I have been alone on this ice eleven months and I talk to keep everything at a distance. The pod holds heat for six more weeks.

Oliver's voice cuts through that wind and never rises at the end. He brought me down into a chamber under the ridge and sealed it. The light along him filled the room. Hold the panel, he said. He did not say it again. He took me against it with the wind shut out above us, those ridges burning brighter. I could not look at him for an hour. I did not want to go back up.

That is the shame of it. Not the chamber. That the isolation I will not name is him now. He says the words of the bond and every argument drains out of me.

He tells me plainly what the rite does. Sealed in below the ice. Taken until the bond holds. Tied to him permanently, past any leaving and past the rival crossing the tundra. The rival is closing, my pod dies in six weeks, and I stay underground counting hours. Once it is done I can never go home. Do I let him finish the bond? Do I climb back into that wind and be alone until the ice has me?

A full-length sci-fi alien bond and claiming erotic novel featuring a stranded survivor and the alien who seals her to him.