Wilder (The Wild Ones 3)

“Dino porn may be in style right now, but you two better not go at it until your Ma is off the ice,” George shouts, pointing a golf club at us as though it’s a weapon.

I never know what to say when they say things like that.

Some of the dinosaurs are wrestling. Some are ice skating. Some are having snowball fights…

It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen, and I can’t stop myself from laughing when Kai’s green dino takes off and tackles another one at the waist. There’s just something funny about watching overgrown stuffed animals do mundane, ordinary things.

“These suits are all over the internet,” Hale goes on.

“Vick will skin us alive if he catches all of us together. We’ve been together too much lately. Let’s get this over with,” George gripes.

Greta Wilder, Kai’s mom, glides on the ice in her pink dino suit like she’s the queen of ice. Life isn’t fair.

My ice shoes aren’t doing me any favors as I try to carefully maneuver my way to the hockey goal I’m supposed to be guarding.

“So this is what it’s like to date Wild Ones?” Reese asks from the safety of the sidelines, as she prepares to do the easy part of filming it, instead of partaking.

Music starts blaring as if cued—the theme song of this rowdy bunch.

Krysta Nickel has a microphone and a loud speaker she’s singing into through her dino costume, as she dances as though it’s an easy task dressed like this on ice.

Meanwhile, I guard my goal, while everyone else does their random things.

“All right! Let’s do this!” Hale shouts. “Roll tape!”

“Fore!” George shouts, not wasting any time.

“Duck!” everyone else shouts.

I turn just in time to see a golf ball nail Hale Vincent in the back, and he goes skidding across the ice.

Reese works hard to muffle her laughter as she keeps the camera steady, and I turn back around just as Kai skates toward me quickly, handling the hockey stick and puck from the dino suit as though he’s done it his entire life.

My eyes widen when he suddenly rears back with the stick and hits the puck way harder than I was expecting. A shrill scream leaves me as it hits the padding on my stomach enough to startle the breath out of me.

The impact doesn’t hurt at all, but it’s so jarring and unexpected that I double over on reflex and crash to the ground.

I end up tangled up in the goal that falls over on me, and I can hear Reese laughing in spite of her effort not to.

“Shit! Sorry!” Kai shouts as he slides to my side, but I’m already laughing too hard by this point to have the strength to even try to stand up.

He ends up slipping and falling on top of me, and the breath actually gets knocked out of me this time.

“Son of a bitch. Sorry. Sorry,” he says as he struggles to get up, making it all the more absurd.

Tears start leaking from my eyes as my laughter gets painful. He starts laughing next to me as he crashes to my side, our thirty seconds of film time complete.

His laughter cuts out abruptly, and I glance over as his dino head swings up.

“Oh shit,” he says under his breath. “Hunter, don’t! That’s too close—”

A loud boom cracks the air with a sizzle and pop so loudly that it makes my ears ring and the ice feel like it’s vibrating. There’s a distinct sound of a tree cracking that follows. I’ve already latched on to Kai, whirling my head around as a fierce, “Whoo!!” gets shouted by some of the Wilders.

Kai laughs under his breath…until that tree suddenly collapses onto the ice, shattering a big chunk of it and sending pieces hurling into the air.

What the hell?!

“Too far, Wilders! Too damn far!” someone shouts, but one of the skating dinos crashes into the tree.

The undetermined Wild One Dino is forced into a falling flip, and smashes the ice on the other side.

A loud groan echoes through the air in the wake of what sounded sort of like an explosion, but not really.

“What was that?” I ask on a shaky breath.

“Tannerite,” Kai states without any farther explanation as he shoves to his feet and skates toward the others, bitching about his plan not involving getting so close or something.

Just as I manage to make it to my feet for the first time all by myself, I hear a loud growl. My head whirls around, and I spot Cougar staring at me, lips curled back and teeth bared.

“No! It’s me, Cougar! It’s me! I’m not really another animal in your territory! I promise!” I shout as she launches herself at me.

Reese screams. I scream. Cougar bites onto my tail, and I run in place, trying my damnedest to get away from her as she tries to wrangle me into submission.