Chapter 76 - Patriot

Arya threw Kai down for the tenth time. They had been fighting for over three hours straight already. Whilst Arya looked as though she had barely broken a sweat, Kai looked more than just a little roughed up. His chest and arms were slashed multiple times and his shirt was now soaked in blood and dirt.

With his connection to Pax completely severed, his ability to heal quickly and react in time to her moves had gone along with it. Kai pulled his hands together in front of him and slowly pushed himself up off the ground again. He was breathing hard from the barrage of attacks he had already faced, but he somehow found the energy to keep going. He knew that she was never going to go easy on him, but then she never did.

"Not so tough without your wolf for support, are you?" Arya stood with her arms folded, as she waited patiently for him to gather himself together.

Arya was right. Whilst he had gone through similar training before, he was finding it significantly tougher this time around. Somewhere along the line he must have started to get too reliant on Pax's heightened senses and his ability to heal him, which must have stunted his ability to develop his human physical skills any further.

"What did I tell you before about relying solely on your wolf?!" She shouted at him.

Arya lunged forward and delivered another swift kick to his gut. Kai managed to partially block it, but the force of the blow was enough to send him hurtling backwards, in to a tree. After taking a second or two, to roll over on to his front, he was already starting to crawl back up on to his feet. When Kai's eyes caught hers, Arya smirked. Despite the sorry state he was in, he was almost looking as if he was enjoying it. His look excited her and she charged at him again.

Arrow had been watching the fight the whole time, alongside Dylan and was struggling to remain seated. Even without his wolf to support him, Kai had managed to block a few of her attacks, but he was losing out to her in speed, and Arya seem to have a counter attack for every attempt he made to try and get the upper hand against her.

"I don't understand how this is supposed to help him? She's just beating on him. How is this training?" Arrow questioned.

"Arya knows what she’s doing. You have to trust her process” Dylan replied.

Arrow watched as Arya followed up a kick with another punch. Kai managed to grab her fist, to prevent it from landing, but she flipped around and chopped him in the throat with an angled palm. Kai instantly collapsed to his knees as he started to cough up blood. He held his hands to his throat as he felt his airway starting to restrict from the shock.

Arrow shot up from the log. "She's going to kill him!"

Dylan grabbed hold of Arrow's arm, causing him to jerk backwards. "Sit. Down."

"I can't watch this." Arrow growled at Dylan.

Dylan growled back at Arrow without looking up at him. He allowed some his dominant waves to come out. Even though he wasn't Arrow's Alpha, he knew that Dylan meant business in his warning.

"Then go somewhere else!" Dylan mouthed aggressively. "Does it look like he wants your help? Kai knew what to expect when he came here."

Arrow looked back over at Kai. He had blood dripping from his mouth but after every attack he instantly starting getting back up on his feet. Even without his wolf's influence, his cool blue eyes looked resolute to continue. Seeing this, the tension in Arrow's body started to disperse a little. He knew Dylan was right, but that didn't make this any easier to sit through. Kai was his Alpha, and having to watch him take a beating was going against every natural instinct within him.

Dylan released his hold on his arm, realising that Arrow had gotten the message.

Arrow sat back down on the log. "I don't understand how beating on him is supposed to help."

"She's trying to force him in to a corner." Dylan spoke, as he continued to watch the fight. "Invocation only works when your wolf relinquishes full control to you. Kai needs to be able to repair that connection in order to be able to do that. Only when he's on the verge of death will the connection between Kai and his wolf start to restore itself. She has to push him to the brink to do that."

"On the verge death?” Arrow asked slightly panicked. “Is this what she did with you?" Arrow had seen Dylan’s eyes turn red when Farren ambushed him earlier. He had no idea up until that point that Dylan also knew how to invoke his wolf, Corin.

"Yes" Dylan responded. There was a mixture of fond and unpleasant memories whenever he thought of his training with Arya in the past. Most of them he appreciated a lot more now than he did back at the time.

"But I think she's going to have to push him further then when she did, back when we were younger. As you know, for shifters with very powerful, dominant wolves, we often have to train as kids to maintain a handle on them and stop our wolves from turning feral. Once you go through that process, your wolf will allow you some control. Invocation takes it a step further and grants you full control to your wolf and all of their abilities in your human form. It allows you to tap in to that energy pool, at will, to the heightened healing and senses. To do so, you have to get your wolf to willingly submit to your human side."

Arrow nodded along as he listened.

