JANUARY 2015

Approximately 3.2% of the world's population was born without a soulmark, a mark somewhere on their body that grows into the first words their soulmate will speak to them. Of that small percentage, around half will appear later in life - some through chance, some by actually touching their soulmate - while the other half never gets their soulmark. Some people have speculated that this is because they don't have a soulmate, the more religious people in the world believe they're cursed by their god. But many go on to live happy lives, with or without a partner.

Nic Forester was one of these unlucky few.

Her parents wanted her to know she was loved, regardless; however, her aunt and uncle shunned her for it. After her parents were murdered by poachers while on a camping trip, her aunt and uncle took her in and their treatment of her only got worse. The only saving grace was her cousin, Eric. Eric showed her she was loved, protected her, and as soon as he was able to move out on his own, he took her with him and looked after her.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop people from bullying her well into her adulthood over her lack of soulmark.

It wasn't until she was hired at Jurassic World as an IT service desk worker that she learned to lie about her soulmark. When people asked, she told them it was somewhere she'd rather not show and they accepted that.

Mostly, though, she managed to avoid all talk of soulmates or redirect the conversation when it came up by getting another round of drinks at the bar.

The only time she regretted not having one was when she saw Owen Grady. A little over six feet tall, built like a brick shithouse, and absolutely gorgeous. Those blue-green eyes of his made her melt!

Too bad he'd never notice her. She'd seen the parade of women he'd taken to his bungalow and she looked nothing like them. Every one of them was athletic and confident with fiery red or bleach blonde hair. Nic had mousy brown hair, and she was only confident when backed into a corner - her cousin, Eric, had compared her to a wild animal once. Not the most flattering comparison, if you asked her.

Not to mention that Own had his soulmark, so the odds were pretty damn good that was never going to happen. The number of times she'd seen him working shirtless in the sun, soulmark on full display….

But she could still look.

Even now as she worked at fixing one of the control panels on the raptor pen she got glimpses of him as he walked the catwalks and called out to the dangerous predators below. He wasn't shirtless, but with how that henley fit, he might as well have been! It was practically obscene!

His muscles flexed just under the thin material as he led the raptors through some kind of drill, talking to them like they were particularly stubborn puppies and not carnivorous dinosaurs.

Nic smiled and shook her head, then re-focussed on the control panel. Some idiot had knocked it with the treat bucket and the parts inside it had disconnected. Some of them needed replacing. Luckily, it wasn't anything important. The control panel didn't let the raptors loose in the park if it broke down, it just meant they had to reroute a few commands to the main console below.

As she worked, she saw Owen and the other lead trainer, Barry, head down the stairs toward the grooming cage. Barry was slightly shorter than Owen, maybe by an inch or two, but holy shit was he also just a wall of muscle. The eye candy she had when she came out to the raptor pen to work….

She made a few more adjustments to the panel, reseated the RAM, tested the panel, and put it all back together.

Below her, the raptors were all settling into their cages except Blue. She was still running around like she was hyped up on sugar. Did velociraptors eat sugar? Nic didn't know. Maybe it was the dinosaur version of the zoomies.

Blue snapped her jaws and snarled and ran around the cage.

Then Nic saw why Blue was so energetic.

One of the pigs they used to bait the raptors ran through the grass, squealing loudly. Workers scattered around the catwalks trying to get ahold of it as it ducked and dodged and did its best to avoid its would-be killer. Had she accidentally let it out when testing the panel? She didn't think so - after all, that would be a pretty poor control for park safety if any old idiot could hit a button in the raptor pen and send them into a frenzy.

Shaking her head, she turned back to her kit - she didn't want to see the poor pig get eaten. As she bent to pick it up, one of the workers slammed into her as he ran past and sent her flying over the railing into the pen below.

Nic landed with a rough thud in a patch of grass. Nothing hurt so that was the good news. The bad news was Blue had skidded to a stop mere feet away from her, lip curled, clawed toe tapping on the ground, head tilted to the side. Almost as though she was trying to figure out what to make of the intruder.

Above and around her chaos erupted. Workers shouted. The sound of metal hitting metal reached her ears - was that the gate opening?

But she didn't dare look at any of it. All she could focus on was the danger in front of her.

In the back of her mind, Nic remembered Owen telling a new worker not to look away from the raptors. Keeping her eyes on Blue, she slowly got to her feet just as Owen ran out in front of her. Owen's arm stretched out as he shouted at both the Asset Containment Unit officers on the catwalk above to not shoot and at Blue to stay back.

"Hold your fire!" he called, looking up to the catwalk. "Hold!"

The ACU officers must've indicated compliance somehow because Owen redirected his attention to Blue.

"Stay back."

Blue snorted and snapped, but didn't move any closer.

"Hey!" Owen shouted. "Don't give me that shit! Back up!"

Amazingly, Blue backed down. She growled softly, but took a step back.

"Good," Owen said. "Good."

"So," Nic muttered quietly, "how do we not get eaten?"

Owen's posture stiffened a little, but he kept his focus on Blue. "Back through the gate," he said. "Slowly."

