Dinosaur World 7 Chapter 1

There was a full moon out as we flew over the dark island of Jejudo in the alien spacecraft. I stared out at the dark shapes of trees below us and had to remind myself that dinosaurs couldn’t harm the spaceship while our forcefield was activated.

It had been only a few hours since we left Ravenscar, but Adhara’s spaceship had gotten us to Korea’s largest island in a timeframe no plane could have ever achieved.

And we didn’t even get lost.

Adhara sat in the pilot seat the whole way, and now her lilac fingers delicately moved over the alien controls as she used her thermal scanner to look for life below. The beautiful alien’s long, silver hair glistened in the moonlight coming through the window, and the small gills on her neck fluttered as she hummed quietly to herself. Her emerald green eyes shimmered with metallic-looking flecks, and silver freckles covered the angular plains of her face.

Adhara hadn’t been in our lives for long, but she’d become a strong member of our team after we cleared up the misunderstanding she had with humans. We’d finally worked out that her people mistook the humans of Earth for an ancient enemy race of similar looking beings called alakerik who used to have a colony on Mars. When her people picked up a signal the hadron collider in CERN had unknowingly sent out, they took this as a call to war.

As it turned out, Adhara’s people responded to the threat by opening thousands of portals all over Earth and letting vicious, bloodthirsty dinosaurs through. Their intent was to wipe out our entire race and then claim our planet for their own.

Luckily, we managed to convince Adhara that humanity had nothing to do with the alakerik race and were in fact innocent on all counts. Unluckily, she hadn’t been able to contact her fellow aliens to spread the word.

Now, it was a race against time to find out how to send a message to Adhara’s people and let them know the human race never meant to send a war cry in their direction. If we failed, an entire fleet of armed aliens would be arriving soon to finish off the attack and steal our planet.

It hadn’t been long ago that I thought life couldn’t get any more complicated than the dinosaur apocalypse. Adding aliens into the mix had really added a new layer of danger, but my girls and I had overcome shit loads of terrifying experiences on the road since all this kicked off. I’d looked death in the toothy, scaly face enough times to know we could probably survive this if we did what we always did: fight our asses off to survive.

Right now, this meant traveling to the Korean island of Jejudo to find Hae-won’s father. He’d somehow managed to call us once even after the phone signals all failed, and while we didn’t know how he managed it, or what tech allowed him to hack into military satellites, we hoped Adhara could use the same system to communicate with her people.

Before it was too late.

My three lovers sat in the passenger seats beside me, and all our eyes were fixed on the ground below as we stared out the blue-tinted window at Jejudo below.

Hae-won’s ebony hair was pushed back over her shoulders, and she bit her lip like she’d been doing for several minutes now. She looked nervous as we tried to locate her family base in the dark, and I knew there must be a lot on her mind.

Just before we’d taken off, my Korean lover revealed she was pregnant with my child.

Hae-won had been a badass from the moment we met in Cambridge University. She’d hotwired motorcycles, mastered multiple weapons with little training, and proven she picked up many of her infamous father’s skills. She was feisty, sexy, gorgeous, and completely in love with me, and I couldn’t help but grin every time I thought of her as a mother.

It wasn’t just Hae-won who was carrying my baby, though.

Becka tapped her foot impatiently to my left as she twirled a blonde strand of blonde hair around her finger. We’d recently traveled across England to find Becka’s mum, and the beautiful blonde and I had accidently ripped our condom the first time we’d made love, but the one thing she wanted more than anything else was to have a baby with me, so we’d kind of forsaken any other protection and had fucked bareback for the last three or so weeks.

The gorgeous Brit had finally gotten to make the announcement a few hours ago that she was also pregnant, and she’d spent nearly every second since then holding my hand and sending me adorable smiles.

Kat sat in the final seat of the spacecraft, and the pretty soldier looked engrossed in the alien technology as we scanned the jungle floor. The curly-haired corporal joined us on our way to Ravenscar after her military base became unsafe, and she’d quickly become a vital part of our family. She was tough as nails and determined like no one I’d ever met, and she never shied away from making it very clear how much she cared about me and my other lovers. Now, her hazel eyes sparkled as lights flashed on the control panel, and I knew what that look meant.

