Raptor King (Alien Beast Kings 1)

I would have been horrified to see a scene like this before. I would have been caught up in the horror of abrupt and bloody death, followed by swift and unfeeling dismemberment by animal. I would have wasted my time with empathy for the asshole who deserved to die. But he tried to hurt me. Worse, he tried to make my death a spectacle.

“Eat Professor Porgypuff’s Salted Poison Nuts,” I declare to the sky. “Mmm, yum yum!”

I’m going to be so unwildly popular now, and I couldn’t give less of a fuck. I haven’t had much good luck in a while now, but a squished Eschaton has to be a portent of good things.

“KRISTINE!”

The sky is yelling at me. It sounds like Rex.

“HIDE UNDER SOMETHING.”

Oh sure. I’ll just hide under something. What the hell am I going to…

TEN

A countdown begins. It’s not a very long one, and I’m really not certain that there’s any way to get under anything really.

NINE

There’s a rocky overhang not too far away that I guess qualifies as cover. I urge Tyche under it too, in case whatever is about to happen would also be bad if it happened to a fifty hundred-pound dinosaur. She looks at me with her big, dark eyes and blinks slowly.

“C’mere, girl. Come on. Come under here. Come onnn…”

She lets out a snort and lumbers toward me in hopes of treats. I have no treats, except for maybe getting through this in one piece.

EIGHT

“Come on, girl. Squeeze!”

SEVEN

SIX

“Squeeeezee!”

She makes an annoyed harrumphing noise, but manages to wedge her hide a little closer to the rock wall.

FIVE

FOUR

The two of us are packed in under the overhang like a couple of unlikely sardines. I hope whatever happens next doesn't kill us both. Dinosaurs have a poor track record of surviving things falling from the heavens, and I, well, I think I technically died once already. So I basically have a history of not making it.

THREE

TWO

ONE…

CRASH

The sky shatters, and I mean falls the fuck apart with girders and bits of steel and lights falling from the heavens in the most terrifying storm yet. A deep, dark cloud is cast over the Dinodome, the very sun having been put out by a vengeful king.

The ground shakes and rumbles as something massive lands before us in plumes of smoke and fire. Is it a building? No. Not a building. A space ship. A relatively little door on the side opens up, and Rex emerges.

I shriek with happiness, and then I shriek with more happiness as he drags me into the interior of his shuttle and carries me up through the center of it to the cockpit where the controls are set for launching the fuck out of here, baby.

“What have you done?”

I don’t really need to ask that question. He’s obviously murdered Eschaton and flown a spaceship into the Dinodome. I bet the ratings are through the roof right now. This is an ending to Dinodome nobody saw coming. The slaughter of the owner and the complete destruction of the dome itself. The structure is shattering around the edges, crumbling apart, releasing the various vicious beasts which inhabited this hell realm. I do not know what will become of them, but I know that their hunting grounds just grew many times over. And I know that this is over, at least in this form, at least for the moment. They’re never going to be able to manufacture an ending like this on their own.

There’s just one problem. This isn’t just about the two of us anymore. Everything we’ve done over the past months, it’s bonded us forever, and we are not the only ones affected by these rash, rough, dangerous decisions we are making.

“Rex. We can’t go.”

“Why not?”

"We can’t leave Tyche behind.”

“I’ve beamed Tyche into the cargo hold. She’s coming with us.”

Fuck yes.

3. 2. 1. Launch.

We take off like a bat out of hell, or a space ship out of a ruined simulation designed to murder humans for fun.

“What are we doing? I mean, what are we going to do next? Are we going to your home planet?”

“I’m not bringing this trouble to my home planet. My sons have affairs well in hand, I am sure. Having killed Eschaton, we are going to be fugitives on the run. Won’t that be fun.”

“Sounds like another survival challenge. I’m good at those. We both are.”

“We will have to be,” he smiles, putting the ship into gear, or whatever it is you do with spaceships. I’ll learn that soon enough, just like I’ve learned everything else.

We head for the stars, leaving the chaos to unfold behind us. I wrap my arms around my royal lover, and smile so wide I think my face is going to hinge open and the top of my head will fall off completely. I have never loved anybody as much as I love Rex. I have never had anybody I could trust so completely. It doesn’t matter what life, or the universe happens to throw at us, I know he is on my side. I know he will come for me. I know there is no tearing us apart. Not now, and not ever.