It feels much longer than two hours before those rocky peaks are just above us. The “narrow path” is actually as wide as a small town, and it soon swallows us up.

The terrain in front of us is rough and rocky, and Titus slows down to a near crawl. As we hover past larger rocks, the bike jerks and bucks, and my muscles soon ache at the effort of holding on.

Titus stops, but doesn’t kill the engine. “Get off,” he says.

“You’re going to abandon me?” I ask jokingly.

“You shouldn't have to ever ask me that,” he says, taking my hand. “You are part of me.”

Then he lets go, and he races the bike at full speed up a sloping wall of rock. It looks almost like a skater going up a halfpipe. To my horror, I see Titus leap off the bike, and then the bike flies up into the air as if it were going to just fly away.

I watch Titus slam into the top of the slope, a guttural grunt escaping him as he slams into the rock, and a few seconds later I see the bike fall and disappear from view. Then I hear a loud crash below us and out of sight. I guess it can’t fly after all.

Titus plants his heels into the rock and slides back down to me.

I look at his calf and see a dull red wound. It’s completely scabbed over, but there should be a gaping hole in it. He shouldn't even be able to sit up. It looked like that spear had cut a hole the size of my fist down into the muscle of his calf.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” I say.

“Humans heal very slowly,” he says.

I guess it’s relative, but I’d have said, “You horned barbarians heal freakishly fast.”

He takes me by the hand and urges me to move. “Can you walk?”

“Of course,” I say.

He guides me through the path between the mountains. It narrows as we advance, but soon there are countless paths that open up and fork out, leading up the mountains on either side.

“We have to go up,” he says. “They will catch us on foot if we just go straight.”

I don’t want to ask, but I assume it’s because I’m slowing him down so much. The clan can run at full barbarian speed once they get off their bikes, while Titus has to move as slow as I do, or get burdened by carrying me over his shoulder.

I nod and follow him up one of the paths.

Once we get high enough and look back, I’m startled to see the sun below us. It’s red twilight shine is just barely peeking over the distant horizon. Then I turn the other way, looking in the direction we are going. The black sky looks like a wall of darkness, but there’s an even darker shape like black ink blotting the edge of the horizon. It might be mountains, but it’s too dark for me to truly know for sure. The mountain we are on casts its shadow across the land before us, and just outside of that shadow I can make out the reflective shine of icy ground, which fades slowly away into the black curtain of the dark night.

“The dark night,” he says, as if it weren’t already clear to me.

“Is there really a life for us in that?” I ask.

“We will make one,” he says, pulling me against him. “I will keep you warm, Elspeth.”

“Are you saying that name just to get under my skin?” I ask.

“Under your skin?” he says, raising an eyebrow at me.

“An expression. It means to annoy me.”

“Ah,” he says. “Yes, I like how you look when I insert myself under your skin.”

I cringe a bit at the way he butchers the phrase, but I realize we don’t really have time to admire the sunset or to stand around here and chat.

We travel further through the winding mountain path, and I only notice hours after we’ve began descending that we actually were descending. The path feels like it goes up just as often as it goes down, but sure enough, when we finally reach another spot with a view, I see we are nearly halfway down to the flat ground before us.

“I have a terrible sense of direction,” I say, shaking my head.

“I am your sense of direction then,” Titus says.

I smile at him, “So you’ll always be here? Like my living GPS machine?”

“I do not know what a Jee-Peez machine is, but I will always be by your side. We are bonded.”

“What if those guys catch up to us,” I say, feeling my chest tighten, “And take me away?”

“I’ll die before that happens,” he says. “And if somehow they take you without killing me, I’ll die trying to find you.”

It feels good to know how much he’d sacrifice to protect me, but I could do with a little less direct mention of him dying. As good as it is to be bonded to him, to have someone who cares deeply for me and would do anything for me, dying is probably last on the list of things I’d want him to do for me.

