MOONLIT FANGS

Vinegar so bitter

Rhys felt it before he understood it—a sudden, sharp wrongness in his chest.

It hit him hard enough to halt him mid-sentence, freezing him at the pack meeting table he'd been stuck at for the last hour. Something's wrong, Fenn said.

The wolf's usual humor was gone, replaced by a razor-focused urgency. He's in trouble. I don't know how I know. Move.

Rhys was on his feet before the thought fully processed. He ignored his grandmother’s startled question, ignoring everything but the bone-deep pull toward the east edge of campus—toward the old, abandoned training grounds.

He found them at the treeline. Sebastian was backed against a stone wall, dark blood already soaking through one sleeve. Across from him stood Grier, a silver knife shaking in his grip.

His face wasn't triumphant; he looked like a man drowning in a decision he already regretted."Grier, STOP—"

The shout tore from Rhys's throat. He lunged forward, throwing his body straight into the gap between them, driven by an ancient instinct louder than rational thought.

He felt the cold bite of the blade before he realized what happened. A sharp, searing line ripped across his flank, stealing the air from his lungs. His knees buckled immediately."RHYS—"

Sebastian’s calm shattered. He caught Rhys before he hit the dirt, his hands immediately slicking with warm, fast-blooding soaking through Rhys's shirt.

Grier froze. The knife slipped from his fingers, clattering into the grass. He stared at his hands in pure horror.

"I didn't—I wasn't aiming for you. I would never—Rhys, I swear to the goddess, I never wanted to hurt you—"

"Sebastian," Rhys gasped. He ignored Grier, fist bunching into the fabric of Sebastian's shirt. His grip was already losing strength. He forced his eyes to lock onto the vampire's face. "Listen to me. Don't touch him. Do not retaliate. Please."

"Rhys, you're bleeding. Shut up, I need to—"

"The treaty," Rhys ground out. The edges of his vision were already beginning to swim. His body screamed at him to let go, to stop fighting the dark, but he tightened his fingers.

"If you hurt him... if you retaliate, it collapses. Two hundred years, gone because of one stupid... please, Sebastian. I'll deal with him myself when I'm better. Just don't give them a reason to blame you."

Sebastian’s face had gone completely bloodless. He pressed his weight hard against the wound at Rhys's side. Tears tracked silently down his face, cutting through the dirt on his skin.

"You're asking me not to protect you. At the same time, you're bleeding in my arms. That is what you're asking."

"I'm asking you to protect us," Rhys whispered. "Everything we've built. Please."

Sebastian let out a ragged, broken sound. He dropped his forehead against Rhys's, his hands still fighting the heavy flow of blood, torn between the instinct for vengeance and the desperate need to keep Rhys breathing.

"Okay," he choked out. "Okay. I won't touch him. Just stay with me. Keep your eyes open, Rhys. Please."

Behind them, Grier sank to his knees. The rage that had carried him through the night had evaporated the second Rhys went down, replaced by a suffocating weight.

"What did I do?" Grier whispered to his palms. "What did I do?"

The self-hatred crashed over him all at once. He curled forward into the dirt, sobbing, utterly undone. He had spent three years loving Rhys from a distance, convincing himself that violence was a form of closeness. And in one jealous, desperate second, he had nearly killed him because he couldn't bear to see him happy.

Rhys's eyelids fluttered, blurring the sight of Sebastian's frantic face above him.

"Hey," Rhys murmured. He tried to force a smile, though it barely formed. "None of that face. I'm fine. Fenn says so. He's never wrong about the big stuff."

Stay with him, Fenn ordered, his mental voice raw with a panic Rhys had never heard before. Stay awake. We are not losing this. Not after everything."Help is coming," Sebastian said, his hands shaking as he cradled Rhys's face.

"Talia already called a healer. I sent word the second I felt you leave the meeting. Just hold on a little longer."

"Told you," Rhys whispered, his eyes finally slipping closed as his hand found Sebastian's. "Linked. Can't get rid of me. Not even like this."

"Don't you dare," Sebastian said fiercely, his voice cracking as his tears fell onto Rhys's pale cheek. "Don't you dare let go. I just found my heartbeat again. I refuse to lose it tonight."

Behind them, Grier wept into his hands, entirely alone with the cost of his silence. Whatever the packs decided to do to him, he knew nothing could be worse than what he had already done to himself.

