by Maz Maddox
“It’s a little fuzzy.” He paused, pulling his attention from the pizza app to search his memories. “You know that feeling you get when you sleep way too long? Like sort of sleep drunk? That’s what it felt like. I woke up confused, surrounded by construction equipment, and had no idea what was going on. Imagine waking up from a nap surrounded by alien technology on something kind of like the earth but not really. And for a bonus twist, you are also an alien.”
“That sounds terrifying,” I said. “So, you woke up as a human, even though you’d never seen one?”
“Bingo. I wasn’t just scared, I felt the panic in my bones. Humans are smart and very sexy, but they kinda lack the normal defensive traits that go with survival. No plates, claws, teeth, and add shit reflexes, bad eyes and garbage smell, and you have a pink, helpless worm with legs. Do you like pineapple?” He motioned to the app.
“Worm with legs,” I repeated carefully. “That’s not the worst way I’ve heard us described. Hairless ape is still my favorite. And sure, let’s get wild.”
“Sexy, smart and good taste in pizza. Simon, you have it all.” He tapped on the phone before setting it aside. “Well, I didn’t know what an “ape” was at the time, so worm fit the bill. But waking up like that was jarring. It was really early in the morning, so no one was around. Which was good, because I just yelled a lot. Thankfully, Montana had been scouting the area since it was a new dig site that promised Cretaceous findings. He heard me screaming and came over to investigate.”
“Does Montana go to all dig sites?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise. It was likely I had run into the man more than once if that was the case.
“He tries to. Anything within the Cretaceous he visits, looking for more of us to be unearthed, along with keeping up with the latest findings. I had been just below the surface of some poor college student’s afternoon dig. I don’t know what exactly woke me up, but it did. Montana took me in like a lost puppy, like he did with the rest of us. He taught me how to speak, read, write, help me understand human culture, and gave me a name.”
I was impressed and warmed by the thought of Dalton getting cared for in such a way. “He sounds like an amazing man.”
“He’s not bad,” he joked with a smirk. “Kind of the fretting older brother type.”
“So, I have to ask. Why “Dalton?” Is that name special to him for some reason?”
“Since we’re all limited to our one human and one animal form, Montana named me based on the area my animal form’s fossils were found. Our code names follow the same pattern. The...what is it called? Hollowed type?”
“Holotype,” I corrected with a smile.
“The Utahraptor’s holotype was found in the Dalton Formation. My code name is “Utah” which is very fucking lame,” he complained sweeping his hair back against his head.
“Montana, Royal, Baha…” I mused over the names. “What are their code names?”
“Hell Creek, Calgary and Egyptian.” Dalton slid his eyes to me. “Can you guess what they are?”
“Hell Creek could be a ton of things. That is a very famous formation with a lot of claims. Royal and Calgary...I’m tempted to say Regaliceratops.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” Dalton sang. “We have a winner.”
I laughed. “They just discovered that species! You said Royal has been around since the 80’s. He’s just been patiently waiting for us to find his species?”
“Simon, I cannot stress to you how annoying this man has been since they unearthed that fucking skull,” Dalton said with wide eyes. “Man acts like he’s dinosaur Jesus.”
My laughter bounced off of the walls, so I covered my mouth. After I reined myself in, I took a breath and shook my head. “Ok, so, Egyptian. Aegyptosaurus?”
“Shorter, more teeth.”
“Oh!” I snapped my fingers in excitement. “Bahariasaurus!”
“No, but good guess.” Dalton sounded surprised and impressed, which warmed my cheeks. “I forget you're actually a nerd about this stuff. No one knows those guys typically.”
“But “Baha” and “Egyptian”...what else could it be?” I creased my brow in thought.
“Same formation,” he added with a twitch of a smile. “Bit more of a … swimmer.”
I gasped. “Spinosaurus! No way!”
“Grumpy, lumpy and soggy. That’s Baha,” Dalton mused dryly. “Alright, last one. What’s Montana?”
