“Let me get this straight, Helion convinced you to pretend to kill your brother for some secret mission, make yourself a pariah to your entire planet, where everyone now hates you and thinks you are a horrible person, all because you had mating fever and gave up on finding a mate?”
“Yes.”
“So, take it back. Tell the truth.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “The evidence was carefully planted. I confessed to the crime. Everything they discovered confirmed my version of events.”
“Except the dead body. Where was that? If he’s not dead, where did they get a dead body?” No body, no crime, right? I watched crime shows so much I firmly believed I could be a homicide detective. Which I believed I would enjoy until I did a ride-along and saw a corpse in person. The smell. The way the body looked?
No. I couldn’t do it. No way.
“Reji was a member of the I.C.. Helion himself led the investigate.”
“And planted all the evidence. Made sure everything pointed directly to you.”
“We took blood from Reji minutes before we put the plan into action. Positioned a spray so that it would appear that I had attacked him from behind, knocked him to the ground and then killed while kneeling over his body.”
“You guys faked blood splatter patterns? With real blood?”
“Yes.”
“That insane. You know that, right? What was so freaking important that you did all of this?”
“I cannot tell you details, mate. It is bad enough that you know Reji is alive. If that information became available, his life would be in danger.”
“So, he has to officially stay dead because now he’s on some super-secret mission and no one will suspect who he really is.”
“Yes.”
“And you were supposed to be executed. Case closed. No one would ever suspect a thing.”
“Yes.”
I sighed. Holy. Shit. “Then I showed up and ruined your plan.”
“Yes. Helion was not pleased.”
Bastard. I bet he wasn’t. “Couldn’t he find some other way to fake Reji’s death? Shoot his body into space or something? Say he was killed in battle?”
“No one could question his death. He could not simply vanish. We needed evidence. Blood. A raging beast lost to the scourge of mating fever. A thorough investigation that Doctor Helion led himself. A public display. We could not risk anyone hiring Elite Hunters to track him. They are…very good at what they do.”
“Everian Hunters?”
“Yes. They have a sense even they do not understand. If they are on a hunt, they can sense the direction their prey traveled. Sense their presence. I do not not how their gifts work, but I have been with an Elite Hunter while he was tracking an enemy. The experience was enlightening.”
“But the I.C. planned the fake murder in the first place.”
“One of Helion’s top officers was murdered by his own brother, a raging beast. The story traveled to every trading station, every planet in the Coalition.”
“You weren’t out of control.”
“If you watch the arrest vids, you will see a very different beast from the one you know.” He looked at me, finally, and I could not bear the pain I saw in his eyes.
I could imagine the act Kovo had put on for the world—more like the universe. And no, I did not want to witness any such thing. “Someone really horrible must be hunting your brother.”
“Not anymore.” Kovo walked to the edge of the bed and sat down, his hip next to mine. “No one hunts for a warlord who is already dead.”
“And you thought you were going to die anyway, so why not use your death to save him.”
