“What?”
“My mating fever was severe. I was days from—”
“I heard you the first time.” She rubbed her upper arms with both hands, as if trying to bring warmth to her skin. I removed my shirt and draped it over her.
“Thanks.”
“It is my honor.”
“Why are you talking to me like that?” She turned to look at me, gasped at the sight of my bare chest, and turned to face forward. “Never mind. So, your fever was really bad. You were going to die. And then what?”
“I ran, long distances and often. The physical fatigue helped me control him. But even that was no longer helping.” I stopped walking and turned to stare out over the water. The size and scope of such a thing inspired awe, made me feel calmer about my future. “I stopped that day and stared at the water for a long time. I knew my time was over. I placed a comm call to my former commander, a Prillon warrior named Helion.”
“Did you say Helium?”
I turned and looked down into the delicate features of her upturned face. “No. His name is Helion. He is the commander of the Intelligence Core as well as a doctor.”
When she didn’t ask anything else, I continued. “When a beast is lost to mating fever, there are two options. Either he returns to Atlan for execution, or he requests an assignment that will insure an honorable death in battle. I requested such a mission. I also told Helion that I would not last much longer. Days perhaps.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It is our way.”
“I know. My sister and my mother are both mated to Atlans. I know about mating fever and the executions. It’s still terrible.”
“It is merely biology.”
She turned away from me to look out over the water herself. “Okay. So, you called the doctor. Told him to send you on a suicide mission.”
“Then I heard your voice.”
“I was on a sailboat a quarter mile from shore.”
“I heard your voice, my lady. My beast recognized you immediately. First, he tried to go directly to you, through the water.”
“So that’s how you got all those jellyfish stings.”
“They were nothing to me. You were the only thing that mattered. When I realized I could not move quickly enough to reach you through the water, I ran.”
“Yeah, you did.” She grinned. “Carmen and I watched you run. She said you were chasing the boat. I didn’t believe her.”
“I was not chasing the boat, I was chasing you.”
“Okay. I know what happened next. Skip to the part where your beast didn’t know who I was.”
“He never forgot. He fought every day to return to you.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Doctor Helion and some others were working on a new treatment. Your father, Warlord Maxus, managed to control his beast for an impossible amount of time, and break the Hive’s hold on his mind. The doctors discovered something unique in his blood, something new. They studied it and created an experimental serum.”
“Max? As in my stepfather Max?” She lifted a hand to rub at her forehead as if she were in pain. “I went to Atlan. I was even in that prison, hospital, whatever you guys call it. That’s where we were when Adrian found Kovo. I met the doctor working on Max’s blood. They said it would help warlords control their beasts.”
“They needed to test the serum on a beast they knew was on the edge of death. The poison in my system was another reason they chose me. I was dead one way or another. They gave me the treatment before I regained consciousness. When I transported from Earth, I didn’t know they’d done anything to me.”
“What did they do to you?”
“They silenced my beast. Completely. He was raging, and then he was gone.”
