After we get Amber up to speed, Elsie risks peeing in the bed. As we guessed, it absorbs all the fluids. It’s much more clean and sanitary than a toilet, when I really think about it, but somehow it’s more disgusting. We spend the first years of our childhood learning not to wet the bed. It feels wrong to just let it rip in bed, even if it’s an alien bed.

Amber is sitting with her hands wrapped around her knees, cradled in the bed. She hasn’t spoken much at all since the initial confusion passed.

“It’s kind of like the cabin,” Elsie says.

Amber scowls at her.

“At least we’re together,” Elsie says, shrugging.

The wall glows, and Amber shields her eyes. Elsie and I are used to it by now.

The door opens, and Proximus struts back into the room. I’m not surprised this time when he comes straight for me.

He grabs me by the wrist this time, and he turns me so his body is blocking us from Elsie and Amber.

“Stop it,” I hiss.

“You said you don’t want to be a slave,” he says.

“Of course not,” I say, trying to break his grip, but his grip is hard as stone.

“Neither do I,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “We have to go now. Come.”

He pulls on my wrist, tugging me toward the door.

Elsie tries to stop him, but he just stiff arms her.

“I have only room to take one of you,” he growls. “Her.”

He tugs on my arm to emphasize his point. I see Amber crying, and Elsie runs toward us, but the wall forms in front of her as he tugs me through the doorway. I can no longer see them as Proximus tears me further down the hallway

“The others are sleeping,” he says, still clutching my wrist.

“I don’t want to go if you leave Elsie and Amber behind,” I say, digging my heels into the ground.

“It’s too late,” he says, and when I refuse to move another step, he scoops me up off the ground and throws me over his shoulder.

I kick and punch, but his one strong hand is enough to hold me pinned as he races down the hallway.

We turn several times, but with my head over his back, I can’t see very well where we’re going–only where we’ve been. The hallways look like those of some ancient temple more than a spaceship. The walls are ornate and carved, but there’s a type of patchwork look to everything. If this were an ancient temple, it looks like a temple that squatters moved in and covered in graffiti and filled with thrift store furniture.

We turn another corner, and there’s a loud shout in an alien language. I feel myself moving down, and the next thing I know I’m on my feet in a low crouch. When I look up, I see Proximus’ muscular body leap forward.

From somewhere in his loincloth he pulls out a small rod, and at the flick of his wrist it expands into a full-sized spear.

As he moves, I catch sight of another teal, horned alien in a loincloth. The second alien’s eyes are wide, and before he can even reach for his own weapon, Proximus throws his spear.

I shield my eyes, but not in time to miss seeing the spear sinking into the alien’s flesh. The last thing I see before I shut my eyes is a spurt of purple blood erupting from the alien’s skull.

I feel Proximus throw me back over his shoulder, and I keep my eyes shut now, not wanting to see anything else he might do.

I soon feel him putting me down again. I look up and see we’re in a tiny, sphere-shaped room. I see the wall closing up behind us just as my vision snaps back into focus.

“What are you doing?” I ask, panting. I wasn’t the one running and killing and throwing spears, but I feel completely exhausted from the whole ordeal.

“We are escaping,” he says. He looks down at me and shakes his head. “Such good lines and curves, you’d have been a hard-worked slave, but I am sparing you that fate.”

“Do you mean...sex slave?”

“Of course,” he says. “You are a young human woman with a near perfect shape and intoxicating scent. And we...we are what we are.”

He points to himself, as if that is any kind of explanation at all. How am I supposed to know what the hell he is?

Just as I’m about to ask him how we are going to escape, I feel a jolt, and then I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster, my stomach drops 1,000 feet all at once.

“Holy crap!” I shout, bracing for some kind of impact, but then I realize that Proximus and I are floating.

“Here,” he says, flicking a wrist, and suddenly the entire top half of the sphere disappears.

I see the black vastness of space, and I hold my breath in expectation that all the air will be sucked out of my lungs.

“This is a window,” he says, tapping.

I sigh and gasp for air. My body floats up into that window, and when I reach to grab it, some kind of handhold forms out of the wall. I grasp onto it to avoid floating back and forth through the little ship.

“Look,” he says, and he flicks his wrist again.

I feel the weight come back to me for a brief moment, and the stars start to shift. Then I see it. The giant ship behind us. The ship is shaped like a large spear, floating through the black, starry void. It’s not quite pure white, more like the pearl, off-white white of bones. It seems to be spinning, though very slowly. I can’t tell if it’s moving or not, and there is no visible sign of engines or exhaust, or anything that would suggest movement.

