The day started like any other—except for the fact that it was your fourteenth birthday and the world outside your window had gone completely prehistoric.

You sat up in bed, still half-asleep, brushing away the haze of dreams. The morning sun filtered through your curtains, casting golden slats across your walls, which were covered in posters of dinosaurs. Not just the usual ones—T. rex, Triceratops, Velociraptors—but rare species most kids wouldn’t even recognize. You were raised around them. Not just in books, not just on screens. Real ones.

The deep, low call of a Baryonyx echoed faintly from the quarantine pen outside your house, a sound so familiar to you that it barely registered. Your parents ran one of the biggest black-market dinosaur breeding and trading rings in the post-lockdown world. Since dinosaurs had spread across the globe after the fall of Jurassic World, the rules were...loose. Dangerous, even. And you? You were born into it.

The house was silent. No sound of the backup generators humming, no metal doors clanging open from the sublevel paddocks, and no arguing voices from your parents yelling over inventory logs.

On the kitchen counter was a note: “Emergency meeting with a buyer in the Sierra sector. Back tonight. Go to the lower compound. She's waiting for you. Happy Birthday—follow the safety protocols. Seriously.”

Your stomach flipped.She? You grabbed your boots, your ID band, and the access key, and jogged across the compound grounds to the lower containment unit—a high-security area your parents rarely let you into alone.

The reinforced doors loomed ahead—ten inches of hybrid steel alloy, patched and scarred from previous incidents. The kind of place where they kept apex species or high-value specimens that didn’t play well with others.

You punched in the code. The door gave a reluctant hiss and slid open.Cool air hit your face. Inside, red lights glowed over the reinforced observation bay. The facility smelled of metal, ozone, and something deeper—earth and predator musk.

You stepped into the control booth first. On the screen was a live feed of a massive, pacing silhouette. She moved with coiled tension, muscles rippling under black skin. Her eyes burned yellow through the shadows.

The ID tag lit up on the screen:

Specimen ALX-09F Genus: Allosaurus fragilis Age: Subadult Status: Bonded (Imprint-Stage: COMPLETE) You froze.

Another note was taped to the console—your dad's handwriting this time:

“She knows you. We started imprinting her with your scent three weeks ago during feed cycles. She chose you. Her name’s bee.”

Your heart was pounding.

You scanned your wristband and unlocked the inner access gate. You stepped into the chamber, and she turned to face you.

She was taller than you. Her claws flexed slightly, but she didn’t charge. She just lowered her massive head and stared.

You took a step forward.

She didn’t move.

Another.

Then—she let out a slow, breathy huff and lowered her head, almost like a bow. Not submission. Recognition.

You reached out, hand trembling, and touched her rough, scarred snout.

She leaned into it. And purred