The Last Blue Lycan

Training Behind The Temple

He broke his promise on the second night.

Kael told Elara he wouldn't attempt. He swore on the Stone King. And for one whole day, he tried to keep that oath.

He scrubbed the statue and didn't look at the real dagger. He carried Omega trash and didn't look at the contest parchment that was now nailed to every wall in the courtyard, with its pretty lies about marrying Zara. He ate his one bowl of cold broth and tried not to think about Rule One: Any male may attempt.

But his hands wouldn't listen. On the second night, at midnight, his hands pulled him out of the Omega house.

The Omega house was a lean-to behind the kitchens. Ten boys slept on straw. Kael's spot was by the leaking wall. He stared at his hands in the dark. Cracked. Scarred from lye. Thin.

Those hands were supposed to pull a magical dagger that had been stuck for twenty years in a twenty-foot stone chest.

He would fail. And if he failed, at least Elara would live. But if he didn't even try, his grandfather would stay stone forever. And the fake Alpha would keep wearing a fake dagger and calling Kael's mother a whore who lay with rogues.

Kael slipped out.

He didn't go to the statue. Guards patrolled it now, day and night, since the contest rules went up. They had built a wooden fence around it to "protect it until the Blue Moon."

He went behind the temple. The old Moon Temple behind the Seer Temple, the one no one used anymore because Black Wolves said the Moon Goddess didn't like old stone. The one where Elara used to meet him when they were kids to heal his wounds.

Elara was already there.

She sat on a broken altar, knees to her chest, brown cloak around her. She had known he would come.

"You promised," she said, without looking up.

"I know."

"I made you promise because I don't want to watch you die," she said, her voice cracking. She was 18, but at midnight behind the temple she looked 12. "My father showed me the archer positions. Six archers. All with wolfsbane arrows tipped with silver. If the statue weeps, you have three seconds before your heart stops. Three seconds, Kael."

Kael sat opposite her, not touching her. If he touched her, her gold light would come and turn blue.

"I have to try, Elara."

"Why? Why can't you be like the other Omegas and hide?"

Because he wasn't Omega. He wanted to scream it. Because he was the last male Blue Demon and that dagger was his family's and that stone man kneeling in the courtyard was his grandfather who wept blue tears only for him.

But he couldn't tell her that either, because if she knew she was quarter Blue Demon, she would be in danger.

So he said the other truth. "Because for nineteen years I've cleaned his foot. I want to touch his heart once."

Elara started crying silently. The tears made her brown eyes shine.

Then she wiped them and stood up.

"Fine," she said. "If you are going to break your promise and get yourself killed in ten days, then you will at least not die like a weak scrap who can't even pull a rusty nail. You have no muscle, Kael. You scrub, you don't lift. Jorn will snap your wrist before you even touch the stone."

Kael blinked. "What?"

Elara pulled off her cloak. Under it, she wore a boy's training tunic and pants. Her white streak glowed in the moonlight.

"My mother; Lyanna, before she died, she told my father she used to train with a Blue Demon Prince in this temple. She taught me. If you are going to attempt, I am going to train you behind the temple every night for eight nights. And you will tell no one. And after you fail to pull it; because you will fail, Kael, everyone fails, you will run. You will run into the forest and never come back. And I will tell the archers the statue didn't weep. I will lie. My family swore to see truth, but I will lie for you."

Kael stared at her. This was the girl who healed his cuts. Now she was standing in a fighting stance he had never seen, small fists up.

"You... you want to train me?"

"I have had a crush on you since I was ten, you idiot half-caste," she snapped, blushing furiously. "Of course I'm going to train you. Do you think I healed you for nineteen years just to watch you die with skinny arms?"

For the first time in two days, Kael laughed. A real laugh that hurt his ribs.

And so the training behind the temple began.

Night One: Elara showed him how to breathe. "Blue Demons didn't pull with arms. The old books my grandmother Seraphine hid say they pulled with blood. You have to make your blood hot." Kael had no idea what that meant. Elara made him hold a heavy temple stone over his head until his arms shook, while she sat on his back and read from Seraphine's diary: The dagger does not choose the strongest. It chooses the one whose blood remembers.

Night Two: Grip. She made him hang from the broken temple arch. His cracked hands bled. She healed them with gold light that kept flickering blue at the edges. "Again," she said every time he fell. On the tenth fall, he hung for a full minute. Elara, hanging next to him for fun, beat him.

Night Three: She taught him how to dodge. "Archers have three seconds. If statue weeps, you don't pull further. You roll behind the King's knee. Arrows can't get you there. My father told me where they are." She threw rocks at him. He dodged most.

Night Four: He told her about the fake dagger. He shouldn't have, but at midnight, lying exhausted on the temple floor, both staring at the cracked moon roof, he whispered, "The Alpha's dagger is fake. I saw it during Offering. No runes. No pulse."

Elara went silent for a long time. Then: "I know."

Kael sat up. "You know?"

"My father knows too. All Seers know. But if we say it, we die. That's why this contest is a trap. He needs the real one because his fake is turning to rust. People are starting to notice. Zara noticed."

"Zara?"

"Alpha's daughter. She told my father her father's dagger cut cheese last week and bent. Real Alpha Dagger can't bend. It can cut stone."

They looked at each other in the dark, sharing a secret that could get both their tongues cut out.

Night Five: Kael finally asked about her hands. "Why does your healing turn blue when you touch me?"

Elara pulled her hands back like burned. "It doesn't."

"Elara."

"It... sometimes does. Since I was little. My mother had it too. Grandmother Seraphine wrote that Lyanna had gold that turned blue. I thought it was because I liked you." She whispered the last part so low Kael almost missed it. "I thought my power got confused because I have a crush on a half-caste."

Kael's heart hammered so loud he was sure she could hear. He wanted to tell her: It's because you're quarter Blue Demon. Your mother was half. You're like me. We're family. Maybe more than family.

He didn't. Because if he told her, she would insist on attempting too. And girls weren't allowed. She would be killed for even asking.

So he said, "Maybe you like me too much."

She threw a rock at him and he dodged, both laughing, both glowing faintly blue-gold in the dark temple where a Seer and a Blue Demon once fell in love twenty-three years ago.

Night Six, Seven, Eight: He got stronger. Not warrior strong, but ropey, lean, his scrubbing muscles turning into pulling muscles. He could now hang for five minutes. He could lift Elara onto his shoulders and run.

On Night Eight, the last night before the two-day rest before the Blue Moon, Elara stopped training early.

She sat on the altar, breathing hard. "Kael. I changed my mind."

Kael froze, holding the stone over his head. "About training?"

"About making you promise not to attempt."

She looked up at him, her brown eyes - for a second - flashing that impossible ice-blue again.

"If you don't attempt, you will always wonder. You will always be the boy who cleans the statue. If you attempt, even if you fail, even if you have to run... you will have touched his heart. And I... I will have seen you try."

She stood and walked to him, and for the first time since they were kids, she didn't heal him. She just placed her small, gold-blue flickering hand over his heart.

"On the Night of the Blue Moon, when they call Omegas, I want you to go. Don't hide. Pull. And I will be on the balcony. And I will not raise my hand, no matter what the statue does. I will break my family's oath for you. I have had a crush on you since I was ten and I'm done watching you kneel."

Kael looked down at her hand on his heart, glowing blue-gold now, steady.

In two days, six archers would aim at that heart.

And the girl who promised to make him not attend was now begging him to pull.