The Last Blue Lycan

The Stone King wept again. Kael saw the single blue tear track down the twenty-foot stone cheek before anyone else did, because no one else ever looked up.

Everyone else in the Black Wolf Kingdom saw a cursed monument. A warning. The last Blue Lycan King, turned to stone twenty years ago on the night of the massacre, kneeling in the center of the Royal Courtyard with the Magical Alpha Dagger still buried to the hilt in his stone heart.

Kael saw his grandfather.

"Half-caste! Are you praying to the stone again?"

The bucket of icy wash water hit his back before the laugh did. Kael didn't flinch. If he flinched, they would hit harder. He kept scrubbing. His knees were raw from kneeling on the courtyard cobblestones since 5 a.m. His hands, cracked and bleeding from the lye soap the Omega house gave him, moved in circles over the giant stone foot. Pigeon shit. Again. The statue was so tall the birds used it as a throne.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, scrap."

Jorn, the Alpha's second son, grabbed a fistful of Kael's hair and yanked his head back. Jorn had true Black Wolf eyes; pure, depthless black, like two holes. Kael had the opposite.

Ice-blue. Like frozen moonlight. Like the eyes in the forbidden books.

"Sorry, young Alpha," Kael whispered. The words were automatic.

Jorn stared into those blue eyes and his face twisted. That was why they hated him. Not because he was weak; he was skinny, but he was tall and could carry two buckets when others carried one. They hated him because his eyes made their wolves uneasy. Their wolves whimpered and wouldn't meet his gaze.

"Half-caste abomination," Jorn spat. "Your mother must have whored herself to a rogue to make those Lycan eyes. Did she?"

Kael's jaw locked. He never knew his mother. The only thing he knew was the story the old Omega who raised him told him before she died: Your mother hid you. She covered you with her body. And then she didn't get up.

He didn't answer. That was a mistake.

Jorn's boot slammed into his ribs. Hard. The air left Kael's lungs in a sharp wheeze. He fell forward, his forehead cracking against the stone toe of the Stone.

Pain exploded. Warm blood trickled down his temple.

"That's for not answering. And this is for making my father look at your disgusting face every morning," Jorn snarled, kicking him again. "Clean it until I can see my reflection in it, half-caste. Or you don't eat today."

Jorn and his friends left, laughing. Their boots echoed away across the courtyard.

Kael lay there for a full minute, cheek pressed against the cold stone. It was the only time he was allowed to touch his grandfather. The stone was always cold, even in summer. Except for today. Today, where his blood had smeared, the stone felt warm.

He pushed himself up, dizzy. Blood dripped into his left eye, turning the world blue-red. He had to finish before the morning patrol came or they'd beat him again for being slow.

He reached for his rag. A small, soft hand covered his.

"Don't move."

Kael froze. He knew that voice. He would know it even if he went deaf.

Elara. She knelt beside him, her brown Seer's cloak pulled low. The daughter of the High Seer. The most beautiful girl in the pack and the only one who had ever been kind to him. Since they were ten, she had followed him when no one was looking.

"Elara, you can't. If they see you... " he hissed.

"They're gone. Shut up and let me," she whispered, but her voice was shaking.

She cupped his bleeding forehead. Her hands were small and always cold, except when she did this.

A faint gold light, like melted sunlight, began to glow from her palms. It was forbidden. Seers were supposed to SEE futures, not heal wounds. If her father, the High Seer, ever found out she was wasting her sight energy on a scrap, he'd lock her in the temple for a month. If the Alpha found out, he'd cut her hands off.

The gold light sank into Kael's cut. It itched terribly, then warmed. The skin knitted together and the bleeding stopped.

But Kael wasn't watching his forehead. He was watching her face.

Every time she healed him, she paid. A thin line of blood now trickled from her nose. Her lips went pale.

"Elara, stop," he grabbed her wrist. Her skin was burning hot now. "You're hurting yourself again."

She swayed, but she smiled at him. It was a small, secret smile she only gave him behind the statue.

"You were bleeding on him," she whispered, looking up at the Stone King. "I couldn't let you bleed on him."

She had been doing this since they were kids. When Jorn broke his arm at twelve, she healed it behind the library. When the Omegas whipped his back for stealing bread, she healed the welts at midnight. She always had a crush on him, and she thought he didn't know. He knew. Everyone knew. The Seer's perfect daughter liked the half-caste scrap. It was another reason they beat him.

"You need to go," he said roughly, because if he was soft he'd pull her closer and then they'd both be killed. "Your father is calling you for the morning visions."

She didn't go. She stared at his eyes. Her own brown eyes were wide.

"Kael," she whispered. "Your eyes..."

"What about them?"

"They're... they're glowing."

Kael frowned. He looked down at the bucket of dirty water. His reflection stared back; a dirty, thin boy with a busted lip. But his eyes were glowing faintly, like two blue coals.

And the statue...

A drop of water fell on his hand.

He thought it was from the bucket. But he was wrong.

High above him, on the giant stone face of the last Blue Lycan King, a single tear made of liquid blue light had formed in the King's stone eye. It rolled down the stone cheek, twenty feet down, and landed perfectly on the exact spot on Kael's forehead where Elara had just healed him.

The moment the blue tear touched his skin, the faint blue rune on his cheek that Elara's kiss had left last week; a rune he thought was just a bruise, burned white-hot.

Kael gasped and clutched his face. The tear didn't feel like water. It felt like memory. For half a second, he didn't hear the courtyard. He heard a woman screaming, Run! He heard a baby crying. He smelled smoke and blood.

Elara grabbed his arm. The moment her skin touched his where the tear had landed, her gold healing light didn't stay gold. It turned blue.

A bright, shocking, impossible Lycan blue that lit up the entire shadow under the statue.

Elara stared at her own hands, horrified.

Her hands were glowing blue.

"Oh Moon Goddess," she whispered. "What am I?"

Then a Horn... It was the High Seer's horn for morning offering to the moon Goddess.