“Pay attention,” Proximus says. “You’ll only see this once.” He grabs hold of me, his hand gripping my naked waist with a fierce possessiveness.

I feel his hard, muscular body pressed against mine, and in the insanity of all that is happening, that closeness to him is the only thing that is keeping me anchored. He’s an alien, but he’s still another living person, and in the infinite vastness of space all around us, he’s the only living thing I have.

Then I see what he is telling me to look at. There’s a big, red sun. I feel like I should shield my eyes from it, but it doesn’t hurt my eyes at all to look directly at it.

“The window shields us,” he says. “But this is our dying sun. It’s much weaker than yours.”

“That shadow,” he says, pointing. “Is our world.”

I see it only after he points. A small spherical shape near the edge of the big red sun.

“You’re…” I whisper. “You’re touching my waist.”

He turns me toward him, rotating my weightless body so I’m floating in front of him, our eyes just inches apart. He still grips my waist as tightly as before.

“I can touch what I own,” he says.

“Own?” I say, my mouth dropping open. “I thought you were saving me from being a slave.”

“You’re not my slave,” he says. “But I do own you.”

He slides his hand up my waist and toward my breasts, and I slap him as hard as I possibly can. His face doesn’t just look like a perfectly sculpted statue, it’s just as hard too. Pain jolts through my hand and wrist and forearm, and the impact of the slap sends me floating backward and away from him.

He just laughs as I slam into the edge of the ship opposite him.

I barely remember to reach and grab at the wall, creating a new hand hold. I scowl at him, red with fury and anger. “You do not touch me. And you do not own me. Are we clear?”

He shoots me that same insufferable, cocky grin. “The first part,” he says. “I can maybe agree to. Though I smell your arousal when I touch you. But the second thing you ask? I must own you, Alice. If I don’t own you, someone else will. This is the way of our world.”

And that world has moved halfway off the sun and grown larger. We are approaching it, I realize. I look back at the bone-white ship we left, and I see it’s smaller now. So we are moving. The big ship must be stationary, at least in relation to the planet. So they aren’t chasing us, at least not yet.

I turn back to the view of the alien world and the red sun. I never thought I’d see Earth from space, though as a photographer, I’d dreamed of such a chance. Seeing this alien world is almost as good as seeing my own planet from this view, though I have no camera to take a picture of it with.

I suddenly remember that he told me I’d see this “only once.” I start to think about what that means, and the only conclusion I can draw from it is that once we land on this horrible planet, I’ll never leave it again.

I feel stupid for trusting Proximus. The other aliens on the ship did treat me worse, but at least I was together with Elsie and Amber. We were in it together. We were maybe the only three humans in this hellish place, and now I may never see another human being again. All because I trusted this big teal monster?

“I fought against you,” I say. “I didn’t want you to take me out of that room. You pulled me out and slung me over your shoulder.”

He grins as he looks out at the planet, growing larger through the transparent top of our little sphere. Then he turns his full attention to me, as if the incredible view of space and the dying sun and his home world were no longer there.

“Alice, I told you you’d see this view only once. This is my second time, and likely my last.”

Then he raises a hand and moves as if he’s going to touch my cheek, but he stops and furrows his brow. He instead takes my hair in his hands and runs his hands along it. His nostrils flare as he leans forward and takes in my scent.

“I told you not to touch me,” I whisper weakly.

“Hair is dead. I’m not touching your living flesh.”

I jerk my neck just enough to give him the hint, and he finally lets go of my hair. “It’s attached to my body. Anything attached to my body is off limits. Why don’t you go enjoy your view?”

I cross my arms and cover my breasts, but letting go of the handhold makes me float slowly toward him, so I use one hand to grasp it again.

“I am enjoying my view,” he says. “I admire your shape. Even when you cover your best parts.”

I scoff and jab a finger into his chest. In zero gravity it’s enough to push the massive alien back toward the other wall. Once we land on the planet, I know I’ll never be able to so much as make him budge ever again. He’ll be able to do what he wants with me, I realize. If he decides he wants to touch my hair, or any other part of me, there won’t be a thing I can do to stop him.

He laughs. “And you looked at me the same way,” he says. “You say you didn’t want me to take you, but your eyes say a different thing. Even now.”

“If you’re not going to admire the view,” I say, anger seeping through my voice, “Then I will.”

I force myself not to so much as look at him, and we both stay on opposite ends of the sphere as we take in the view together. There are maybe only three feet of space between us, but after all of Proximus’ advances on me, it feels suddenly like a vast and cold distance.

