Chapter Text
Owen Grady grows up with a gift of interacting with animals.
Not like he has a psychic link to them or anything - no, nothing like that - it's just... they take to him and in turn, he gravitates towards that kind of interaction. As a little boy, he's just no good with socializing amongst his peers. And as a result, he spends more time with his family pets than ever with kids who never wanted to his friends to begin with.
Alfie, their golden retriever, has more understanding of him than anybody ever could, he believes.
When he's ten-years-old, he gets sit down by his mom and she tells for the first time about soulmarks.
She tells him that his soumates words will start to develop possibly after he hits puberty.
She also tells him that when he grows up and meets her, he'll just know. That along with her words, divine intervention or whatever will help him understand it immediately.
How would he know? Will she be nice? Will she understand him and his love for animals?
And anyway, he barely even likes girls.
(he thinks and says that strongly at the time because he is still two years off from believing girls don't, indeed, have cooties so...)
And what words will they be? And what makes his mom think he'll even get his mark?
He'd learned at school that one in ten people don't get a soulmark in their lifetime. One in ten people don't ever get to meet their soulmate.
People barely like him. How is he ever gonna meet somebody who will love animals like he does or even like him for being different.
That can change. His mom says soothingly. When you grow up...
When he grows up, he still won't want a soulmate. Of that his ten-year-old self is certain.
And when has a kid ever been wrong?
In the summer after junior high at thirteen years of age and almost directly after growing a whole foot before starting high school, he wakes on a hot morning with his palm burning.
And it hurts. Like scalding sunburn but, worse and when he frantically goes to tell his mother, all she does is try and calm him down with a cool compress to his hand.
It's alright, honey, let it pass. This is good. It's gonna be okay. She tries saying in the way she always has when something's gone wrong.
After what feels like eternity and the pain finally passes, he looks at his palm in surprise.
No real burn. No blistering. Just... an embarrassing red mark that he immediately wants to cover up.
He doesn't, though.
Now, the words will start developing in a few years now that he has the mark. The simple phrase that his apparent soul partner will utter upon meeting him. The sentence that will give that jolt and make him know.
Whatever transpires after the fateful meeting is all up to him basically. The universe could only do so much and it's on him and whatever girl is unlucky enough to be paired with him to do the rest.
Even at thirteen, he much rather not deal with it, to be honest.
He's learned since being sat down by his mom years before at school that no matter what you do, fate always finds a away to bring you to your soulmate eventually... no matter how unwilling you may be.
Which, incidentally, he doesn't.
This soulmate business sounds like a pain and he wants no part of it. Not now or ever.
According to the timing of his mark, he would probably meet her in several years time... giving him plenty of opportunity to avoid it, as far he's concerned.
At eighteen, six years after waking up with that burning mark on his left palm, he leaves after graduating to join the Navy on a lark because why not?
After a while, he ends up specs op. He winds up working with dolphins, of all things. Trains them calmly. Rigorously and consistently. Earns the respect of his fellow men.
Most of the men have already found their soulmates.
They seem happy, he thinks. Gladly showing off the thin, reedy scars on the palms of their afflicted hands like trophies.
The few like him. Untethered and not wanting it, tell him he's better off.
Bitterness isn't something he swallows easily so, he mostly leaves it alone when it comes up.
The whole thing is more than a little hard to forget when he's got a reminder literally printed on his fucking palm. A goddamn token of his eighteenth birthday.
The words that seem dangerous, are you sure that's safe? is stamped permanently and unevenly on his flesh and more often than not he finds himself tracing the words when he's alone or something goes wrong.
He doesn't sweat it.
He still doesn't want it. At all.
This is just... solace.
He's had more than his fair sure of woman in his life already but, he hardly sticks around afterward and so, he has no girl waiting for him. Or hell, even a girl hating him at home.
This is just a comfort thing, really.
Honestly. He doesn't want that.
Fate can kiss his ass.
Besides, who's to say he still won't be the lucky few who don't meet their soulmate?
Who knows? He might be.
On another hot morning, at thirty-five, he finds out he's very wrong.
It's been nearly a month since the I-Rex disaster. The decimated park has been re-growing itself. They've been hiring new people and re-hiring the crazy few who would come back after everything. Messing with nature, as he'd known it would, cost them a lot of things and lives in the process and they're still trying to rebuild the pieces of what remains. Masrani is firing on all cylinders when it comes to damage control as any man with tons of money who's invested in an island with a formerly extinct species living on it would be and Claire Dearing has jumped ship after getting herself and her nephews to safety in the aftermath of the Indominus Rex.
This is what they get, really. He thinks. They is what they get for fucking with the natural order of things.
It's one thing to work from a possible DNA in a sample they find inside of fossilized fly of all things but, it's quite another to mingle genetics as you see fit to suit your own needs.
