bed, utterly unaware of the full weight of what had just been revealed about him.

"I understand," Sebastian said, voice shaking but certain. "I will never give him a reason to doubt me again. Not after this. Not after everything he's already survived, across however many lifetimes it's taken to bring us back to each other."

Rhys's grandmother, still gripping his hand tightly, looked between Sebastian and the sleeping face of her grandson, something ancient and grieving and finally, achingly hopeful settling over her features all at once.

"Then let's make sure," she said quietly, "that this time, finally, after everything, he gets to keep the love he was denied the first time around."