It was hard to keep herself steady while not only walking backwards, but walking backwards while fearing for her life. Every step they made back to the gate, Blue advanced. No closer, though. Just matching step for step.

A hand grasped her wrist, making her jump a little, but she didn't look at whoever it was. They guided her back through the gate and to safety. Well. Relative safety. The gate was still open. And Owen was still inside.

"Close the gate," Owen said.

"Are you crazy?!" Barry hissed to her right. So that was who dragged her out of the pen.

Nic couldn't take her eyes off him or Blue. They came to a stop a couple of feet from the gate at a standstill. Blue snorted, but otherwise didn't make a move. It occurred to her, in the back of her mind, that if Blue wanted them all dead, she could have charged and all three of them would be raptor meat before they even knew it.

So why wasn't Blue attacking?

The door on the gate closed as Barry hissed a curse in French.

She must've spaced out and missed the part where Owen convinced Barry to lock him in the pen! "What's he doing?" she murmured to Barry.

Barry shook his head as he watched Owen carefully and muttered under his breath.

Owen slowly stepped backward. One step.

Two.

Three.

And Blue remained still, growling low.

Four.

Five.

And he turned sharply and rolled under the nearly closed gate.

Blue surged forward and closed her jaws around empty air as the gate slammed shut with Owen safely behind it. Her claws poked through the bars as she…was she purring or growling?

Nic shook her head and fought to remember how to breathe. They were safe.

"You okay?"

She turned to see Owen panting heavily as he reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.

"It's Nic, right?" he asked. "Anything hurt?"

The hand slid down to her hip and she hissed in pain. She didn't remember landing on her hip, but she supposed she could be misremembering. Long fall, murderous dinosaur waiting at the bottom. Memory could be a funny thing. Not to mention the feeling of his fingers on her skin probably wasn't helping the situation. The reaction her body was having to a simple touch was almost indecent and she flushed a little.

"I…."

His breathing started to relax and even out. "Can I take a look?"

Not trusting her voice, Nic nodded.

Owen's fingers grazed her skin as he lifted her shirt a little and pulled her pants down just far enough to see her hip. And the freshly emblazoned lettering.

Back through the gate. Slowly.

Her soulmark.

Owen's words.

That meant Owen's soulmark was…. She'd never actually seen it from close enough to make out the words. But they had to be 'So, how do we not get eaten? '.

Her wide eyes met his.

"You've got to be shitting me," he muttered, brow furrowed as he stared at the mark. "You?!"

And in an instant her heart sank. After 35 years she finally had a soulmark, finally met her soulmate, and he…. Nic blinked back tears and stormed out of the grooming cage.

Just her luck, the one person who was supposed to be capable of loving her unconditionally thought she was…. Whatever he thought, he clearly didn't think much of her.

As soon as she reached her car, she sighed and let out a frustrated growl. Her kit. She'd left her kit on the catwalk. It wasn't like she could just walk back to the IT office without her laptop or any of the gear she'd checked out.

"Fuck!" she hissed.

Owen watched as Nic stormed off. It was an asshole reaction, he knew it. But she wasn't his type at all. Quiet women did nothing for him. He needed a woman who could hold her own, even if it was just a one night stand.

Hell, he was half sure he'd break the poor girl.

"You could have been more tactful," Barry muttered.

Owen shook his head and walked back toward the grooming harnesses. "What do you want me to say?" he grumbled. "You've seen my type - she's not it."

"That soulmark on your chest would argue otherwise," Barry said.

He reached up to subconsciously rub at the mark seared into the skin just below his left shoulder. Seared might not have been the best way to describe it, given he was born with it, but right now it felt like the mark was on fire.

Through the gate Owen watched the wranglers on the catwalk manoeuvre Blue into her harness and cage. "Maybe the damn thing got it wrong."

Barry snorted a laugh. "Or maybe you're just un imbécile."

Owen turned to face his friend, hands on his hips. "What do you want me to say? She's not my type! Look at her, poor girl probably jumps at her own damn shadow!"

"She handled herself well in the pen," Barry countered. "Had the presence of mind not to look away from Blue or turn her back."

"She was frozen in terror," Owen retorted.

"Even if that were true," Barry said, "how many people wouldn't be in that position?"

Owen chewed his lip as Blue pushed her snout into the harness. Blue hadn't attacked the girl at all. A few growls and snarls and grunts that might've been terrifying to her, but she hadn't actually been aggressive until Owen turned his back and ducked under the gate.

Blue must be getting better at socializing.

"Good girl," he murmured.

Even if she purposely hadn't attacked, that didn't change the fact that Nic wasn't his type. Whatever the soulmark said, he wasn't attracted to someone like her.

"I'm not about to fall for some mousy IT girl who can't stand up for herself, Barry," he muttered, locking Blue into the harness.

Loud banging on the catwalk made him look up just in time to see Nic storming off again. She must've come back for her gear and heard him.

"Fuck," he sighed. He was such an asshole sometimes.

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