The healer's room at Wraith Hollow smelled like crushed herbs and old wood, and Sebastian had not left the chair beside Rhys's bed in eleven hours.

He knew it was eleven hours because he had counted every single one of them, watching the slow rise and fall of Rhys's chest, listening to a heartbeat that had gone worryingly faint right after the attack and had only just, in the last hour, started to sound steady again.

Werewolves healed fast. Everyone kept telling him that, over and over, like repeating it enough times would make Sebastian's chest stop feeling like it was caving in. Fast healing didn't mean much when the wound was that deep, and the blood loss had been that bad. Sebastian had seen exactly how much blood there'd been. He didn't think he'd ever stop seeing it.

"You should eat something," Talia said quietly from the doorway, holding out a paper bag that smelled like the campus cafeteria's attempt at soup. "Or drink something. Whatever you people do instead of eating. You've been sitting here since last night."

"I'm fine."

"You are visibly not fine. You haven't blinked in ten minutes. I've been counting."

"Vampires don't need to blink as often as—"

"Sebastian." Talia's voice softened, and she crossed the room to set the bag down on the small table beside him anyway. "He's going to be okay. The healer said so three times already. You can breathe. I know you don't technically need to, but you know what I mean."

Sebastian didn't answer right away. His hand was still wrapped around Rhys's, had been for hours, and he wasn't sure he trusted himself to let go, even for something as simple as food.

"I keep replaying it," he admitted finally, quiet, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical tiredness. "The moment he stepped in front of me. I could have stopped him. If I'd reacted half a second faster, I could have pulled him back."

"You couldn't have known he was going to do that."

"I should have known. Grier's been circling him for years. I told myself it was rivalry. Ordinary jealousy. I didn't think—"

"None of us thought it would go this far," Talia said firmly. "Not me, not Milo, not you. This isn't yours to carry alone, Sebastian."

From the door, Milo appeared, looking like he hadn't slept either, holding two cups of something hot that he set down without a word before dropping into the second chair with none of his usual bounce. For once, he didn't have a joke ready. He just sat there, watching Rhys breathe, quiet in a way that felt almost wrong on him.

"He pinched my ear two days ago," Milo said eventually, voice a little rough. "I keep thinking about that. Stupid thing to keep thinking about. He pinched my ear and called me ridiculous,s and I laughed, and now he's just — lying there."

"He's going to wake up and pinch your ear again," Talia said, reaching over to squeeze Milo's shoulder. "Probably harder, out of spite, once he hears how dramatic you're being right now."

That got a small, watery laugh out of Milo, the first real sound of humor any of them had managed since the night before. Sebastian found himself grateful for it, even through the exhaustion, even through the fear still weighing on his chest.

These were Rhys's people. His pack, in every sense that mattered. Sebastian had spent most of his life keeping people at arm's length, and somehow, in the space of a few months, he'd ended up surrounded by people who cared about the same person he did, who understood exactly what it meant to sit in this room and be terrified.

A soft groan came from the bed.

All three of them went instantly, completely silent, staring at Rhys as his eyelids fluttered, his hand twitching against Sebastian's before his eyes finally, slowly opened.

"Rhys?" Sebastian's voice cracked right down the middle, all composure gone in an instant. "Rhys, can you hear me?"

Rhys blinked slowly, taking in the ceiling, the room, the three faces hovering over him with varying degrees of barely-contained panic, and after a long moment, he managed a weak, slightly delirious smile.

"Wow," Rhys rasped, voice raw and scratchy. "Everyone's here. Did I die? Is this what dying looks like? Because Milo looks really upset and that's genuinely concerning me more than the stabbing."

"You did NOT just make a joke right now," Milo said, half laughing, half crying, already lunging forward to grab Rhys's free hand. "You absolute menace. You scared us half to death,h and the first thing you do is make a joke."

"Would you rather I cried?"

"A LITTLE crying would have been appropriate, yes!"

"Noted. I'll cry later. Right now I mostly feel like I got hit by a truck. A very specific, silver, extremely rude truck."

Sebastian let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob, pressing his forehead against Rhys's hand, finally, after eleven hours, allowing himself to believe this was real fully.

"Don't," Sebastian said, voice thick, "ever do that again."

"No promises," Rhys murmured, weak but stubborn as ever. "You were in trouble. I wasn't going to stand there."

"You could have died."

