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.)