In movies or books, it’s always romantic to see the hero die for the heroine, like Jack dying for Rose after the Titanic sunk. I still think Rose could have made some space for poor Jack on that floating board–maybe she could have lost the soaked and heavy dress–but that’s beside the point. People thought it was romantic, and sacrificing herself was the grandest gesture he could make to show the full extent of his love for her.

The problem, of course, is that he ended up dead. She lived on knowing just how much he loved her–loved, past tense–and had to live her whole life without the guy. That was good for Rose, in some ways, because it freed her and made it so she could learn to fly a plane, travel the world, and eventually remarry and have kids with someone better than the stuck-up rich guy she was arranged to marry before meeting Jack.

What about me though? First off, it would break my heart if Titus died for me. I’d feel the full brunt of his love for me as crippling anguish and bitter grief at his death. That might be fun for people to watch in a movie and feel second-hand, but it’s not something I look forward to, or even like thinking about. And Titus dying wouldn’t set me free either, it would just leave me for dead, for some other male to take me. Maybe the protective scent of his bonding would wear off, and I’d be handed around the dark night like a piece of meat, or maybe those guys on hoverbikes would have their way with me, then take me back to the capital so the Emperor could sell me off to some new Magistros.

“You think too much,” Titus says.

I look up at him in confusion. “Huh?”

“When your eyebrows do that,” he says, pointing to my scrunched eyebrows, “It means your brain is working too hard.”

“I was thinking about what you said,” I say, frowning.

We’re still walking. The path has opened back up, and we are more or less just walking down a small slope. The great flat plain is laid bare before us. There are small trees and shrubs, but little else I can see.

“What did I say?” he asks.

“That you’d die for me,” I say, taking his hand and stopping him. “Titus, I want you to live.”

“There is great honor in death,” he says.

“Not for me,” I say. “I’m not from here. You will get the most honor from me if you stay alive. Fight to stay alive, not to die for me.”

“I fight to keep you alive,” he says.

“What chance do I have here without you?” I ask.

He looks at me with a serious expression, as if he’s barely ever thought of this. “Maybe it’s the bond,” he says, “But I can see how you think now. If you were of our kind, you would rather suffer, knowing I’d died to honor us.”

“But I’m not,” I say. “That’s ridiculous.”

He nods. “I told you, Elspeth, I see how you think now. I don’t think it’s ridiculous, but I know you think it is. I will force myself to see things your way. I will sacrifice my own honor to do what you ask of me. I will dishonor myself by fighting to stay alive above all else.”

I bury my head in his chest, and I reach around his body and hold tight to his lower back. “Thank you, Titus. It’s a different kind of honor, but it’s the highest form of honor, at least in my eyes.”

He growls with satisfaction, and I feel tears sting my eyes, knowing that I finally got through to him. I don’t think I feel “the bond” as strongly as he does. It’s not some long-dormant biological ability for me, but connecting to him like this allows me to feel the strength of the bond. His sense of honor is strong as iron, and for him to let it bend or re-mold speaks to the true power of our bond.

We press forward across the flat plains. I find myself looking back often at the mountain behind us, amazed that we cut a path through what already looks again like an impassable wall. The red sun is just barely peeking over the top of the mountain, and we’re now in the great shadow of the mountain itself. The air is cool and dry, and I hold my thick cloak shut tight as I walk to stop the biting air from seeping in.

“We’ve been seen,” Titus says.

I reflexively look back over my shoulder, thinking the desert clan has caught up to us, but Titus instead nudges my shoulder and points forward, toward the dark night.

At first I see nothing, but then I see black shadows walking across the ice, just beyond the shadow of the mountain.

“It dishonors me to say this,” Titus says, and I cut him off with a glare.

He clears his throat. “Honor or no, we need this clan’s help. I will offer to help them, in exchange for their protection.”

I don’t like the sound of it, but assuming the hoverbike guys keep coming after us, we will need safety in numbers.

“Can we trust them?” I ask.