“That’s such a loaded formation, Dalton. He could be anything from a Triceratops to a Pachy.” I laughed as a lovely memory surfaced. “Do you remember the Triceratops at Dinosaur World--” My cheeks began to burn at a sudden realization. “Oh, my God. When I was rambling about all the dinosaurs...there was a raptor there. Oh my God.” I covered my face.
Dalton cackled like an amused, evil villain. “Oh, I remember.”
“Jesus, I’m so embarrassed. I was...human-splaning your own species to you.”
The roaring laughter that crippled Dalton made him fall over to his side, the noise loud enough to earn us a wall pounding from our neighbor the next room over. That didn’t help dampen the fire of embarrassment over my skin, since I was sure someone had likely heard us earlier as well.
“Human-splaning!” Dalton wheezed. “I need to text Royal that!”
“I’m never going to live this down,” I said out loud to myself. “This is a stain on my pride forever.”
Dalton wiped his cheeks and sighed happily. “Don’t feel too bad, Simon. You were...kinda close. Not bad, anyway.” He winked. “Also, you still need to guess Montana. Concentrate on that.”
I let out a defeated sigh. “Give me a hint?”
“Tall.”
I shot him a look. “Super helpful.”
He hummed and raked his teeth across his bottom lip before smirking. “Teeth.”
My heart started to pound.
“No,” I whispered, feeling heat spreading over my chest. “No fucking way.”
He hummed again, wiggling his eyebrows.
“T.rex?” I whispered. “Is Montana a T. rex?”
Dalton touched my nose. “Ding.”
“Holy...shit. Holy shit!” I turned to face him fully. “Does he have lips? Feathers? Does he roar? Did they hunt or scavenge?”
Dalton’s face was a mix of horror and amusement. When he spoke, it was half obstructed by a laugh. “Does he have lips? What the fuck?”
I grabbed his shoulders in excitement, which made him blink in surprise. “Does he have belly ribs like a crocodile?”
“I’ve never seen his insides, you fucking mad man!” Dalton yelled, still fighting alarmed laughter.
I fell back against the bedframe and ran both of my hands through my hair. A fucking T. rex. King of all dinosaurs.
“I don’t know what to do with myself right now,” I confessed. “I feel like someone just told me Santa was real and he has been stockpiling presents for me since I was eight.”
“He’s not that impressive,” Dalton grumbled, sounding...jealous? “He doesn’t have pre-flight feathers and sexy tattoos.”
“You cannot be jealous that I’m excited about seeing a T. rex.” I scoffed. “It’s purely academic.”
“Better be academic,” he mumbled, reaching for his cigarettes. “Asking me about his lips.”
“In his T. rex form!” I defended with a chuckle. “Oh my god!”
“Uh-huh.” He narrowed his eyes at me as the pizza delivery person knocked on the door. “Conversation paused for pizza. You better cuddle me so hard later.”
Chapter Thirteen
Dalton
I envied how deeply Simon slept.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t exhausted from the day, but my mind couldn’t shut up long enough to let me drift off. My brain was whirling between the dread of knowing I had possibly exposed us and the thrill of having Simon in my arms. Had I not gotten beaten, shifted in a rage and let my team down, I would be fretting over my growing attachment to Simon.
Well, I was still doing th
at, but it was a little further back.
I slipped out of the bed, grabbed my cigarettes and phone and stepped outside. This time, I made sure to check for waiting assholes who might want to ambush me and kept my gun in my waistband. Who the fuck attacks a guy when he’s getting his morning smoke? Cheap fucks.
Montana’s phone rang one and a half times before he picked up.
“Status.”
“Clear.” I lit my cigarette and exhaled the smoke up into the cool night air. God, hunting sounded great right about now. “We’re settled in. He’s asleep.” I swallowed around an icy lump in my chest. “Do you have any news?”
“No footage, only a couple local news blogs and media outlets addressing the “animal attack” in the area. Hyena’s men didn’t go to any hospital, so there’s nothing tied to any police reports.”
