I’d finally get tenure at the university.
Overhead, from inside the hole, a creature screamed. It wasn’t a, “help, something’s chasing me,” scream. Or even a, “I’m super-happy,” scream. It was more of a, “hey, what’s that yummy thing dangling in the air?” scream.
“Oh, hell,” I whispered as a big black rodent peeked through the hole. Its yellow eyes lit up when it spied me rocking below it like a very plump minnow on a hook.
Just call me rat-bait.
“No, no, no,” I shouted, shaking my head. I rubbed my eyes, but the creature still peered down at me. “One, go away! And two, you can’t be a spelaeomys florensis.”
Or, flores cave rat to the rest of the world. Well, the part of the world who was not researching prehistoric rodents. Thought to have died out before the fifteen-hundreds, the only information anyone could learn about the creature came from subfossil fragments.
Obviously, someone got their extinction date wrong.
Called the biggest rat that ever lived, these babies weighed in at about three pounds.
Ugh. My flesh crawled as I gawked up at it.
As the rat squirmed out of the hole and I shrieked and tried to swim through the air to get away—a totally useless move on my part—the rat started shimmying down my rope like an Olympic climber.
My archaeologist friends got the creature’s weight wrong, too. Based on the creaking of my rope, this one had to be ten, twelve pounds, about the size of a poodle—without the curly hair. Or the cute doggy face.
How long would it take a creature that size to gnaw through my bones? Because I was too big to be consumed in one gulp. Assuming the beast could leap onto me and somehow kill me.
Please, let it kill me before it started to eat me.
“Stop,” I yelled, banging on the rope, hoping to dislodge it. I knew it was mean that I hoped it would lose its grip and fall to the ground, but I did not want it turning me into the latest food supply. There must be smaller rats or plants or bugs or something up in the cave system it could eat instead. “Get lost, creep.”
Yeah, like that would scare it away.
The rat was not listening. And its grip was better than a toddler clutching a forbidden piece of candy.
Inching further down the rope, getting closer to me all the time, the spelaeomys florensis wiggled its whiskers and chomped it’s not-so-little teeth.
It was going to chew on me. Latch onto me and give me a horrible disease. Assuming I lived long enough for the disease to take hold.
My short life flashed before my eyes. Parental abandonment. Foster care. Graduating from college. Hooking up with, followed by breaking up with Jim, who became a certified, first-class a-hole when he told me he wasn’t turned on by my overweight body.
Hiking with my friends.
“Go away,” I shouted at the rat.
“Prehistoric rats are extinct. Prehistoric rats are extinct,” I chanted, as if saying it over and over would make the creature disappear.
But rat-boy was determined. He—or she—kept working its way down toward me, one clawed foot placed in front of the other, big teeth gnashing.
Just when I thought it was going to hop off the rope and onto my back, where it would proceed to touch me while I screamed and flopped around, the rat stopped.
It almost smiled, if a spelaeomys florensis could smile. I imagine it did for its baby spelaeomys florensis’s, but that was not me.
“Please, leave me alone,” I said softly. “Be a good ratty and climb back up to the hole.”
The rat started gnawing on the rope.
Shit.
Hauling back, I tried to smack it, but I lay face-down and had to twist and fling out my arm. The little beast was beyond my reach. Ignoring me, it kept chewing on my rope. Working its way through.
Threads went ka-boing. Frayed pieces were caught in the breeze and carried away like dandelion fluff.
Ratty paused and grinned. No other way to look at it. This thing was out to get me. It dug into the shreds of my rope once more.
Snap!
In seconds, my rope gave way, and I was free-falling, wailing. Scrambling to clutch air.
I didn’t check to see what the rodent was doing. Climbing back up to the hole, for all I knew. After all, its mission had been accomplished.
As I tumbled, I caught movement to my left. A giant bird was flying my way, roaring.
Great. I’d barely avoided becoming a rat snack, only to turn into a big bird’s dinner instead. It would swoop in and swallow me down in one bite.
Of course, I might splat on the ground before something ate me, because it was rushing up fast.
Below, I spied a grassy area in front of the ruined city, which might break my fall. Sort of. But no memory foam bed was lying around, waiting to catch me.
Something big and shiny and sapphire-red dove below me.
No time to rub my eyes, but…I had to be wrong.
Remember, my brain shouted, the spelaeomys florensis was not extinct. Who could say if someone had messed up and declared dragons extinct, too. Not that anyone believed they’d existed to begin with.
It couldn’t be a dragon.
If I going to start believing that, I might as well start believing in unicorns.
“Not possible,” I shouted as I flew toward it like an overzealous kamikaze bomber.