Kat was desperate to have a go of flying the ship, but Adhara had been adamant about no one touching her controls. Ever.

I grinned as I admired the moonlit faces of my three girlfriends, and with them by my side, preventing the end of the world didn’t seem so impossible. They inspired me everyday to kick ass and keep stepping no matter how crazy shit got, and now that the lives of my first two children were at stake as well, I’d unlocked a whole new level of determination.

There was no way I was going to let the world end. Not when my lovers and babies were here with me.

I stifled a yawn as the spaceship hovered over a clump of trees, and I looked over at Adhara as she peered out of the front window.

“Did you find something?” I asked, and the lilac-skinned alien sighed.

“There are many omatti here,” she said. “Dinosaurs, is what I mean.”

“Don’t worry.” I grinned. “We’ve definitely learned your word for them by now.”

“I’m almost positive this is near where the family base is,” Hae-won said. “It’s so hard to remember, but it was near the outskirts of the forest right on this side of the island.”

“Should we just roll down the window and yell?” Becka muttered with a smirk. “We’ve been looking for ages.”

“It’s so cool, though,” Kat said as she sat on the edge of her seat. “This technology is amazing, I could watch it all day.”

“Well I want to sleep,” Becka yawned. “I’m a pregnant woman, I can’t be up all night.”

“Your stomach is still flat as a board,” Kat said with a raised eyebrow. “I think you’ve got a while before pregnancy habits start to kick in.”

Becka scoffed in mock insult, and I left a soft kiss on her hand that made her instantly melt into an adorable puddle beside me.

The ship moved slowly over the trees, and the small screen which showed the thermal scanner findings flashed up with orange outlines of various animals. Alien technology seemed to be eons ahead of ours in so many ways, and the thermal imaging picked up what looked like mice as they ran along the forest floor along with a few even smaller creatures.

I wished it was light enough to see the view properly, though, because I knew the island would look incredible from up high. There hadn’t been any signs of a base from what we’d seen, and the only humans who had come up on the scanner were clearly families inside small houses near the beach.

“So, you’ve never been to the base?” I asked the Korean beauty beside me.

“Not that I can remember,” Hae-won replied. “I think I possibly went when I was very small.”

“You’re still very small,” Becka giggled. “Sorry, I really am sleep deprived.”

There was the sound of multiple roars below us, and I glanced at the thermal scanner which showed a mass group of dinos. Like the herds we’d seen at Ravenscar, it seemed to be multiple different species, some of which I didn’t recognize the shape of at all.

“Seems they’re ganging up together here as well,” Kat said grimly. “I hoped maybe they hadn’t caught up over here.”

“Do you think there’s more dinos or humans at this point?” Becka asked, and I shrugged as I stared at the orange outlines moving across the screen.

“There have been no human shapes nearby,” Adhara reported. “Not since we left the little house land.”

“Village,” Kat added. “Those little places are called villages.”

“Village,” the alien repeated with a nod. “Village, village…”

The air system in the spaceship seemed to regulate the temperature constantly in here, so I had no idea what to expect when we eventually left the ship. I’d never been anywhere in Asia before, and I was excited to see part of the world that was so far from my home in the States.

I’d already managed to get on a tour of England, although the sightseeing had been interrupted by prehistoric monsters that wanted nothing more than to slaughter us. Still, it was a hell of a trip, and getting to learn about Hae-won’s family and her country was an opportunity I was looking forward to.

A distant thunderous howl reminded me it wasn’t exactly going to be a vacation, but there were worse places to save the world than a Korean island.

“I’m so excited to see my family,” Hae-won said. “I can’t believe you are going to meet my father.”

“Ahh, yes… The underground king.” I grinned. “I have to admit, I’m still kind of nervous. He sounds intimidating as fuck.”

“Definitely introduce yourself as the guy who shagged his little princess and got her preggo.” Kat smirked. “That’s always a good way to make dads like you.”

Becka smacked the soldier’s arm with a giggle, and Adhara suddenly gasped.

“What?” I asked as I stood up to get a better view.

“There are even more omatti here,” the alien muttered. “They are gathering so much near this one place. Do you see?”

I frowned down at the thermal scanner and saw there were a shit load of dinos prowling back and forth over the same spot. It looked like most of them stood on their hind legs, but it was difficult to tell how big they were from the small screen.

