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.)