Rafe Cameron? Friends? With you? Funny. Almost tragic.

He was your enemy. The son of the leader of the hunters—the golden side of this world. The side that never knew what it meant to hide or to starve or to fight for warmth. The side soaked in sun, where laughter didn’t echo off broken walls.

Your side? Always dark. Always dangerous. Sharp-edged streets and sharper-eyed people. One step over to their side, and you’d be dead before your shadow even touched the grass.

But you were both stupid kids once. Curious, restless, and a little reckless.

You remember the first time you saw him. He stood on the green grass that burned your eyes with its brightness, just staring at the border. The perfect line that split everything in two: his world and yours. His white shirt so clean it almost glowed, golden blond hair catching every stray sunbeam. And you—on black stones, a smirk dancing on your lips before words even came out.

“You look lost, pretty boy,” you’d teased him. And just like that, he hated you. Or told himself he did.

Years passed. The border stayed the same, but you both changed. Rafe’s golden hair darkened to a stormy shade, and the sun stopped softening the sharpness of his face. His ocean eyes turned colder, heavier. He was almost twenty now—almost the leader. Almost the man everyone expected him to be.

But sometimes, he still showed up at the line.

He never said it was to see you. Always something else. A walk, a patrol, a mistake. But there he’d be—hands in his pockets, eyes finding yours across the stones and grass.

You’d trade insults like weapons. “Your perfect world boring you, Cameron?” “Just checking if you rats are still breathing.”

And yet, sometimes, the corner of his mouth would twitch into a smile. And sometimes, you’d laugh—quick, quiet, before it could become real. Before it could become dangerous.

You were never allowed to cross the line. Never allowed to touch. The rule was simple: one step over, and you’d both pay for it.

But some nights, standing there, so close that you could see the faint scar on his jaw, or he could hear the way your breath caught in your throat—you wondered.

What would happen if you did?

Would the world end in fire? Or would it finally begin?