“Maybe they have a nest there,” I suggested as I peered out of the window.

It was so dark below that I could barely make out the shapes of the trees, and even though Adhara’s ship had spotlights she could use, we’d decided it was better to be as subtle as possible so we didn’t alarm the locals.

The last thing we needed was to alert the entire island that we had an alien spacecraft, so we made do with the thermal scanner to keep track of the life below.

“No, not a nest,” Adhara replied as she studied the screen. “The omatti egg would show up on screen. The small ones would still have heat enough to show.”

We watched as the orange silhouettes on the screen slowly started to leave their spot and slunk back off into the trees. Adhara slowed down the ship and hovered over the spot where the dinos had gathered.

“Are we going to land?” Kat asked. “If Hae-won only knows the rough location, we might be better doing the search on foot.”

“What if the base isn’t even on this island?” Becka asked. “If Hae-won can’t remember, then this might not be the right spot. Or her dad could have told her a lie.”

“My father would not lie to me,” Hae-won said firmly. “He may hide the truth sometimes, but he would never lie.”

“Okay.” The blonde shrugged. “As long as he still has that pool you mentioned, he’s my favourite person in your family so far.”

Hae-won grinned at her friend, and Adhara started to slowly lower the ship into a clearing where the trees created a small circle.

“Okay,” I said. “I guess we better get geared up if we’re going to explore a jungle. We have no idea if the dinos are any different over here.”

The girls stood up and we headed over to the weapons room in the ship, and just walking through the doorway activated the dim pink lights in the place.

We’d left a bunch of Adhara’s guns with the locals at Ravenscar after we taught them how to operate the alien technology, but there was still a more than decent selection of the weapons left for us.

I’d quickly fallen in love with the slick design of the weapons as well as the unbelievable power of them. There were large, cylindrical blasters which could blow up dinos into a firework display of guts, sharp guns with dagger-like bullets and the ability to melt down bodies into goop, and swords with blades which could cut through anything, including the thickest hides.

I still had my SA80 rifle and Glock, which had been my trusty weapons through most of our trip, but the alien technology quickly became my favored method of fighting. Since we left a lot of our personal ammo reserved back in Ravenscar for the locals, we also wanted to try and preserve what we could during our time in Korea.

The sharp guns Adhara gifted us looked somewhat similar to human rifles. They were razor-thin, though, and the finish was a deep bronze color. Their bullets were razor-sharp, too, and I’d used them to take down enormous dinosaurs with a single shot.

Which was just so fucking satisfying after all the shit we’d come up against in the last few weeks.

I swung a sharp gun over my back and hovered my hand over one of the swords. They were hung up on the wall with the blade still retracted into the dark green hilts, and I hadn’t gotten the chance to use one on a live dino yet. I’d only tried it out on a dead triceratops back at the castle, and the blade had sliced through the thick hide with no problems.

“You really want to cut something up, don’t you?” Kat laughed as she watched me. The soldier took some more sharp guns and handed them to the other girls before she took one for herself.

“So badly.” I grinned and grabbed one of the sword hilts before I attached it onto my belt. Without the blade it was incredibly light, and like the rest of the weapons, I could barely feel it as I carried it.

“So, what’s the plan?” Becka asked as she flicked her blonde hair. “We just run around the forest until we find the secret mafia base?”

“He is not the mafia,” Hae-won sighed. “But I know the base is around here somewhere.”

“I trust you,” I said, and the Korean beauty smiled up at me as she clutched her sharp gun.

Becka absentmindedly stroked her belly, and although it was still flat, I could already tell it wouldn’t be long before she was showing off our baby to the world.

I knew the girls were capable of handling themselves, but having two of them pregnant with my babies made me feel so much more protective. I almost felt sorry for any dino that crossed our path, because no lizard fucker would come near my kids, let alone my super-proud, pregnant girlfriends.

Once we all had our guns, we stepped back over to the pilot’s chair as Adhara guided the spacecraft to hover over the forest floor. She’d managed to maneuver the ship down between trees without crushing any, and she checked the thermal screen every couple of seconds to make sure we were alone before she started to lower the craft onto the ground.

I peered out into the darkness, but the forest seemed still, and the only noise I could hear was some kind of night bird chirping far off.