“Thank fuck.” I breathed out a sigh of relief.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” he warned. “Royal is seeing that Hyena is out for your blood. You’ve caused too much trouble for him, so now it’s personal.”
I snorted. “Hell yeah it’s personal. It was personal to start. That piece of shit works for a goddamn thief who owns too many priceless fossils as it is.”
“You having a hit out on you complicates things. Royal is doing his best to track their movements, but you know that’s not a perfect science. What exactly is your plan?”
Montana’s frustration was just below the surface, like a boiling volcano of authority that would burst and demand I pull the plug.
I flicked my cigarette to shed some of the ashes. “I’ll keep a low profile until we get to Texas.”
Montana cleared his throat. “We need to discuss the “we” in that sentence.”
“Don’t bust my balls over this, HC. Hyena’s goons were frothing at the mouth to take him and the fossil back to Mexico. I couldn’t leave him behind.”
“Why not the police station? Or leave him back at the safe house?” he asked in a level tone that was fooling no one.
“You mean the assholes who De Leon has in his pocket?” I asked slowly. “Do you not read Royal’s reports, Mr. Boss Man?”
“Did you check to see if any of the flagged officers were actually in New York? I’ll save you the trouble: they’re not. Once he reported in, they would have realized he didn’t know anything, didn’t have the fossil and wasn’t worth the time.”
“You don’t know that,” I snapped back. “You think De Leon or Hyena would really just let him go? Bullshit. You know how personally he takes his collection. He would have killed Simon for the hell of it.”
“I think you’re trying desperately to justify why you dragged a paleontologist into a shitstorm that’s gotten out of control.” There was that Tyrannosaurus bite.
Ouch.
I hadn’t realized I had been grinding my teeth until I felt them creak. He knew about De Leon’s reach, he knew that asshole could have pulled Simon in with a phone call. But what angered me was the stab of guilt I felt when I let his words marinate. Maybe I made the wrong call.
Maybe I fucked Simon’s life up.
Like the responsible adult I was, I doubled down on my bad choice.
“He’s safer with me.” I hated how defensive I sounded, like a pissy teenager arguing with his dad. “You don’t know the situation like I do. Those guys would have killed him if he stayed back in New York.”
“If you drop him off at the station in Knoxville--”
“No!” I threw my cigarette on the ground. “I’m not throwing him to the wolves now. What the fuck, Montana?”
“We have friends in Knoxville,” he said patiently, which pissed me off more.
“I’m not leaving him!” I hissed, glancing up as someone leaned out of their room to scold me for the noise. I bared my teeth and they disappeared back inside.
Silence stretched for a long minute, just enough time for me to fish out another cigarette and put it in my lips. Restless anxiety over my mistakes were starting to crawl over my skin like ants.
I heard Montana sigh heavily, and when he spoke, his voice was calm. “You care about this human, don’t you?”
Damnit, that stung. Hearing him ease his teeth back was harder than facing his anger.
I moved my unlit cigarette to behind my ear and licked my lips. “Yeah.”
“Oh, Dalton.” He didn’t sound disappointed or frustrated. He sounded sad. Like he could peer into the future and saw the heartache on the horizon.
“Don’t do that,” I scolded. “Go back to being annoyed with me. I can’t handle you sounding like a kicked puppy.”
“I’ve been a human a long time,” he started quietly and I gave a humorless chuckle.
“I’m aware, you ancient fart.”
He didn’t let me derail him, the stubborn bastard. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.”
My heart squeezed at that. I know he did. Reaper was a brother to me, but he was much more to Montana.
“It’s much easier to walk away from someone you care about than have them taken,” he said, his voice low with a lifetime of grief. “And you need to accept that Simon is not safe with you.”
I shut my eyes to pull my emotions in check. The cool night air was sweet against my skin. The soft tapping of a moth bouncing off the humming motel lights filled the silence. I took a moment to watch the stars, not nearly as many out as the night we camped in West Virginia. The smile that tugged at my lips remembering Simon’s face at the Mystery Hole was bittersweet.
