Welcome to Jurassic World

Chapter 45

(A/N: Hi, I would just like to thank you guys so much for 100,000 reads! So in honour of that accomplishment, welcome to the very first chapter of Jurassic World: Dominion. I hope you like it. XxD)

******************************************************************

Four years is a long time.

And it had been four years since Anya Masrani, the only living descendant of billionaire and Jurassic World founder, Simon Masrani, had been seen.

Granted she was a wanted criminal in relation to Maisie's disappearance from the Lockwood manor, but Anya had never been a fan of being in the public eye anyway.

And neither was her boyfriend – husband. It still shocked her to say that.

True to his word, Owen Grady had married her after they lived through the events at Lockwood manor. He had used some of his wife's tech, which was ridiculously encrypted to prevent anyone from finding their location, to get himself ordained.

And in their little backyard, around a campfire, Anya stood with Owen and Maisie, a large grin on her face and a pillowcase on her head as a veil as Owen married them.

It was absurdly perfect.

Despite the fact that it was just the three of them, they didn't have fancy clothes or rings. Rather, they had a tattoo gun where they tattooed their wedding date in Roman numerals on their ring fingers. It was much less of a hassle with all the work they did anyway.

The two of them worked with a band of renegades who grabbed dinosaurs from areas that were too close to civilisation and moved them to a safe place.

Humans were a sucky species sometimes.

In the four years that they'd been coexisting with dinosaurs, it hadn't taken long before a black market popped up for them. Before people were illegally breeding them or mistreating them or trading them.

In fact, Claire Dearing, who was also slightly wanted, spent much of her time trying to free them - that was done illegally -, whilst Owen and Anya spent most of their time trying to save the ones already out there.

Maisie, on the other hand, was becoming bit of a handful.

She had just turned 14 and wasn't too thrilled about her living arrangements. She wasn't allowed past the bridge of the remote area they lived in because people might recognise her, even four years later.

They had a good system going.

Claire stayed with her while Owen and Anya were out at work and Owen and Anya stayed with her while Claire was out at work. It wasn't a perfect system. There were times when Maisie was left by herself for a bit until someone got there, not that she minded. She liked the quiet and even in their absence, the cabin they stayed in was well-stocked thanks to Anya.

And sometimes there were times when all of them were home.

Maisie hated those times a bit more because Claire in particular was pretty adamant about the not going past the bridge rule.

Owen encouraged it but was definitely a bit more lax about it than Claire was.

Anya was definitely her favourite.

She had this way of making everything fun. Of lighting up a room or making everyone understand a situation in the way that she did. And she always brought Maisie back trinkets and knick-knacks from her adventures.

Back when Maisie still had nightmares from what happened at Lockwood manor, the stories Anya would tell were nothing short of incredibly happy. Be it a funny story about her and Owen – granted, he told slightly different versions of the same stories where he painted himself as the hero as well – or a story from her and her father's culture or their time living in India, Maisie could sleep soundly after Anya told her a story.

Claire tried, but she was sort of just there. Kind of like an aunt you hadn't seen in a long time. She didn't really know how to talk to Maisie.

If anything, Maisie considered Owen and Anya more so her parents. They were the ones around a lot more too.

She never said anything about that to them though. It was sort of unspoken, but Owen and Anya felt it too. They saw the way Maisie tended to stick closer to them whenever all four of them were together.

Though, neither her parents nor Claire could answer the questions she had. The questions about Charlotte. About her birth. About who she was before she met them.

And one day Anya really hoped that she'd be able to give her those answers.

Today, however, wasn't that day.

Because today Owen Masrani-Grady was racing on the back of a horse as he chased down a herd of Parasaurolophus, he and his band of renegades trying to nab at least one and get it out of the Sierra Nevada.

While the two men Owen worked with chased after the herd, Owen went after one of the crested dinosaurs that had been separated, swinging his lasso over his head as he prepared to throw it.

His wife had laughed at him relentlessly when he was first learning how to throw one of those things. Let's just say it took him a few days to get the hang of it.

And the practice was worth it as he looped the rope around the Parasaurolophus's neck before trying to tie it to the saddle of his horse.

It was a task that was going well, at least until the dinosaur slid down an embankment and Owen almost lost his grip on the rope as he was pulled off his horse and onto the cold, snow-covered ground.

As it seeped through his clothes and sunk into his shoes, he blinked it from his eyes as he watched the rope catch around a tree stump, Owen angling his body so that his feet hit the dead wood and he could get a little bit of leverage to stop the Parasaurolophus from running.

The dinosaur roared as it pulled on the rope, its little arms too short to reach as the rope began to slip from Owen's grasp, despite the gloves he wore.

With a thumb's length worth of rope left after his hands, Owen dove for the tree stump, wrapping the rope around it and tying it securely as the dinosaur still wailed and he began to pull its head closer as he tried to calm it.

"We're gonna get you someplace safe," he promised as the Parasaurolophus lowered its head to his hand, its nostrils blowing out a warm breath in the cold wind as the air travelled down the arm of Owen's coat and warmed him up too.

Eventually, he was able to get himself back on his horse as he led the Parasaurolophus back the way they'd come, meeting up with the renegades who'd waited for him after they'd lost the rest of the herd.

"Where's Anya?" he asked with a raised brow, especially since neither one of the men seemed too worried.

"Right here, Sailor," came her melodious voice and Owen could hear the smile in her words as he turned in the direction of the sound to see her sitting on the back of a Parasaurolophus she'd caught, her horse trailing behind until one of the renegades took its' reigns. "Looks like you caught one too," she grinned victoriously.

"You just had to one-up me, huh?" he asked with a smirk.

Her gloved hands ran up the neck of the dinosaur as she pulled her beanie further onto her hair.

"Old habits die hard," she shot back, the dinosaur chirping happily in response to her warm strokes on its neck.

"Well, two is better than nothing," he admitted. "So, let's get these guys to their new home so we can go back home to our kid."

Her smile was warm in the winter wind. It was happy and it was bright. It was a sight Owen loved seeing on her face.

"Sounds like a good plan, Sailor."

And onwards they trekked.