Chapter One: Rally Up
It had been two and a half long years since Zach went through his ordeal at Jurassic World. While he tried to repress all the terror that had flooded his veins during those harrowing hours, the nightmares persisted. At least his panic attacks had eased, and that break in his anxiety was exactly what he was looking to test at his first summer back home from college, where he had spent the last year bypassing his general education classes in order to focus fully on political science.
If he had been asked the day before leaving for that eventful weekend with his aunt Claire what he wanted to pursue in the future, he probably would have responded something business-related. The grand tradition of following in his parents' footsteps. Despite their problems, his parents had managed to stay together throughout the years. In the weeks following "the incident", as his father referred to it, they called off the divorce lawyers and decided their children needed them more than they needed space from each other.
Gray had the elasticity of youth on his side, and he looks back on their vacation as a wild adventure. Zach had been older, and so the trauma became harder to shake. Their parents weren't even there, so they couldn't know the crushing responsibility that Zach had to endure.
Going to college was the greatest escape for him. He ditched his high school girlfriend and started fresh. Political sciences called to him because he now knew how the world worked – that there would always be a villain (not in a reptilian skin), and somehow the scales needed to be balanced.
That was what Owen had taught him.
He pushed the thought of the velociraptor trainer out of his mind. His goofy smile, his bulging biceps, the way he always knew the correct thing to say… he pushed it all down. Zach would not allow himself to have any sort of feelings other than respect for the man who was currently sleeping with his aunt. At least, that was the last he had heard.
Claire had made great strides since leading that T. Rex to the fray, but that didn't forgive an entire lifetime of obliviousness when it came to him. He once again felt almost envious of Gray's youth, because he only had hero-eyes for their aunt.
"Stop thinking about this shit," he told himself, bracing for the entry into the room that awaited him. "You have other things to worry about."
Waiting for him beyond the thin wood door was a group of about thirty people that he had managed to recruit in the short time he had been home. In the past year, he had learned that InGen had continued Hammond's research, and that thanks to Dr. Wu, it had escaped the island. Now, he wasn't one to share all this with the general public, but he did have a certain way with words, and had convinced the crowd in the next room that the genetics building where Wu worked was performing experiments that weren't necessary politically correct. It was the most truth he was willing to share without saying anything that could be turned around on him. He knew how to protect himself.
He opened the door on the people he had gathered to protest the research they didn't even know about. All eyes focused on him, and for a moment he allowed himself to think that his charisma, and not their radical view points, was what drew them all together.
"We are prepared?" He asked the room, as the chatty din simmered to a quiet.
"Hell yeah!" A woman said, standing and raising her poster for all to see. "Are we marching now?"
There came a chorus of approval from the rest, and Zach raised a hand to silence them. "We have a mission. We don't want genetic research to be weaponized! That is our stance. Keep the message clear and we will show those corporate bastards how we feel!"
He thought again of Owen, and his heart skipped a few beats. He had sent the trainer a text a couple weeks prior urging him to participate. Maybe having a high profile person involved would generate some press. However, he got no response. The radio silence wasn't something that he wanted to see, but he understood it. The two of them had a strange history, to say the least.
Zach gave a few more rowdy words to the people he had amassed, and then led them on the march on InGen Genetics.
Owen woke up next to Claire, and once again regretted his decision.
She was a brave, bold woman, but that wasn't enough for him. Not anymore. Ever since the trial by fire at Isla a couple years ago, and that encounter six months ago, he thought that they could never have a real run. Yet he told her that he loved her, and time had taken its course.
On top of that, he really didn't want to get into their familiar fight again. The job he had taken, and why he had undergone such a task, was beyond her limited world view.
Sliding out from beneath the sheets of her bed, his thoughts went directly to the events that transpired around Christmas. He could still feel Zach's smooth skin beneath his harsh touch, that part of him that still felt like an Alpha calling out for an Omega to call him master.
And that is exactly what he got. With Claire, the balance of power shifted from side to side. As his relations with the teen – well, that was another thing entirely. He had been so engrossed with his raptors for so long, that the primal relationship between them definitely surpassed the bond that he had tried to create with Claire. When it came to Zach… that was a different story.
They had spent one night together, right after Christmas. Zach came to him to thank him for saving all their lives at Jurassic World, but it didn't end there. That part of Owen that he called his Alpha raged against his psyche, and acknowledged something within Zach, allowing the two of them to sleep together in a blissful ecstasy.
He wanted to push that night out of his brain, but it stuck with him. He felt for sure that Zach thought nothing of it, being as hormonal as he was, but to Owen it meant the world. He had finally found someone that made him feel whole.
Sliding on his shirt, he looked over at Claire with that regular pain in his gut. He had been lying to her, for sure, but he also didn't want to hurt her. Thankfully, his job would distract Claire and also had to keep Zach at bay, if what the teen had told him was the truth. He pulled on his jacket, and went on to his job at InGen.