I don’t want the massive alien to continue manhandling me. Not really. Yes, he’s objectively attractive. His body has the right “lines and shape,” to put it in his terms. But beyond that? He’s arrogant, forward, and knows no boundaries. He thinks he’s rescuing me, but I can never forget that he kidnapped me.

Okay, so I was kidnapped by the other aliens, and then he kidnapped me from the kidnappers, but the point stands. Proximus stole me away against my will. He can try to tell himself that he saw something in my eyes, but just because he caught me checking out his arms or shoulders doesn’t mean I wanted to have him sling me over his shoulder and go on a killing spree to take me as his property.

Maybe the planet won’t be as savage as I’m expecting it to be. Maybe once we land, some kind of authorities will catch him, and I’ll be offered a trip back to Earth. I’d have to try to find Amber and Elsie before I took an offer like that, but I shouldn’t assume everything about these aliens is terrible just from the small glimpse I’ve seen.

“You see the ice,” he says, pointing at the planet, which covers half of our view by now.

I can only see the half of the planet facing me, but ice is threatening to swallow all of the outer edges of what I can see, only the oceans are spared. There’s only one continent visible which isn’t totally swallowed by the ice. The continent is mostly grey and brown, with tiny patches of dull green. The ice swallowing the world looks like the white of an eye, and the dark continent. In the center of the continent–near the equator–is the only sizeable patch of lush green.

“Our planet is not like yours,” he says. “This is the day side. No one can live on the night side.”

So one side always faces the sun.

“Night on Earth must be a convenient thing for you,” I hiss. “Gives you a nice cover to kidnap poor women out of their cars.”

He ignores me. “We will land near the ice.”

“I’m naked,” I say, glaring at him. “Why don’t we land in that nice looking green part.”

He shakes his head. “Far too dangerous. We must meet my clan first. They will be near the ice.”

I imagine flying in toward Earth from a spaceship, seeing all the lush green continents, and deciding to land on freaking Antarctica.

“I will touch you now,” he says, and his strong hand reaches across the space between us and grabs my forearm.

Before I can pull away, he looks at me with those serious purple eyes and says. “This ship is old. We might burn in a great fire before we can land. I will hold you so you do not feel scared.”

He swells with pride as he grips my forearm, as if he read or saw in some movie that women like to be held when they are scared.

“You’d usually hold my hand,” I whisper.

He slides his hand down my forearm, and rather than taking my palm and wrapping his hand around mine, he grabs my knuckles from the outside and squeezes.

“Proximus,” I say, “That’s your name, right? I assumed…”

“Yes,” he says, nodding.

“Okay,” I say. “You hold a hand like this…”

I pry his fingers off me and show him. “Not so tight.”

He lets go some, and it does feel as nice as a brutal alien holding my hand could feel.

“You know,” I say. “If you didn’t want me to feel scared, which I do now–by the way–you could have just not told me about the risk of being burned up in a great fire.”

He grins at me and squeezes my hand ever so slightly tighter.

I can’t figure out if he is just dense and didn’t realize that telling me would make things worse, or if he told me just so he could touch me again.

I sigh. If I am going to burn up in the atmosphere of this horrible planet, I guess I would rather hold someone’s hand while I die.

The ship says something in an alien language, and Proximus takes his free hand and pokes on the window with his index finger. The window highlights a point on the planet–a point near the ice–and I suddenly feel sick to my stomach as the ship moves again.

Proximus holds me tighter, and looks at me with a forced smile. “The likeliness we die is less than half.”

“Likelihood,’ I correct him. “And great, less than half. Just great odds.”

“Yes,” he says, nodding. “In our culture, anything above half is good. Anything less is bad.”

I try not to think too much about what that might mean about his world and his culture. I imagine a big alien like Proximus losing his arm to some giant axe, and laughing and smiling that he’s lucky because he still has 75% of his limbs left.

The sphere talks some more in the alien language, and then I start to feel the vibrations, and our view of the world through the window is swallowed up by flames.

I feel like an idiot doing it, but if my chance of dying is just under 50%, I want to hold onto more than Proximus’ hand. I find my head on his strong shoulder, and my hand grips tight to his muscular torso.

I can imagine the big grin on his face, but my eyes are shut tight. I imagine the sphere giving out, and just how fast we’d burn up if even a fraction of that heat came inside. If something like that happens, I don’t want to see a hint of it, I just hope it is all is over faster than I can realize.