“Guess I have a lot to think about,” I said. “Thanks for the chat, HC.”
He hummed. “Keep me updated on your plans.”
“Yep.” I ended the call and rubbed a hand over my face. I’d fucked up more than I thought. The entire situation was a giant dumpster fire with extra bullshit as fuel. As much as it physically hurt me to admit, Montana was right.
Simon wasn’t safe with me.
As much as I wanted to be his knight in spiky armor, the fact was that I could only protect him for so long. Dallas was still so far away, and the knives were at our backs. What kind of protector would I be if my Pretty Simon was miserable?
Or scared?
Or hurt?
Or dead.
I sniffed back the threat of tears as they stung my eyes, my nose tingling with the inbound wave of emotions. My thumb tapped the name on my phone screen that I needed, and I cleared my throat a bit as I heard the grumpy voice on the other end.
“What,” Baha growled.
“Egyptian,” I said, swallowing back another tingle in my nose. “I need your help.”
Chapter Fourteen
Simon
The knocking at the motel room door jarred me awake.
I rubbed my eyes and scanned the room for Dalton, and a chill of panic rolled down my spine when I didn’t see him. Morning light was peeking around the heavy curtains of the motel window, and the red electric numbers on the ancient bedside clock displayed ten seventeen. I wasn’t terribly sure what time we had fallen asleep last night, but I could tell by the fog over me that I had slept way too long.
The knocking came again, heavier than before.
“It’s Baha,” the voice rumbled through the door. “Move your ass.”
I pushed the covers off and rolled out of bed, staggering over to my clothing that was still thrown around the room from the excitement last night.
“Hold on!” I called, sounding very much like a man who’d just woken up. I peeked outside through the door’s peephole before opening the door. The sunlight made me wince, but I stepped aside and held the door for him. “Dalton’s not here.”
“I know.” Baha moved inside, scowling at the messy, dark room that was disheveled from sex. I think I was more embarrassed that we left the pizza box on the floor than the fact that there was an open condom wrapper crumpled up on the nightstand. I swept it off as I reached for the lamp and turned it on.
“You know?” My brain was still trying to fire properly from
the fog of sleep. “Where is he?”
“Your bag should be packed and ready to go.” He nodded towards the duffle bag sitting by the foot of the bed. “We need to get on the road.”
“What are you talking about?” I rubbed my eyes with my finger and thumb, trying to knock more sleep away from my senses. “Sorry, I’m just lost. What’s going on?”
Baha sighed like he was arguing with a toddler and crossed his big arms over his chest. The guy was all scowls and annoyance, his dark brows set in a permanent downward position that made his forehead crease. If he wasn’t such a sour person, he probably would be very handsome. He had the bulk and shape of a professional fighter, matching the small scars on his nose and lower jaw.
“I’m taking you to the airport. You’re going home.”
That was the splash of cold water I needed. “Wait, what?”
“Did you not understand me, or are you arguing with me?” he growled, as if it were a dare.
“I don’t understand you,” I said, shaking my head. “Where is Dalton? We were taking the fossil to Dallas. He said it wasn’t safe to go home.”
“Plans changed.” He motioned behind him with his thumb. “Get your ass to the car.”
It felt like I was hanging upside down, like the world had gone backwards and I was still staggering in the wrong direction. I snatched my shirt up from the floor and tugged it on, glancing towards where the fossil case had been placed. I knew it wouldn’t be there, but seeing the empty space still hurt.
Had he really just...left?
Without me? And sent Baha to pick up the mess?
In a haze, I moved to the duffle bag that was waiting for me. On top was a package of Sour Patch Kids and a little folded piece of paper. I swallowed down the fist clamping hot fingers around my chest, and dared to slip the paper out and read it.
I’m sorry about all of this. I didn’t leave you behind because I wanted to.
Maybe we’ll meet again someday back at Dino World. By the raptor or the stupid Allosaurus. Don’t forget me, Pretty Simon. Name the next raptor after me.