“I think we should use these,” Adhara said, and she pulled open a small compartment to reveal two pairs of what looked like sunglasses. “Good for seeing in the darkness.”

I stared at what apparently were her people’s version of night vision goggles. They were super slim, and the lenses were tinted dark green, and the shiny black sturdy temples were attached to a black, stretchy cord so we could keep them around our necks.

“Yes,” Hae-won said as she bounced up and down. “I have been waiting to use these.”

Adhara took both pairs out and handed one to me then one to Hae-won.

“You don’t want one?” I asked, and the alien shook her head as she rose to her feet.

“I only need them when there is no light,” she said. “Your moon is enough.”

“Nice.” I grinned as I examined the goggles.

I hung them around my neck and wasn’t surprised to find they were lightweight to carry. Then I turned to face the darkness outside the front window and took a moment to try and study the jungle with just my natural eyesight. It was hard to see much other than the plants closest to us, and as clouds rolled in front of the moon, everything dimmed.

I grabbed my goggles and slid them onto my nose, and I had to stifle a gasp as the world suddenly lit up with color.

“What the fuck?” I muttered as I stared out at the forest, which suddenly looked bright enough to be around sunset.

I could see the brown of the trunks and the various greens of the tall palm trees and bushes. There were small pink and orange flowers scattered around the clearing we landed in, and I could see every leaf that rustled in the evening breeze. I held my hands out in front of me and could see every minuscule scratch on my skin.

Even in the interior lights of the ship, the goggles somehow improved my eyesight.

I’d played around with cheap night vision goggles as a kid, but they’d barely made it any easier to see, and everything had been an emerald green color. The alien tech made everything visible, and I watched Hae-won as she looked around open-mouthed with her goggles perched on her face.

“They work?” Adhara asked as she looked at me. “I have not used in a while.”

“They’re fucking amazing,” I chuckled. “You really are just showing off at this point.”

The alien smiled as she looked up at the treetops and kept steadily taking us down toward the ground, and a far off roar echoed through the jungle. The sound snapped me out of my technology-induced trance, and I knew it was almost time to explore.

“Okay,” I said as I slowly lowered the eyewear. “We’ve seen there’s shit loads of dinos here, so it goes without saying we need to be careful. The three of us who can see should stay on the outside of the group. Becka and Kat, stick to the middle.”

“Make sure to check above us, too.” Kat nodded. “Who knows what kind of dino parrots are in here.”

“What the fuck is a dino parrot?” Becka snorted. “Aren’t modern birds just dinosaurs anyway?”

“I guess.” Kat shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m tired, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get-”

Before I could finish, there was a deafening roar of gunfire, and Adhara slammed her hand down on the controls in the blink of an eye. A split second later, the forcefield zapped on, and we landed on the ground with a thump.

It sounded like a dozen assault rifles were going full bore on our asses, and as my heartrate jacked up, I tried to remember we were safe under the cover of the forcefield.

I sprang toward the front window with my sharp gun in hand, and the girls hurried over to join me.

The hazey shield that wrapped around the ship was barely visible from the inside, but as bullets flew toward us, I could see them bounce off the forcefield and ricochet back into the trees.

There were shouts from all around the ship as more shots were fired, and I slid on my goggles to get a better look.

It was clear we were not dealing with some ragtag gang like the ones we’d encountered in England.

The fast moving group of men were all dressed in black, and even from a distance, I could see the muscle definition in their arms. Some of the men had scarfs pulled up over the bottom of their faces, and others had tight black hats down over their eyebrows.

The weapons in their hands were slick, black rifles I didn’t recognize the make of, but they looked expensive as hell, and as the group quickly formed a circle around the ship, one man yelled in Korean to make the gunfire halt on the spot.

I guessed they’d realized their bullets were no use, but not one of them backed away from the spacecraft.

“Holy shit!” Becka whimpered as we stared out at the men.

“Uh, Hae-won,” I said as calmly as possible. “Is this your family?”

“No fucking way,” Kat said at once, and she turned to the Korean beauty.

Hae-won leaned over the control panel as she stared out into the darkness with her goggles on, and she slowly turned her head like she was scanning every half-covered face.

“Min-jun!” she suddenly gasped.

