Threshold shift

Chapter 2

Sometimes he dreamed about The Incident.

He had been part of everything, had been there, right in the middle, hunted by the i-rex. She had tried to kill the one human who was talented enough to control her, who might bond with her.

Owen Grady had survived, thanks to luck, skill and his pack of four velociraptors. It was thanks to them that he wasn't experiencing severe post traumatic stress disorder symptoms. When he dreamed, it was like a raptor.

Distanced. Cold logic. Survival above everything else.

The pack protected his mind, kept him sane, balanced his very soul, and Owen gave them the same stability by being a strong, powerful preternatural who was their alpha.

But sometimes the dreams were strange.

Not like reality.

Not what had happened.

Like last night had been.

Owen had dreamed of violent attacks that had never occurred, about deaths among his pack. Echo, Charlie and Delta dying. Blue surviving.

He had been there, in the dark, hunting the indominus, like it had hunted him, hiding from her violence, her single-mindedness as she wanted to find the human who shone like a beacon in the night. He had taken the pack to find her, had used their scent training, and then they had turned on him.

When he woke it was with adrenaline spiking through him, his mind muddled and confused, seeking out his pack and finding four peacefully resting raptors.

He had to go into the stables, see them for himself, and when he slipped into the semi-dark building, the musty smell of ground-up bark, dried leaves, sand, and his pack enveloped him like an olfactory aura.

Tension slowly slid out of him, the knots in his shoulders loosening a little, and he exhaled.

There was a soft snuffle, then a slender shadow detached itself out of the twilight, coalescing into the almost phantom-like form of a velociraptor, silently padding over to him. A quizzical rumble had him smile and Owen wrapped an arm around Blue's neck, burying his face against her scaly skin.

"Hey," he mumbled.

Her scent was familiar. Musky, warm, mixed with the faint odor of earth and dry leaves. Owen breathed it in, felt his mind sink against her almost automatically, and part of his tension flowed away.

The quizzical sense remained. What happened? she wanted to know.

"Bad dream."

Blue, beta of the pack and three months older than her pack sisters, felt the turmoil in him, distorted images buoying through his mind, crashing against reality. Like her pack sisters she didn't understand the concept of such vivid dreams. Animals dreamed, but not in the way humans did. Owen had never felt them go through nightmares and when they dreamed, he barely received a blip at the edge of his mind.

You don't have nightmares, alpha, she stated matter-of-fact.

No, he didn't. He didn't wake up, disoriented, scared, heart hammering and mind whirling with what he had dreamed of. He didn't dream surreal things.

Because the pack wouldn't let him have nightmares.

When he fell asleep, he was automatically ensconced in the pack mind. They were curled up around him, protective and seeking his nearness in one. It had happened gradually, from the babies he had raised to the rambunctious teens to the lethal hunting pack of four grown, fully mature and adult velociraptors.

"I have weird dreams," Owen murmured. "About the i-rex. Stupid stuff. Happened so long ago and sometimes it comes back. Now I dream of things that never happened."