The desert holds twenty-seven ways to die. Today, I discover number hallucination-induced cliff diving.

When a golden-eyed alien hunter tracks me to my cave, I assume I’ve finally cracked—until he throws me to the ground and light erupts where our skin touches.

He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t kill me.
Instead, he drops a butterfly earring—my missing sister’s earring—between us like a challenge.

Now I have to
1. Trust this glowing stranger who smells like desert storms and moves like a predator.
2. Stay here and let the creatures of the dark finish what the Xyma started.

Survival just got a hell of a lot more complicated.

(First-contact sci-fi romance with forced proximity, survival stakes, and a possessive alien hero who really doesn’t like human screaming.)