Chapter 77 - Master and Student

The sun was starting to set and Arya and Kai were still going at it. They had been fighting for nearly four hours straight now.

Arrow was watching in astonishment, seeing Kai drag himself back to his feet over and over again. Whilst Arya was still managing to land most of her attacks, Kai's reaction time to her moves were steadily increasing.

Each of her attacks were nothing flashy or over the top. She was doing no more than simple punches, kicks and palm strikes. They seemed effortless but were all devastatingly effective.

Kai had had enough of being forced to eat dirt but he was low on energy. He lurched forward to elbow her in the stomach. His strike grazed her, but it was not enough to throw her off. In retaliation, she grabbed both of his arms and then kneed him in the stomach. This blow knocked the wind out of him. Temporarily blinded from the pain, he dropped to his knees in front of her.

"Pathetic," Arya chastised him as she released his arms. "Done already?"

Kai looked up at her from the ground with a menacing look in his eyes. “No,” he growled in protest through a series of dry heaves. He tried to get up again, but his knees gave out, and he collapsed in front of her.

"No?" she said with amusement in her voice. She kicked Kai over on to his back and then knelt her knee on to his throat. "Then get up! Fight back or I'll end you!"

Kai grabbed on to her leg and tried to throw her off but she didn't budge at all. He could feel his airway tightening.

Arrow wanted to intervene, whatever kind of training this was, she was taking it too far. He also knew that if he did intervene, Kai would be furious. He just willed Kai to get up, to overpower her and fight back.

Kai could feel his vision fading as each small breath became harder than the last. He knew he was going to black out unless he got out of this hold, but it didn't seem like there was anything he could do to stop it. He inwardly cursed himself. He was frustrated at his own weakness, at his vain attempt to get the upper hand over Arya, at his inability to protect his mate. All these emotions started bubbling to the surface. As his vision started to get darker, it felt like he was starting to hallucinate. He saw a shadow starting to appear behind Arya. There was no sound, no noise as the shadow slowly started to take shape in to a black wolf. A wolf he recognised.

"Pax?" Kai mouthed silently. It was the first time that he had felt him in a long while.

Pax snarled aggressively then came over to Kai's side. He was pissed. Really pissed at seeing Kai being outmatched in such a manner. Pax rested his muzzle against Kai. As soon as he did, Kai suddenly felt this overwhelming surge of energy starting to course through him.

In a flash, the darkness lifted as he was brought back to reality. His eyes flew and he saw Arya laying beneath him, with both of his hands wrapped tightly around her throat. Arrow and Dylan were holding on to each of his arms, desperately trying to pull him off of her.

"Kai!" Arrow shouted. Realizing what he was doing, Kai instantly released his hands from her neck and staggered backwards. He couldn't quite work out what had just transpired but it felt like some kind of lucid dream, halfway between death and life.

With her throat now free Arya coughed then rolled back away from him. Despite nearly having her throat crushed in Kai's hands she looked pleased with herself.

Kai's eyes were now bright red and they glowed just like the setting sun in the distance. Dylan and Arrow stared at him in amazement. They could feel his wolf and his dominant energy back in full force. The formidable power of the young prince was back and greater than before.

Kai stumbled backwards a few steps. He could feel that his connection with Pax was back and that he had invoked his abilities but the sensation this time around felt different. His hearing and vision had multiplied ten times over. He closed his eyes as this information overload of all the sounds and sights in the forest flooded his senses. It was just like before, after Arrow found him in the forest. His brain was struggling to process it all.

"Focus Kai!" Arya shouted as she started to get back up on her feet. She could see that he was struggling to maintain it. "Focus on my voice and then drown everything else out." She repeated saying this over and over to give him something to concentrate on.

Kai did as she asked and started to hone in on her voice. He drowned out all of the background noises and just listened to her. After a moment or two he could hear the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, the sound of her heart beating and even the rush of the blood through her veins.

"Woah" he said astounded. He had gotten used to feeling heightened senses before, when he first learned how to invoke his wolf, but now he was able to hear the most minute of things. He slowly opened his eyes as he started to gain more control over it.

"Good!" Arya said proudly. "Now just try and hold that form for a while. The longer you hold it, the more natural it will feel when you decide to switch it off and on again later.

Arrow looked Kai up and down. While his clothes were tattered and torn, he could see that most of his injuries had already started to heal now that he was connected back to his wolf. He could feel the waves of energy coming off of him. What had impressed him though was not the energy that he could feel radiating off him, but what he was trying to hold back. To not overwhelm them, he presumed. This level of control so quickly after uniting with Pax seemed incredible.

Dylan placed a hand on Arrow's shoulder as he went to approach Kai. "Do you see what I see now?" Dylan whispered out the corner of his mouth. Before Arrow could respond, Dylan had released his hand and continued to walk towards Kai. Arrow sighed inwardly. Whilst he never doubted Kai's potential, he couldn't help but be fearful of the path he would have to walk down if things did go the way that Dylan had hoped.

"Welcome back!" Dylan said smugly. "For a second there I thought you was going to rip Arya's head off with the way that you exploded."