“No fucking way,” Kat scoffed again. “You really know one of these guys?”

“They will not shoot us!” Hae-won said and bolted toward the exit before any of us could grab her.

“Hae-won, stop!” I yelled as I dove after her, but she’d already slammed the exit button, and the ship opened into the Korean night.

“Min-jun!” she screamed through the forcefield, and the shouting of the men suddenly stopped.

Then Hae-won screamed something in Korean, and I glanced back at the other girls to find them wide-eyed with their weapons raised at the ready.

“Adhara, stay inside,” I whispered. “We don’t know who these people are, and you’re… well, you’re an alien.”

The lilac alien looked unsure, but she nodded as she gripped her sharp gun.

“Be safe,” she murmured.

“We will,” I promised.

“Min-jun!” Hae-won cried out again when no one replied to her calls, and her voice cracked slightly as she spoke.

“Hae-won?” Came a deep, male voice from outside, and my Korean lover leapt out through the forcefield.

I jumped through behind her and was hit with the fresh air of the night, and it was warm, but nothing too clammy or hot. There was a very mild breeze which rustled the jungle trees around us, and the moon shone brightly above the forest as the clouds rolled lazily across the sky.

Hae-won raced around the side of the ship, and I ran after her despite every instinct telling me to keep my eye on the armed men. The men had surrounded the ship in a neat circle, and they held their fingers on the triggers of their assault rifles as they tracked my path until I skidded to a halt at the front of the spacecraft. The girls caught up with me a split second later, and I Kat stared down the nearest man as he shifted his aim toward her.

My gaze was mostly on Hae-won by now, though.

My Korean lover was laughing as she clung to the neck of the tallest man in the group, and his muscles bulged out of his black shirt as he swung her from side to side and chuckled in a deep, bassy timbre. Then the pair started to talk in rapid Korean, and I decided we were probably okay where we were.

I tried to give a casual wave to one of the armed men beside us, but I was met with a silent glare as he kept his gun pointed at us.

“This isn’t exactly the welcome home party I was expecting,” Becka whispered.

“We did just land a spacecraft in the jungle,” Kat said out of the corner of her mouth. “They’ve got every right to be freaked out.”

“Don’t mention anything alien,” I whispered. “I know this is her family, but an actual alien is kind of a lot to spring on them as an opening conversation.”

“Sure,” Kat hissed. “But I think they might work it out by themselves on account of the alien weapons we’re holding or the fucking spaceship we flew in on.”

Becka snorted before she could stop herself, but then we all fell silent.

There was enough moonlight to see some of the men around us, but I couldn’t make out anything much further than the nearby trees. I kept my goggles lowered, since I didn’t want to make our group seem any stranger by putting on what looked like sunglasses in the middle of the night.

I watched as the tall man finally lowered Hae-won back to the ground, and he held her hands as they continued to talk in Korean.

By Hae-won’s tearful tone and his crazy deep voice, I guessed the guy was one of her brothers.

He sounded too young to be her dad, but I couldn’t see his face properly since a black tube scarf was covering his mouth and nose. All I could see were his dark eyes and short, ebony hair, and he his arm muscles bulged beneath his black sweater in a way that gave me the impression he was not a guy to fuck with.

“He looks hench,” Becka whispered. “I bet all her brothers are.”

“Do you think one of them’s her dad?” Kat asked as she looked around the circle.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “She would have gone right to him, and that guy looks way too young.”

“Jason!” Hae-won called as she looked over her shoulder. “Becka, Kat, come.”

I glanced at the girls hesitantly before I nodded and swung my sharp gun over my back, and then I strode over as confidently as I could with this many fucking guns pointed at me.

“This is my eldest brother,” Hae-won said as tears fell from her electric blue eyes. “This is Min-jun.”

“It’s great to meet you,” I said as I looked into the tall Korean’s eyes. “I’m Jason.”

I held out my hand out of habit and then quickly turned it into a bow as I remembered where we were. It wasn’t my smoothest maneuver, but I figured I pulled it off alright.

Min-jun studied my face carefully while his half-covered expression didn’t change, and the bow he gave me in return was so small, I wondered if he’d just twitched.

“Kay, so… I’m Becka,” my blonde lover announced nervously, and she offered an even tinier bow. “Hi.”