I smacked into the bird—okay, dragon, because tail and spiky back ridges and scales!
We flipped, spiraling toward the ground.
Clinging to the creature’s neck, as if I rode a rollercoaster toward hell, I screamed.
The grass rushed up to us, and I didn’t just splat on the ground. I landed hard, like I’d been filleted on top of the dragon’s belly.
Dragons were not squishy.
Air chugged from my lungs in one quick gasp, and I floundered, trying to suck in wind. My head spun, and it took me too long to find my wits.
When I finally re-gained control of my breathing and brain, I sat up, straddling the dragon’s stomach.
It lay underneath me, its neck extended, its snout flopped to its side on the ground. Its wings were sprawled apart like I’d impaled the poor beast with my plus-sized body-spear.
“Forget tenure at the university,” I said hoarsely.
This was horrible! Worse than when I tripped at the introduce-the-new-dean-of-the-department social, dumping my Bloody Mary down the front of her white dress.
It even topped that time I’d farted in my classroom while my students were working on their finals.
My colleagues were never going to let me live this down.
Because I, Pamela Jean Brendon, had just killed the sole surviving Earth dragon.
To read more, look for CLAIMED BY A DRAGON,
the conclusion to my Dragon Mated Series, on Amazon.
And thanks for reading!
~Christina
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CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR: ESCAPE, Book 1
A Sci-Fi Alien Romance
co-written with Laney Kaye
on Amazon & Kindle Unlimited
Herc: A cat shifter mercenary—gun, fangs, and claws for hire—doesn't fall for a pretty little human. It's cost the Regime big-time to have me and my guys hunt down the Resistance fighters skulking in caves spread across this gods-forsaken planet. My sole focus here is this deployment. Until Maya touches me, igniting the first phase of a bondmate.
But it doesn't matter how freakin' sweet she is. How sexy. No way in all seven hells will I complete the three bonds. As long as I don't kiss her, we won't hit second base. And I'll be damn sure to keep my hands off her incredible body, because having sex wi
th her would bring on bond three, linking our souls for eternity. Problem is, now it's not just my life that's in danger. My heart is in all kinds of trouble.
Maya: Herc must believe I'm nothing more than a nurse working for the Regime. If he finds out I've infiltrated the military compound to rescue my imprisoned sister, my life's in danger. He may be the hottest guy I've ever seen—shifter or man—but I refuse to bond with someone who's hunting my people into extinction.
Now that my mission's accomplished, I can flee into the desert. He'll never find me once I'm hidden in the Resistance stronghold. Problem is, Herc's hot on my heels. If he catches me, will he return me to the Regime? Or does he have his own--very personal--plan for me instead? Hooking up with me will ruin Herc's career and make him an enemy of his own people. But if he hands me over to the firing squad, the bullets won't need to hit my heart to shatter me into a billion pieces.
Fancy a glimpse of my November, 2018 romcom release?
MY BIG FAT POMPEII ROMANCE
Legally Blonde meets Gladiator in this romantic comedy with a historical twist.
Twenty-first century goddess Pandia is shaking in her Jimmy Choos. A few weeks ago, the NYC socialite traveled back in time, where she suggested Julius Caesar abandon politics for gardening. Her father, Zeus, summons her to present-day Olympus after he discovers her meddling eliminated the month of July. To teach her the importance of fate, he strips Pandia’s goddess powers and sentences her to a stint of mortality in ancient Pompeii.
Pandia refuses to let her punishment get her down. She’ll do her time, leave destinies untouched, and be home in time for her next shift at the local animal shelter. Instead, she’s mistaken for a prostitute and arrested for inciting a riot. Sentenced to serve as a massage therapist in Pompeii’s gladiator school, she’s assigned to Caladus, a gladiator whose washboard abs test her vow to remain uninvolved.
To escape Pompeii, Pandia must prove she respects mortals’ fates. But she’s falling for Caladus, and her time’s running out: Mt. Vesuvius is rumbling.
MY BIG FAT POMPEII ROMANCE is available on Amazon and through Kindle Unlimited.
Other books from Christina Wilder:
DRAGON MATED
A humorous dragon shifter novella series.
CAPTURED BY A DRAGON
HUNTED BY A DRAGON
CLAIMED BY A DRAGON
MY BIG FAT POMPEII ROMANCE
A romantic comedy with a gladiator twist
Available on Amazon
Books Co-Written with Laney Kaye:
CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR (A Sci-fi Romance Series)
ESCAPE
ENGAGE
ENSNARE
ENDINGS
*****
HUNTED BY A DRAGON: Fated Dragon Series (Book 2 of 3) (DRAGON MATED) Page 10