He looks at me with wide eyes. “Of course not. We trust no one, but we trust them more than my former clan, who have told me that they want you. We can trust that they will take you at all costs. The clans who live this far from the capital, by contrast, are much less likely to be swayed by monetary gain, and more importantly, they hate the emperor with a burning passion. They will keep you safe, if only to spite him.”

I can make out the horns of the approaching figures now. There are at least fifty man-like figures, and a half-dozen or so large beasts the size of sandsuckers. I imagine Titus’ old clan behind us, somewhere within the ridges above us, maybe looking down at us from high up, and seeing us join up with this huge mass of hardened warriors.

“Maybe your old clan will just give up?” I suggest.

“There’s no honor in that,” Titus says.

A lump forms in my throat. It doesn’t make sense to me as a human, but I know it makes sense to all of them, and I know that they really won’t give up, even if the odds are not in their favor.

Titus and I stop walking, but the figures continue toward us. Their spears are extended and ready to strike, and I soon can see their hard faces as they get closer to us.

“I am Titus,” Titus says in a loud, booming voice. He takes a few steps forward, putting himself between me and the entire clan.

“Just Titus?” One of the men–at least I think it’s a man based on his horn size–says. He steps forward too.

Soon the two men are a few feet apart from each other. The fifty or so warriors are behind the man across from us, while I stand alone behind Titus. As strong and capable as Titus is, the power dynamic is crystal clear to me. The only benefit I can see is that we are at such a clear disadvantage, that they have no real motivation to actually attack us.

“Titus of no clan,” he says. “Titus the mercenary, though I come here on no paid assignment.”

He points past Titus, toward me. “That’s not what I was asking.”

Titus turns to face me. “This is an alien. One that the Emperor wants badly.”

The whole mass of warriors starts to grumble at mention of the Emperor.

“How badly?” the leader asks, his jaw tightening.

“The entire desert clan is behind us,” Titus says. “Tasked by the Emperor himself.”

The leader snaps his fingers, and several warriors step forward with their spears up. Titus does not flinch.

“And you bring them to us!” The leader shouts.

“There’s honor in fighting,” a voice from the back says.

The grumbling starts to take on a tone of approval, though the leader growls. He looks toward a man behind him and gestures for him.

The two men talk in hushed whispers, while the warriors hold their spears toward Titus, though the looks on their faces make it look like they have no real intention of attacking him. Titus looks equally at ease.

I try to come up to his side, but he pushes me back with his hand.

I look out across the warriors, and they don’t seem to be examining me with the curiosity that I’m used to. Even though my scent is no longer intoxicating to them, I’d expect some craning of the necks and attempts to check me out more. Then again, I am wearing a thick cloak, and maybe my face isn’t enough of a draw without my so-called “curves” to back it up. I see a few people who look at me point, whisper to someone near them, and then both people look back over their shoulders nervously.

Just what is going on here?

The leader and the other warrior stop whispering and look up at Titus. “This alien,” they say, pointing at me. “Does the Emperor want just her?”

Titus tilts his head in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Just her,” he repeats, pointing at me. “She is all he wants?”

Titus shrugs. “Do you see any other alien here?”

The two men bite their lips and look at each other, but then they look back at Titus with stern expressions.

“There’s another alien here?” he asks.

“Is Alice here?” I ask, stepping past Titus before he can stop me.

They look at me as if I’d just spoken another language.

“Amber?” I ask.

As soon as I say it, the look on their faces gives it away, though they quickly go back to neutral expressions, trying to hide it.

“You have Amber,” I shout. “Let me see her!”

“She is ours,” the leader booms at me.

“And neither you nor the Emperor can take her from us!” The second man growls.

Titus laughs. “You’re sharing her?”

“Titus of no clan,” the leader says, pointing an accusatory finger. “You would not understand.”

My blood starts to boil. So the whole clan is just–what–running trains on her? I feel equally heartbroken for Amber, and terrified to think of what might have happened to me, had Titus not protected me.

“We must go,” the second-in-command says, “To prepare for their attack.”