“Kat,” the Corporal said last, and her tone was as level as I’d expect any soldier to sound under pressure.

“Your sister is an incredible fighter,” I told the tall Korean. “I’m guessing she learned from the best.”

“She is a good student,” Min-jun said, and his voice was even more impressively deep from this close.

Then a sudden chain of whispers started up around us, and the armed men quickly turned to watch as another man silently entered the circle nearby.

In the moonlight, I could tell he was about as tall as me, and his face was chiseled with sharp angles while small scars covered his neck. I guessed he was maybe in his fifties, but his dark stubble made it harder to tell, and he had one of the rifles swung over his arm while a dagger hung from his belt. Like Min-jun, his muscles were clearly defined, but his presence seemed to demand attention from everyone in the area.

He kept his almost-black eyes on Hae-won, and I knew he had to be her father without needing any introduction.

If I’d ever seen a man who suited the title of Underground King, it was this guy.

My palms started to sweat a bit as I made sure my posture was sturdy as hell.

Then the man suddenly barked something in Korean, and his voice was low and gravelly like an older, smoker version of Min-Jun. Within a second, every man around us lowered their weapons and bowed to him, and I did the same so we wouldn’t start out on the wrong foot already.

“Appa,” Hae-won whispered, and the older man closed the distance between himself and the Korean beauty in four, sturdy strides.

He growled something in their native tongue as he cradled Hae-won against his chest, and he stroked her hair as she started to softly sob. The pair stood for a moment in a tight hug, and nobody spoke as the breeze made Hae-won’s hair dance in the moonlight. Then man whispered something to her, and Hae-won giggled before she pulled away to face him.

I was already mentally rehearsing what I would say to him, but my concern about the alien subject kept taking over my thought process.

How was I going to tell this group of highly-trained, armed, gangsters about the pretty alien friend we’d stashed in the spaceship?

Getting the small town locals at Ravenscar to trust Adhara had been hard enough, but I had a feeling Hae-won’s family would be a tougher nut to crack.

Hae-won started speaking quickly in Korea, and the older man’s eyes never left her face until I heard my name thrown into a sentence. Then the man’s dark eyes darted over to me, and I tried to give a friendly smile as he looked me up and down with no expression.

Fuck, he looked even more intimidating than Min-Jun with his somewhat lifeless stare.

After a few anxious moments passed, he finally looked back down at Hae-won and quietly spoke as he dried her eyes for her. Then the stone-faced Korean headed straight for me.

My heartbeat quickened, and my palms started to sweat even more. I tried to subtly wipe them on my pants in case he shook my hand, I stood as tall as I could without drawing any attention to the movement.

“You are Jason?” the Korean growled quietly.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, and I gave a quick bow. “Jason Mattley, it’s an honor to meet you.”

The man studied me for a minute, and he looked over at the spaceship with a frown.

“I am Kwan Gim,” he said as his eyes flicked back to me. “This may not be my real name, but it is the one you will call me.”

“Yes, sir,” I promptly agreed, and I decided this man was an absolute badass.

He looked at Becka and Kat next, and he offered them each a respectful bow as they stepped forward.

“Hi, Mr. Gim,” Becka said with a small wave and a sweet smile. “I’m Becka, and this is Kat. Your daughter is pretty amazing, we love her, and we’re her best friends so… we come in peace, and all that.”

“Hm,” Kwan replied as he looked between the two blondes. “My daughter says you have been a group from the start. Traveled together. Fought together.”

“We have.” I nodded. “I guess we have a lot to tell you, we came-”

I was interrupted as two young and brawny Korean men hurtled into the circle and practically jumped onto Hae-won.

They howled with laughter as they grabbed her into a group hug, and the shorter one gave her a kiss on the cheek as she grinned and seemed to be struggling to breathe.

“More brothers?” Kat asked, and Kwan nodded with obvious pride.

“My youngest sons. Sun-hee and Tae.”

I grinned as Hae-won chattered in Korean to her siblings while they nearly crushed her in muscly hugs, and when they finally let up, she clung onto both their hands as she spoke enthusiastically and gestured over to me.

