He can feel Vadir's excitement as she flies with the blue, echoing Volterra's own excitement at being close to Amaris. She is far more agile than Vérzés, yet she is still relatively inexperienced at flight and it takes every ounce of her concentration to avoid the trees that the spirit-blue soars through with such ease. She is not the playful sort - she is too refined, too regal, too proud, to lower herself to play - so this is extremely rare for her, but Volterra reasons that it's not every day she gets to fly with a wild dragon. Her agility is tested to its limits as she swings side to side through the trees in pursuit of the blue, bouncing off branches, darting under twigs, twisting around gnarled trunks.

It is a beautiful sight, one that makes the stallion shift his attention from the golden queen nestled beside him to the one bonded to his mind.

Admist her dance with the blue, Vadir offers a caw as Amaris hums her name, saying it how it should be said - by the tongue of a dragon. Volterra continues to watch her, even as the dragonmare's flesh sits closely next to his own, so close that he can feel the heat of her body, so close that he thinks she might be able to feel every heightened beat of his traitorous heart...

It comes as a relief when she begins to speak and answer his question. He can focus on this, as it's of genuine interest to him, and take his mind away from the gutter where it's currently making itself a nest. He will try anything to get his companions to, if not like each other, then at least tolerate each other without this constant fighting. As she refers to the arguments as juvenile behaviour, he releases a gravelly chuckle as his mind is suddenly bombarded by indignant thoughts from red and gold alike. Being called juvenile for their dislike of one another has, as expected, bristled against both of their proud natures, but the brute cares not a jot. Hell, maybe they'll stop arguing if they think it reflects badly on them to continue their feud.

She continues, explaining the principles of bonded souls. He nods, somewhat impatiently as he already knows all of this from his extensive dragon research as a boy. Get to the good bit. It does, however, remind him what a heavy responsibility he now carries on his young shoulders, caring for not one but two souls joined to his own. As well as taking care of them, he has to ensure his own safety, too, as his death would mean his two glorious dragons would perish as well...and the thought of that makes him ache inside. Plus, considering he shares every thought and every emotion with his companions, he has a horrible feeling that he would be able to feel the death of either of them, and vice versa.

The thought bids his blackened flesh to shudder. To feel part of your soul snapping off and falling into the abyss...It hardly bears thinking about.

She asks for confirmation that he can hear their thoughts and feelings, and he nods again. It is the closest and most personal of bonds, to have the sanctum of his mind delved by these two beautiful, magnificent creatures. She mentions guarding himself from the thoughts of his bondeds, and he finds himself looking guiltily to Vérzés. "Yes. I have done that with Vérzés in the past, for...a variety of reasons." He swallows hard, remembering his conversation with Isopia where he'd explained that having Vérzés' masculine, testosterone-fuelled presence in his mind when he reached manhood had created a distance between them. They were so similar, so brazenly male, that their personalities had clashed as they both reached maturity. Despite Vérzés being a relatively young dragon, Volterra's mind had accelerated the red's own mental development far faster than it should have been, leading to him becoming confused and irritable as his mind began to tell him things that his body wasn't yet ready for. When Volterra hunted for women, it confused his red and turned him to violence, which, when combined, made them an extremely volatile duo. Vérzés had started taking himself away from his bonded whenever the beast's lusts began to rise, and they would narrow their bond down to the thinnest of tendrils for the sake of everybody around them. It ached, to lose the mental company of his dragon, but they both knew that it was for the best. Until they could both learn to control their primal emotions, it was best they stay apart in times of heightened feelings.

Vadir's hatching has changed everything. She is a strong, feminine presence in his mind now, a stark contrast to the maleness of Volterra and Vérzés. Her mere existence seems to have tamed the hellion's rampant emotions, although until today he hadn't encountered a woman to lust over since he bonded to the gold. This, with Amaris, is the acid test of his new, developing relationship with his dragons, and so far it is a lot less violent than previous incidents. The red doesn't look like he's about murder anything, and Vadir is distracted with the blue. In tandem, his dragons are keeping him from being overwhelmed by his hunger for Amaris, which is a blessing in disguise.

She continues to speak, explaining that he can force his desires upon the dragons and bend them to his will. He hums slightly, pondering this new information. The dragonmare's distaste of this seems obvious, and to an extent Volterra can see why. He enjoys dominating everything, and has, in the past, been extremely strict towards Vérzés to the point of becoming his master. However, he knows this isn't entirely healthy. Their relationship should be that of equals, not to mention that from what little he knows of Vadir's personality, she would not take kindly to any attempt to dominate her. "Yes, I...am not sure I would be comfortable doing that. I don't want either of them to become robots, devoid of their own personalities. I love the fact that they each have their own unique temperaments, that they're individuals, not just pieces of me broken into two bodies. I love the way Vérzés rips his prey apart like his life depends on it, whilst Vadir looks at him like he's just thrown shit in her face. I love how he sleeps sprawled like he hasn't a care in the world, whereas she perches upright with her head under her wing and never allows herself to truly relax. I love how he jumps into anything headfirst without thinking, whereas she takes time to analyse it first, watch it from every angle, poke it, prod it, then eliminate it." He looks fondly from red to gold and back again, and his adoration of them both is plain for all to see.

He loves the fact they're scaled war machines, that they're death on wings, that they can help him become the all-conquering dictator he dreams of being. But equally, he loves that they're invidual little sentient creatures, with thoughts and hopes and likes and dislikes.

He sighs, exhaling a warm breath of air. "I can only hope they grow less distant as they both age. I assumed that scale colour hierarchy would make Vérzés respect her, even if he didn't particularly like her, but it appears I underestimated quite how few fucks he gives towards how a dragon 'should' behave." Because, like Volterra himself, the red will never conform unless he wants to, and bends the knee for nobody and nothing.