"What I originally found confusing about Kai's whole situation is that once you go through that process, your wolf wouldn't suddenly try to take back control. I didn't think Pax was the cause of Kai's connection being disrupted to him."

"I don't understand, what are you getting at?" Arrow asked.

Dylan furrowed his brow as he tried to refocus. "Seeing him fight now, do you not feel it? The difference in his energy."

Arrow refocused his attention back to the fight. Whilst he originally felt nothing emanating off Kai since he found him unconscious in the forest, after his fight with Mya and Gabriel, every now and then he'd start to feel something coming off of Kai, that had his wolf standing still to attention.

"His connection is starting to knit back together, but even in its partial state you can feel how big it is right? The dominant energy there." Dylan looked over at Arrow who was now completely transfixed at what he was feeling. Dylan smiled secretly at Arrow's response.

"You feel it now, right?" Dylan's eyes turned red as he invoked his wolf Corin to fully take it all in. "It all makes sense now, why his connection was disrupted. It's not that Pax was withholding his energy from Kai, but rather the pool of energy that Pax has available to him has suddenly grown vastly bigger. That's what's thrown off his connection to him." Dylan's smile slowly started to widen. "It's because of her, isn't it? Raeliana had something to do with this right?"

Arrow looked at Dylan startled. Kai didn't want him to know who Adalyn really was, but it seemed that Dylan had managed to find out.

Dylan's eyes faded back to their hazel colour as he caught Arrow's surprised look.

"How did you...?"

"Were you not paying attention to my little biology lesson just now Arrow?" Dylan tapped his ear and smirked. "Invocation grants you heightened senses. I heard your conversation with Arya. With invocation, it's child's play to listen in on a conversation from pretty far away."

*'Shit!'* thought Arrow. He hadn't sensed that he was anywhere near by when he spoke to Arya. Even if Dylan did use his heightened senses to listen in, it was a blow to Arrow's pride to have slipped up like that.

"Even now, you still don't trust me?" Dylan questioned. "I get that it's sensitive information, so I’ll keep what I heard quiet."

Arrow turned back to look at the fight continuing to unfold in front of him. "It's not me that doesn't trust you." He tipped his chin up toward Kai, to show who he meant. "Can you blame him?"

Dylan frowned a little. He knew he had done little over the years to earn Kai's trust, but he was serious about changing that. With all this new information he was finding out and realising the untapped potential that Kai had, he felt even more steadfast in trying to get Kai on the throne.

"Will you talk to him Arrow?"

"Talk to him, about what? Trusting you? That's your bridge to repair, not mine."

"No, not that about. I meant about succeeding Maddox to the throne."

Arrow looked over at Dylan for signs that he was winding him up, but he could see that Dylan was completely serious.

"You're bringing this up again? He already said no." Arrow sighed. This was not a conversation that he wanted to get stuck in the middle of.

"Then talk to him. Change his mind.”

"What makes you think I could do that?! Why would I even *want* to do that. You're asking him to put his neck out even further then he already has. You've seen how much shit he's had to put up with all these years. All for simply existing. "

"Believe me, I know. Despite all that he's endured, he's still here. Men twice his age going through the crap he went through would have already crumbled, but I'm serious about this Arrow. I meant everything that I said back at the apartment. Kai *has* to take the throne."

Arrow shook his head and tried to block out his words.

"Look, I know I rag on him all the time, but we both know that he is the best person to succeed Maddox. If Colton's involved in all of this, like I heard you say, if he has people in the palace, then we need to take action now. Weed out all the corruption. I know he thinks the same way as I do, he just needs to commit and act on it. I'll get him the backing he needs to do it."

Arrow clenched his fists. He had heard enough. "You're asking me to try and convince him to challenge his brother for the throne? I won't do that. You'll start a civil war with the way you're talking!"

"If that's what it takes to set Galas on the right path, then so be it! I'm asking him to do the right thing by his people, by his country. Hell, to do the right thing by his mate. This is all for her right? She's not the only one that needs saving. If that's a conversation that you're not ready to have with him, then fine, don’t. But like I said before, I'm not going to drop this. If anything, I feel more convinced than I did before."

"Spoken like a true patriot" Arrow responded sarcastically. “But at what cost?” Arrow and Dylan stared eye too eye. Each one looking for the other to relent.

Dylan's phone started ringing, bringing an abrupt end to their heated conversation. He looked down to see his beta's name Kale appear on the screen. Dylan patted Arrow on the shoulder as he stood up. "We can all win here," he concluded as he walked off to take the call.