"But I didn't. Fenn wouldn't let me. He's been yelling at me this whole time, actually, very rudely, considering I just saved your life."

I was NOT yelling, Fenn said immediately, indignant. I was providing essential motivational commentary during a life-threatening situation. There's a difference.

"He says he wasn't yelling," Rhys relayed weakly. "He's lying. He was definitely yelling."

Three days later, Rhys was well enough to sit up properly, eat real food instead of the healer's bland recovery broth, and complain loudly about being bored, which everyone agreed was a genuinely good sign, since a bored Rhys was a Rhys who was clearly on the mend.

"I'm serious," Rhys said, poking at Sebastian's arm from where he was propped up against a mountain of pillows Milo had smuggled in from somewhere.

"I've watched every show on my phone. I've read the same three chapters of my textbook eleven times and understood none of it. I need entertainment. Tell me something interesting."

"You need rest," Sebastian said, not looking up from the book he was actually reading, though the small, fond curve of his mouth gave away that he wasn't as strict about the rest thing as he sounded.

"I've rested for three days. I'm going to lose my mind. Please. Anything. Tell me a story. Tell me about your childhood. Tell me embarrassing baby vampire facts."

Sebastian set his book down with a sigh that was mostly for show.

"There isn't much to tell. I was a fairly serious child."

"You were a serious CHILD. Sebastian. I need you to understand how funny that sentence is."

"I don't see what's funny about it."

"You're describing yourself as a tiny, serious vampire baby, reading — what, ancient treaty law, probably, at age six?"

"Age five, actually," Sebastian said, and the way he said it, completely deadpan, made Rhys burst out laughing so hard he had to press a hand against his healing side.

"Ow. Ow, don't make me laugh, it hurts. Also, five years old, reading treaty law. That explains SO much."

"I found it soothing."

"You found LEGAL DOCUMENTS soothing as a small child."

"I told you. Serious child."

Rhys grinned, warm and delighted despite the ache in his side, tugging Sebastian's sleeve until he gave in and settled onto the edge of the bed properly, close enough that Rhys could rest his head against his shoulder.

"I was thinking," Rhys said, quieter now, some of the humor fading into something more serious. "About Grier. About what happens next."

Sebastian went very still beside him. "I've been trying not to think about that."

"I know. But we have to. Both packs are going to meet about it eventually. I need to figure out what I actually want to happen."

"He tried to kill me, Rhys. He very nearly succeeded in killing you instead. I don't know what mercy looks like in a situation like that, and I'm not certain I want to find out."

"I'm not talking about mercy for his sake," Rhys said carefully. "I'm talking about what's right. What actually serves the pack, the treaty, all of it. Revenge feels good for about five minutes, and then it just becomes one more thing weighing everyone down."

"You almost died."

"I know. Believe me, I know; I was there; it hurt a lot." Rhys managed a small, tired smile at that, though Sebastian didn't quite return it.

"But I keep thinking about how he looked, after. Not smug. Not satisfied. Wrecked. Something's been going on with him for a long time, way before this, and I don't think anyone bothered actually to look close enough to see it."

"That doesn't excuse what he did."

"No," Rhys agreed. "It doesn't. He still has to answer for it. I'm not saying let him walk away as nothing happened. I'm saying I want to understand it before I decide what justice actually looks like here. I promised him I'd handle it myself, and I meant that."

Sebastian was quiet for a long moment, jaw tight, clearly fighting down every instinct that wanted something far less measured than understanding.

"I don't know if I can be as generous as you're asking me to be," he admitted finally, voice low. "When I think about that knife, about how close it came to actually killing you instead of just wounding you—"

"I'm not asking you to forgive him," Rhys said gently, turning to press a soft kiss against his jaw. "I'm asking you to trust me. There's a difference. Let me handle Grier my way. You can hate him from a safe, respectful distance the entire time if you need to. I won't judge you for that."

That, finally, got a small, reluctant huff of laughter out of Sebastian. "That's oddly generous of you."

"I contain multitudes," Rhys said solemnly. "Also, I'm still recovering from a stab wound, so you have to be nice to me right now. That's just science."

"That is not how healing works."

"It's how MY healing works. New rule. Be extra nice to Rhys until further notice."

"I've been sitting in a hospital chair for three days straight,"

Sebastian said dryly. "I believe I've more than met the extra-nice quota."

"Fair. But the offer stands indefinitely, so that you know. I'm keeping the option open."