When they glanced over, I saw the young men looked less intimidating than their older sibling. Their faces were rounder, but still incredibly good looking, and they grinned from ear to ear as they spoke with their little sister. The shorter of the two men pointed to the spacecraft and snorted as Hae-won explained something to them, and I wished I knew what they were all saying to each other.

Still, I waited patiently beside Kwan Gim and maintained an annoying straight posture, but as the minutes ticked passed, I was tempted to put my night vision goggles back on to make sure the area was still clear. There had been more rustling noises in the jungle trees in the last minute, and I didn’t think it could only be the wind.

After conducting our thermal scan, I knew this jungle was infested with dinosaurs of all sizes, and it wouldn’t be long until something came to investigate all this noise.

I didn’t want to be rude, though, so I just hovered my hand over the strap of my sharp gun and remained ready to pull it to my front at a moment’s notice.

“Is that a sword?” Kwan said as he looked down at my belt, and I grinned as I saw my chance to impress him.

“It is.” I nodded. “If you hit the button on the hilt, then the blade appears. It’s red hot and can cut through basically anything.”

“These are not military weapons,” he said in a gravelly and intimidating voice. “Unless they from secret American military?”

I didn’t know what to say since it didn’t feel like the right time to bring up the whole alien invasion story. This group might have been under the impression the ship was some secret project flown in from the States, and as I stared into the abyss of his cold eyes, I decided it’d probably be way safer to let him think that for the time being.

Hae-won seemed to notice I was struggling under her father’s sharp gaze, and she hurried over to me with her brothers in tow.

“I feel so happy,” the Korean beauty gasped, and she smiled up at me.

“I’m glad,” I said in earnest.

“This is Sun-hee and Tae,” the Korean beauty explained, and she gestured to the shorter one when she introduced Sun-hee, so Tae was the one who was taller by a good few inches.

The men had similar facial structures to Hae-won, and both shared a greenish tint to their dark eyes. They bowed to me, and I followed suit before they straightened up and gestured to the spaceship.

“I think you will have many stories for us,” Sun-hee said, and I laughed a bit.

“You could say that,” I agreed. “You must be relieved to have your little sister back.”

“We have missed her every day,” Tae replied. “But she tells us you are the reason she has returned. She says she could not have managed without your help.”

I smiled and shrugged, but then I noticed Kwan and Min-jun’s steely expressions hadn’t softened by even a centimeter. If anything, they’d somehow hardened even more.

“Ladies,” Tae said as he bowed to Kat and Becka. “We have also heard about your bravery. You must be tired.”

“Knackered.” Becka nodded, and she glanced at the circle of armed men. “So, I take it these guys are with you?”

“They are my father’s men,” Sun-hee laughed. “You will grow to realize he is a well-respected man around here. Yes, Appa?”

Kwan raised an eyebrow but stayed silent, and I wondered if Hae-won was going to explain the spaceship so Adhara could come out.

I knew she must be watching us all through the ship’s window, and while I was grateful she’d obeyed my order to remain hidden, I did feel bad about stashing her away like this. Adhara was part of our crew now, or maybe we were part of hers, but the sooner we could clear things up where our alien friend was concerned, the more relaxed I’d feel.

I didn’t even get a chance to send Hae-won any silent hints, though, because an eerie clicking sound started coming from the depths of the jungle.

At first I thought I imagined it, but then every man in the circle swung around with their guns raised in perfect unison, and Kwan grabbed his daughter by the shoulders and pulled her behind his muscular frame as he glared out into the night.

I swung my sharp gun from over my shoulder, and the girls did the same while we all listened to the strange clicking.

It echoed through the trees more rapidly by the second, and I couldn’t work out which direction it was even coming from. It seemed to be everywhere at once, and the fact that all the Koreans stayed in a circle with guns directed at the trees assured me this might be the case.

“Dinosaurs?” I whispered, and Sun-hee nodded.

“They are nothing like I’d ever imagined as dinosaurs,” the youngest brother hissed, and the circle of men slowly started to step forward. “They are called therizinosaurus, and they look like something from a nightmare.”

I glanced at the girls as the clicking grew louder, but then a blood-curdling howl echoed around the jungle, and we all jumped about a foot. I’d never heard any noises like these before, and it made my skin crawl as the clicks rang out all around us.

A whole new species of dino had us surrounded in the jungle, and it sounded like an entire herd had come out to play tonight.