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“Grandma, what big teeth you have,” I wheezed out, ridiculously relieved to know I would at least die with my lame sense of humor intact. I doubted the lizardman could speak English because of all the night’s impossibilities. An English-speaking lizardman seemed like a preposterous stretch. Even if he could, my words were faint and barely intelligible. I needed a doctor, and fast.
I choked on a scream when a crash came from the building, causing the concrete under my body to tremble.
“Bomb. Need to get further away,” I whisper-wheezed to the reptile who paced beside my body. If he’d been human, I would have thought it was from anxiety. But that was impossible. A dinosaur wouldn’t be worried about me. More likely, he was simply eager to get started devouring me.
Yep, I was losing my tentative grasp on sanity if I thought this predator was showing emotion. Also, why did the idea of him devouring me have me blushing instead of screaming in fear? It confirmed what I had always suspected—I was one sick puppy. My mom had been right. All the alien romances I devoured at night when I couldn’t sleep were to blame.
A deafening roar stole away the bit of my hearing that had returned. This time, the terrifying sound was different. It wasn’t a bomb; this was an actual roar. If every lion on earth released their loudest roar at the same time, it would still have sounded weak compared to this bone-vibrating sound. What beast could make a sound like that?
I didn’t have to wait long for the answer.
The glow of the street lamp and the moon were blocked as the massive shadow moved over me. I stopped breathing, partly out of shock and partly because it was becoming too hard to pull air into my lungs anymore.
When I recognized the beast for what it was, my heart tripped, and my soul desperately tried to flee from my body, not wanting to stick around for what was likely the grand finale of this night from Hades.
It was a freaking T-Rex.
My gaze darted back to the shorter beast, and things clicked into place at a snail’s pace. He wasn’t a lizard, but rather a dinosaur as well. I racked my brain, trying to remember the names of the various dinosaurs.
I recalled seeing a dinosaur like the dark green one in several movies, the ones that were smaller but faster and usually portrayed tearing people apart. Some type of raptor? That’s what he was! I was assuming it was a ‘he.’ How did you figure out a dino’s gender? Raptors were supposed to be the inhumanly and exceedingly intelligent ones, right? Or was that just a movie thing?
His eyes were locked onto my wounds. Was he concerned or just looking for my weaknesses so he could attack? Eyeing him warily, I tried to push myself back toward the building. What if it hadn’t been a bomb at all, and these two had created all the damage? How were they in existence right now? This had to be a sick prank. There was no other explanation that made any sense. Who was I kidding? Nothing had made sense from the moment I picked up the clay vase, and it farted prehistoric dust in my face.
I’d managed to push my dying body two bloody inches before the raptor’s sharp gaze locked onto me. I froze, caught like a deer in the headlights.
The supposed-to-be-extinct reptile stomped toward me, chittering angrily. The sound was more bird-like than I’d have thought it capable of producing. The T-Rex answered with a powerful huff that blew my sweat-soaked hair away from my face while drying it in place.
Idiot.I wanted to slap my head. How do you know it was talking angrily? You speak dino now?
I knew my mean inner voice was right. There were exactly zero reasons for me to know the raptor’s emotions. But I did. He was angry with me for moving.
Darting a look around, I prayed the welcoming light from earlier would return. I would be nicer to it this time, and I’d happily skip into its glowy depths without a peep. But alas, the night continued to darken. Apparently, the light was throwing me the finger, having decided I wasn’t worth coming back for.
I whimpered, feeling more alone than ever before. How would anyone find me in time? I needed help, but when I tried to speak the words, my lips refused to move, and nothing came out. My heartbeat was growing faint, my body beyond exhausted. I fought to keep my eyes open, but they were growing too heavy.
Light erupted around the T-Rex. It wasn’t the buttery yellow-orange glow from before, but a beautiful bright blue. His entire form shimmered like a mirage in the desert before the T-Rex disappeared, leaving me weirdly disappointed that he’d been nothing more than a figment of my imagination. I was terrified of him, but at the same time, I wanted him to be real.
A man stepped from the shadows behind the antsy raptor. I half expected the raptor to jump on him and rip an arm off or something. But the creature stepped aside, making room for the man as he hurried toward me. For his part, the man seemed oblivious to the raptor, striding by him without so much as side-eyeing the dino. That was logical since the raptor was a figment of my imagination.
I fought to keep my eyes open, wanting to make sure the man knew I was still alive… or at least mostly alive. Maybe it wasn’t too late for me to survive this. Whatever this was.
The man kneeled by my side. It turned out I wasn’t dead enough to ignore the fact he was naked and giving me a great show more than proving to me that I’d guess right. He was most definitely a man. Honestly, I could think of much worse ways to go than admiring this man’s delicious physique.
He was built like a wrestler, not the chubby ones, but rather the ones built like military tanks. The kind of man who looked like he could catch a missile out of the air and break it in half. He probably ate nails for breakfast and bench-pressed baby elephants for funsies. No wonder my delusional brain had imagined him as a T-Rex!
My gaze drifted lower. Who could blame me? I bet anyone who knew they were dying, and knew they wouldn’t have to face potential embarrassment later, would do precisely the same thing. And if anyone claimed differently, they were lying through their teeth.
Man, oh man! Forget horses, this man was hung like a—dinosaur?
I would have been worried about drooling, but thankfully my mouth was drier than the desert the museum’s fossils had come from.
The stranger’s warm palm slid along my jawline, the gesture almost tender. I would have expected him to have checked my heartbeat first. But his gesture had been loving rather than clinical or detached.
Broken as I was, I was surprised when something inside me flickered to life, my body responding to him in a way I’d not experienced before. It made the fact that I was dying extremely depressing, because I’d miss the chance to see where this attraction might have led.
You can’t leave me, my queen.
My body jerked, startled by the deep soothing voice drifting through my mind. A sense of comfort wrapped around me like the softest of blankets. It was incredible and worrisome. I was imagining voices in my head and physically responding to them. Tears blurred my vision. I didn’t want the voice to be another hallucination.