Proximus pulls me tight against him, and I feel too deathly terrified of imminent death to feel at all embarrassed at just how much of my body–my curves–are pressed up against his bare torso. The warmth of him against me, and the protectiveness with which he holds me tight against himself are the only things keeping me from screaming and crying and breaking down into all-consuming terror.

I don’t realize the vibrations have stopped until Proximus’ voice rumbles proud through the sphere. “We at least will not die from the great flames, though–”

“Stop,” I say, my voice shaking. “Don’t tell me anything else that might kill us within the next several minutes. Just tell me we’re okay.”

“We are okay,” he says, in a dead and emotionless monotone.

“Great,” I say, and then I realize that my breasts are smooshed against his body. I tear myself away from him.

“You may touch me,” he says.

“What?” I ask?

“You forbid me to touch you, but it seems you want to touch me sometimes. As your owner, I allow it.”

I ignore him while trying not to blush. I look up through the window and see a giant line cutting across the landscape. One side is white, the other grey. I cross my fingers and pray we will at least land a few hundred miles within the grey. I don’t look forward to the idea of traipsing through the snow while butt-naked.

As we get closer, I notice flecks of green, red, blue and white within the grey. As we get even closer, I can make out the green as trees.

Proximus taps his finger against the window, selecting a wooded area near a river.

“Is that where your clan is?” I ask.

He just grunts, but I don’t know if it’s a “yes” grunt or a “no” grunt.

“We will soon meet the ground,” he says, focusing on the window.

I realize that we should be squashed against the wall since we are falling so fast, but we’re still floating as if there were no gravity. Then I realize we are not falling as fast as we should. The ground should be racing up toward us, but instead the forest and river are growing slowly as we get nearer.

Suddenly I feel a hint of weight to my body, and Proximus and I gently float down toward the window, which is the ground now. The feeling of gravity grows until I can make out the individual trees, and suddenly I see the trees fill our view.

The sphere must be pushing against gravity somehow, but it’s slowly surrendering to it as we descend.

Just before I see us hit the trees, the window disappears, and we are locked within a silver-walled sphere with a dim, pink light.

“The chance was greater than half,” Proximus says in the new silence, “That the ship would just fall so fast we’d be turned into a liquid when we hit the ground. I did not tell you about this, to make you feel safe.”

I look at him with wide eyes and a slack jaw, and I laugh with relief.

“Would you like to know our chances in the forest?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Don’t tell me any chances. Please. Let’s keep it all a surprise.”

He nods. “The ship can make us a few things. I don’t know how many.”

“What do you mean?”

“Make. Things,” he says, drawing out each word, as if I were an idiot.

“Such as…?”

He grunts something in his language, and moments later something melts off the wall and plops down between us. I pick it up and see that it’s what looks like a bright teal wetsuit.

“Clothes,” I whisper, and I jump into the thing with an intense relief at not having to be naked anymore. I’d grown used to being naked in front of Proximus, which cannot be a good thing.

Then I get the “wetsuit” on, and it feels similar to the material the beds on the ship were made of. It tightens against my body, so tight that it looks like I’m just wearing teal body paint. My nipples are clearly visible, just teal rather than pink.

“Good,” he says, nodding. “Very warm.”

“Can it...cover me,” I ask.

“I do not know how much more power the ship has left.”

“I’ll risk it,” I say, glaring at him.

He says something else, and something else drops out of the ceiling. I pick it up, and it looks like some kind of black coat or mantle.

I wrap it around my body, and it clasps almost magnetically in front. It covers everything, hanging down just below my knees.

“Now I can see nothing,” he says, scowling.

He grunts something at the ship, and it chirps back at him in an apologetic tone.

“It cannot create any weapons,” he says. “My skull spear is all we have.”

“Why is it called a skull spear?” I ask.

It holds it up and taps the tip. “The point is very hard, for breaking through skulls.”

I shudder as I remember the spear going into the other teal alien’s skull.

He says something else to the ship, and holds his palm up. A small little teardrop thing drops into his palm.

He hands it to me, “Put it in your ear.”

“What’s it do?”

“For understanding,” he says.

I think I know what he means, and I put it into my ear.

The ship is still talking, and rather than the alien language, I hear clipped and imperfect English.

“It does not know your language well,” he says. “But you should understand.”

“Can other people understand me?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I own you, others are not to speak to you.”

He shouts at the ship, and I hear the translator do its job. “OPEN DOOR!”

The side of the ship melts away, and a blast of cold air hits my face, but the mantle and teal skinsuit keep the rest of me warm.