Kai looked down at his hands. "I'm not even sure what happened," he responded. He was both confused but relieved at the same time. Whatever Arya was aiming for, had worked.

"It was your wolf forcibly opening those chakra channels that I closed off." Arya interrupted. "As you started to slip away it invoked a reaction that forced the channels back open. Very few wolves are able to overcome that. You're lucky."

"Slip away?" Dylan asked curiously. "As in die?"

"Yeah" Arya responded simply.

"Wait, so you *'were'* actually trying to kill him?!" Arrow asked.

Arya shrugged "Are you really going to nit-pick all of the smaller details here? It worked didn’t it."

"Smaller details?! You just said that very few wolves overcome it, and that he's lucky he did! What if he did die?!" Arrow shouted annoyed.

"Well lucky for him he didn't, so don't get your balls in a bunch kid."

Dylan was now full on laughing whilst Arrow continued to throw accusations Arya's way. Kai however was completely ignoring them and taking in the feeling of having his full connection with Pax back. He could feel Pax's anxiety at being separated from his mate. Kai felt the same too. *'We'll get her back boy'* he said inwardly.

"Settle down kids," Arya shouted, breaking all the commotion and getting everyone's attention.

"Now you can do the invocation again, it's time to finish what we should have finished years ago,” she announced.

She pulled off her cami top, leaving her in just her sports bra and exposing her impressive six pack. As she starting marching over to Kai, she cracked her neck then started massaging her fists like she had just finished a warm up "Now the real training begins." Arya's eyes flared red to match Kai's.


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It was the morning of the third day. Dylan had set off last night to return back to his pack territory, after some new information had come in about the secret meeting Matias was planning with some of the council members. Arrow had gone back to his car and was busy planning their route back out of the Steel Tail pack territory.

Kai woke up refreshed. He had been sparring non-stop with Arya for the last 2 and half days to help fine tune his control over his more powerful invocation. Arya had called it 'sparring', but she fought close to 100% against him. Both of them fighting in their invoked state meant the damaged that they caused each other was pretty brutal, but their accelerated healing made quick work of any injuries they caused each other.

Arya was sat down on a log in front of her house, unlacing her boots. Kai quietly walked up to her and sat down next to her. "Going for a run?" he asked as he observed her.

She smiled secretly but continued to focus on unlacing her boots. "You know me, I'm a stickler for routines."

Kai chuffed. She had been failing to hide most of her secret smiles since he first arrived. Something about her living quietly out here had definitely started to mellow her out over the years. She seemed genuinely content and happy, which were two words that didn’t instantly come to mind when he thought of her in the past.

"My father still talks about you," he said with admiration. His father had often praised her efforts as both a solider and his guard.

"I bet he does," she responded quietly, as she kicked off one boot before she turned her attention to the other. "I honestly thought he was the one that sent you here. After Elias came to see me, I figured it wouldn't be too long until you turned up too."

Kai raised his eyebrows. "Elias was here?"

"Yeah. He wanted me to pledge my loyalty to the Blue Moon pack. He knows a war with Sirran is coming. I'm guessing he's worried I might suddenly decide to side with Sirran."

"Would you?" Kai asked frankly.

Whilst Arya had served under Maddox for a while, she never pledged loyalty to him or Galas. She never really divulged much about where she originally came from either, but with her dark skin and eyes, it was fairly easy to say that she wasn't a native to either Sirran or Galas. All the things she knew and her unique fighting style had both sides coveting her talents, but she stayed true to herself, unwilling to commit 100% to anyone.

"No," she replied. “Whilst I would never dream of working with Sirran, I can’t pledge my loyalty to Galas either. I loved your mother, heck I don't even mind Maddox, but this country has grown corrupt Kai. I couldn't continue to fight for him. This country needs change. I just wished that he had been the man to initiate it."

Kai could understand her words. His father had been too weak to really drive change in Galas. There were many things about Galas that Kai didn't agree with. It was the reason why he pushed back against a lot of the council's decisions and that was likely one of the reasons why some of them were trying to plot his early demise.

Arya kicked off her other boot then started massaging her toes in the forest floor. She stood up abruptly and stretched. She wasn't a big talker and he could see that her discussing the past wasn't a comfortable subject for her.

"Don't fight this fight on your own. Go and find your mate. You'll be stronger with her," she said with finality. She looked at him briefly out the corner of her eyes, then proceeded to walk off in to forest. Arya was never one for goodbyes. As thankful as he was for her help, he knew that she wouldn't want to hear the words from him. She helped who she wanted and that was that.

Kai activated his invocation again. He closed his eyes as he scented the air. In this form he could feel his mate. He could feel Raeliana. The pulse he felt in his chest, felt like some kind of homing beacon. Inside his mind Pax's ears flicked up as he felt the tug of his mate bond. It was faint, but there was enough there to steer him in the right direction. As Kai had predicted, she had gone south to get as far away from the Sirran border as possible. Kai slowly reopened his eyes, revealing its crimson red colour. "I'm coming to get you Rae."