Tharn's Hunt

<p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>The desert holds twenty-seven ways to die. Today I discover number twenty-eight: hallucination-induced cliff diving.</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>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.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>He doesn't speak. Doesn't kill me.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Instead he drops a butterfly earring-my missing sister's earring-between us like a challenge.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Now I have to choose:</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>1. Trust this glowing stranger who smells like desert storms and moves like a predator.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>2. Stay here and let the creatures of the dark finish what the Xyma started.</span></p><p></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Survival just got a hell of a lot more complicated.</strong></p><p></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>(First-contact sci-fi romance with forced proximity survival stakes and a possessive alien hero who really doesn't like human screaming.)</em></p>