“Very few things in this forest will try to kill us,” he says. “Come.”

He holds out his hand, and I reluctantly take hold of it. I don’t know if he was trying his best to comfort me, or slyly tricking me into touching him again, but I take his hand either way.

He holds his skull spear in the other, though not fully extended. That calms me a little bit. If there really were all kinds of dangerous things here, he’d at least have the spear ready to throw or stab with, right?

“Do not worry,” he says, pulling me forward, “I can make the spear long very quickly if something does try to kill us.”

I look back at the ship, but it’s melting into the ground.

“It is spent,” he says.

The trees around us are as grey as slate, much greyer than trees on the bleakest of winter days on Earth. The leaves, though, are the most vibrant shade of green I’ve ever seen, and they completely blot out the sun, forming an emerald sky above us.

“I don’t really know why I’m asking this,” I say. “But I think the vagueness of ‘something’ killing us has me on edge. Without going into too much detail, what exactly might kill us? Wild animals? People?”

“Yes,” he says.

I tug on his arm and dig my nails into his palm. “Proximus, that is too vague.”

He stops and looks at me, as if considering how much to tell me. “Many people must have seen our ship. People this far out near the ice cannot get such things, and they will come looking to take such things from us.”

“So they will kill us to get our stuff?” I ask. “What do we have? The earpiece, the skullspear, my clothes?”

He nods. “Your clothes and the ear thing are worth fortunes here. Though you are the most valuable prize. But I will protect you. It’s my duty to protect my own property.”

“You really know how to make a girl feel special,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Thank you,” he says in a serious voice, but he rolls his eyes back at me. He must think it means something else–the complete opposite of what eye rolling actually means.

“Should I tell you more?” he asks, tugging on me and urging me to keep following him.

I squeeze his hand and keep walking. “Okay, just don’t make it too scary. Pretend you’re trying to make this world sound interesting to me, like a tour guide selling me on your planet.”

“Hmm,” he grunts, “Interesting? The sun is dying, and our world has been populated millions of times longer than yours. We can find things in the ground tens of millions of years old, from people and cities that are long dead. Some of those things crawl up out of the ground, and try to kill us.”

I shudder. “You did really well, up until that very last part.”

“It happens very rarely,” he says. “But it can happen. It’s very interesting. This is what you asked of me.”

“The leaves are nice,” I say. “What is nice about your world? Tell me about the leaves, and the flowers. Are there any flowers?”

“Those,” he points to a tree, seemingly at random. “Those leaves can kill. Do not touch them. There are many deadly flowers here, some we even use as weapons.”

“I said nice,” I say.

“The emperor clan has all the nice things,” he says. “My clan and the other clans along the ice have learned to not need such nice things.”

“Great,” I say. “And if you hadn’t rescued me, would they have taken me into the center, where all the nice things are?”

He nods.

“So you rescued me from that? And now I can live among the flowers you use as weapons, and the leaves that can kill? And not as a free woman, but as your property?”

He frowns at me. “They’d have used you for pleasure. You’d be a nice thing for them. Your curves and exotic shape would fetch a high price, or you’d be given as a valuable gift. Maybe whoever ended up owning you would treat you with some kindness, or not. It would be up to chance. Or maybe those pets of the Emperor–the ones that examined you–would run tests on you forever? I do not know what they’d have done to you, only that the likeliness of it being good was much less than half. ”

“And you?” I ask. “You’ll...treat me with kindness? Even if we live in this desolate place?”

He looks at me in confusion. “No, Alice, I own you only for now. I will sell you to free my clan from its debt to the Emperor.”

He lets go of my hand and tilts his head at me, and I use the opportunity to run. To run as fast as I can.

I’ll take my chances with the deadly leaves and flower weapons. With the people who come to find me and kill me for my clothes. At least the poisonous plants and bandits will make their intent clear. They won’t pretend to be rescuing me and protecting me, holding my fucking hand, all the while planning to sell me off for money.

I look back over my shoulder, expecting to see Proximus just a few strides behind me. I expect him to close the distance in moments and hoist me back over his shoulder, but I don’t see him at all. It’s as if the forest has swallowed him, and I’m truly alone and running from nothing and no one.

I don’t stop running though. I stay on what seems to be a path cut through the woods, avoiding touching any of the leaves. The teal skin suit covers my feet and legs, so none of my skin is truly exposed, but maybe some of those leaves or flowers have spines that could penetrate through. I stay well within the center of the path as I run, and I keep checking back over my shoulder every twenty or thirty strides, expecting to see Proximus–the horned monster–rushing me down like some teal devil.