In the mean time, he tries moving on. Taking care of his girls. Continuing to train them. Watching them develop. Grow older. Sharper.
That abomination had controlled them to the point of nearly having them turn on him and that's something he will not let stand.
Though, these are easily the last thoughts on his mind when he wakes up several years after having been soulmarked, with his palm burning for the second time in his life.
And if possible, it hurts even worse than the first time. That awful sunburn-like sensation now feeling a hole burning in the center of his palm. Like some asshole pouring acid on the skin and watching it bubble in down to the bone.
Basically it hurts like a motherfucker and he's too busy running around with a cold compress to calm it down and then going about his own routine - wake up, shower, maybe breakfast, who cares? - to even notice what it signifies until he's stepping outside of his bungalow in the early morning and about to reach his bike and pauses mid-step.
Fuck.
He'd learned about this throughout the years since getting marked and the following words growing in it's place: When the words burn up on his skin for the second time in life, that essentially means he's soon to meet his soulmate.
And soon meaning in the span of either the same day or in the coming days.
Double fuck.
And really, he's definitely not in the mood, the state of his life being what it is and all that, but he literally has no goddamn choice.
Either he meets her of his own free will or the universe will find some kind of fucked way to bring him to her or her to him.
Somehow, regardless of what he thinks of this whole soulmate business, he sincerely hopes it isn't somebody who hates him or finds his job bizarre or him just plain crazy.
(he also secretly - very deep down - hopes that he doesn't walk into an awkward situation like she's already in a relationship or is married or whatever because he has no idea how this fated bonding works and hopes against hope that it won't have him pushed into something that's more trouble than it's worth)
He works on an island with pre-historic animals. He's imprinted on a pack of velociraptors. He's literally the Alpha. Some people still call him insane to his face.
Who would wanna get within ten feet of that?
He has no clue and hopes it doesn't blow up in his face.
He finds out exactly that a week after that morning.
Ever since, he'd just been going about his business. Treating the passing days as though nothing has changed. Mainly it hasn't and it's never gonna as far he's concerned. Nope. No way. Nothing will change if the fates allow him to have anything to do with it. Nothing at all.
He also re-enforces that it has nothing to do with nerves.
That he's most definitely not anxious about meeting her - his soulmate - for the first time.
Because he's not. There's rationally no reason to be. He's got no plans of getting off the island any time soon and so, for practicality's sake, she's gonna be the one to come here and anybody coming to this island willingly shouldn't really all that up his ass about the park and his work.
It wouldn't matter anyway. He tells himself as he visits the girls.
"Everybody sleep well?" He asks, as they chuff and make noise upon his arrival. "Good. That's what I like to hear." He adds with a smile as he pets their snouts in greeting.
When he pulls his hand away, it throbs - like the all mighty burn but, much... less - and he flexes his hand in response, feeling something new and odd take root in his body just then. A spiking of awareness in the center of all that he is and suddenly, he just knows.
Later, he wouldn't even be able to tell you how he'd gotten from point A to point B but, abruptly he's on the move and walking without clear direction towards the other side of the island. His foot almost running without his permission.
He ends up at the greeting center that has somehow survived the disaster of a month ago and sees a few people piling out of a jeep.
It's two men and a woman.
He also seesTracy - whom is responsible for the new hires and whom he actually likes but, he knows it's not her - directing them towards the center and without a second thought, he follows.
He ends up blending into the small group and his hands is throbbing as he does.
He's behind them and unseen, really, so he can't get a good look at the people exactly and he no impulse to do so and-
Oh, great. Tracy just seen him. Awesome.
"Owen!" She greets with the biggest smile you could ever see aimed in his direction and he's certain he only ends up grimacing back. "Nice of you to join us!" The whole group turns in his direction and yeah, this is just a good start. "Everyone, this is Owen. He works with the raptors on the other side of the island."
"Like the velociraptors?" He hears from one end.
"How do you work with them?"
"That's crazy! Are you serious?!"
And on and on and on.
This isn't new to him. These questions. He's heard so many variations of them that he's hardly ever surprised anymore.
Throughout the chaos of questions however, someone actually raises a hand and he points without thinking. "Yeah?"
"That seems dangerous." She says thoughtfully. "Are you sure it's safe?"
He takes her in. Small. Dark hair up in a messy bun. Big, intelligent blue eyes looking at him inquisitively. Pouty mouth pursed in afterthought. Dressed in muted, jungle colors that wouldn't have drawn anyone else's attention.
Anyone except him.
Because she is completely and utterly gorgeous.
They meet eyes and oh, here it is. He can almost hear her breath catch from where he stands as though she knows he knows and shit, this isn't fair.
His palm is burning again. His whole body is tingling from the inside out. And his heart feels like it's been blown to pieces. His breath feeling caught in tangles inside his lungs.
Ladies and gentlemen, he's just met his soulmate.