Tyler was not born, he was summoned.
There was a scent to power, and it clung to him like wild honey and storm-charged ozone. He wasn’t the kind of beautiful you paint—he was the kind of beautiful you bleed for. That celestial charm. That vampire instinct. That soul-ripping, unrelenting awareness in his electric blue eyes that always knew where Ra kept her secrets. And worse, he never told.
Ra was his best friend. His parabatai. His ride-or-die since the Orion Wars. But ever since she dragged his dying body out of the Astral Abyss and poured every drop of her cosmic fire into him, something had changed.
He was alive. And she was undone.
"You're avoiding me," Tyler said, leaning against her doorframe like a Renaissance sin.
Ra didn’t look up from her pulse tablet. "I’m avoiding a poor life choice."
"Cute. But we both know I’m the worst and best choice you've ever had."
Her breath hitched. Damn him.
It wasn’t just the way he looked at her like she was both salvation and slow death—it was the way her body responded like it remembered something her mind hadn’t agreed to yet.
One flash of those electric eyes and her thighs had a mind of their own.
"Tyler—"
"Don’t 'Tyler' me like I haven’t seen what you dream about when your shields are down."
The room pulsed with tension. She could taste the copper of truth on her tongue.
He stepped forward, fingers brushing the edge of her wrist. Just a graze—but it was enough to short-circuit her resolve.
"You saved my life, Ra. But what you don’t know is… every part of me woke up craving you. I dream in your skin. I rise because of your fire. And I want—"
"—Don’t. Finish. That. Sentence," she warned.
"Then shut me up."
She kissed him like she wanted to win.
And maybe she did. Or maybe she lost everything.
The sex was not a confession. It was an unraveling.
She gave him her fury, her guilt, her passion, her damnation.
And Tyler? He worshipped.
Afterward, tangled in stardust sheets, she whispered, "This was a mistake."
He pulled her closer. "Then let’s make it again."