I slow down, panting and gasping for air. I keep up a labored jog, but soon I am panting so hard that my lungs burn, and I’m barely managing to walk further down the path.

At some point I stop completely, resting my hands on my knees while doubling over. I always hated running, and I hated people who liked running even more.

When I look up, I see three horned aliens eyeing me. One is holding a crossbow, which is pointed straight at me, the other two have “skull spears,” which are fully extended. Neither of them have horns half as long as Proximus, but the one with the longer horns seems firmly in the lead.

“What is it,” Crossbow hisses to the leader.

“Shoot it!” Shorthorns shouts to Crossbow.

I should turn around and run, but I can’t move. I’m paralyzed by fear, and I’d be too spent to outrun their long strides. I remember what Proximus said–that I can understand them, but not the other way around. Then I remember how valuable he said my clothes and earpiece would be.

I point to the mantle, and they all stare at me in fascination.

I tug at it some, and hold up an open palm.

“Just shoot it!” Shorthorns squeals. “It might taste good.”

The leader backhands him casually in the face, knocking him back and sending his skullspear flying into the woods. “Shut fucking up. You fuck fuck. Don’t put holes in the nice clothes.”

The earpiece sounds a bit garbled when it says “fuck fuck,” and I get the feeling it doesn’t quite understand how to swear properly in English, almost correctly assuming that swearing in English is just dropping the word “fuck” casually into any part of a sentence.

I hope that my upturned palm is some kind of universal sign for “Do you want this?”

The leader steps forward, holding out his own open palm toward me. Okay, so he does want it, and I’ll give him the mantle if he lets me go.

I reach toward the front and unclasp it, and the moment I pull the mantle off my body, the three go into a complete frenzy.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Crossbow shouts. “I want to fuck it with my spear!”

The leader rushes toward me and slaps the mantle from my hand, and grabs my wrist so hard I feel he’s going to rip the skin off it.

He tugs me and pulls me tight against his body, and even though I fight as hard as I can, I can’t create even an inch of space between us.

My face is buried in his chest, so I open my mouth wide and sink my teeth in.

“She’s so in heat! She’s in heat!” One of them shrieks. “She wants Chief’s seed so much she’s biting him!”

Chief throws me down to the ground, and I see a small splotch of purple blood where I bit him, but his eyes are filled with nothing but frenzied lust. Tears fill my eyes and blur my vision, and I feel like such an idiotic little girl for running from Proximus.

Crossbow and Smallhorns shriek, and I hear the thud of the crossbow going off.

Chief crashes down onto the ground in front of me, a skullspear sticking out of his head. His violet eyes are lifeless and cold.

I turn around in time to see Proximus rushing toward me. I roll out of the way when it looks like he’s going to run me over.

He steps on Chief’s corpse and rips the skullspear out of his head, and he leaps into the air and plunges it down into Crossbow’s head.

I see Smallhorns raise his spear, but he takes one look at Proximus’s raw fury and throws his weapon to the ground. He throws his hands up and shrieks at Proximus, who is now holding his spear pointed toward Smallhorns, his whole body covered in purple blood

“I surrender!” Smallhorns says, his whole body trembling. “I’m weak and wouldn’t have got to spear her anyhow! Chief wouldn’t have let me!”

Proximus jams the skullspear into Smallhorns’ shoulder, twists it, then rips it out. Smallhorns shrieks and falls to the ground, clutching his gaping and bleeding wound.

“What clan are you?” Proximus roars.

“Ice cliff! Ice cliff!” he screeches.

“You are far from the ice cliff,” Proximus says, kicking Smallhorns in the ribs. “Go back there, and tell any of your clan that I will kill them if they so much as step foot off the snow.”

Smallhorns gets his feet under him, scrambles up, and runs away and into the forest.

Proximus has me in his arms within moments, he clutches me against him, his hand possessively dipping into the curve of my waist.

“You are unhurt?” He asks me.

I nod, tears streaming down my face.

He snatches my mantle up off the ground and wraps it around me. “Do not remove this again,” he says. “Under any circumstance.”

I nod, feeling like such an idiot.

“It’s difficult for us to control ourselves,” he says. “I have more discipline than most. You see now that it’s good I own you?”

My lip trembles and I bite it, but the tears still flow without end. I manage to wail in a blubbering voice. “You are going to sell me!”

“I will make sure your owner will not mistreat you,” he says.

“This is my promise, to which I am now honor bound.”