They meet in a flurry of sand and heaving sinew, together as if they have never been apart. He's not breathing near as hard as her, to her chastisement; he's all hot muscle and collected bone, ripening out to a broad form. She has little of her father in her head, but from Mongrel's occasional images and Confutatis' rare descriptions, Volterra has indeed taken after their sire's bloodline. Beside him, she feels tediously small—weak and fragile—her robust curves so womanly in comparison to Volt's broad chest and thick cannons.

The wolf smiles anyways, eyes flickering up to meet his vermilion gaze. His scent fills her up, swells her breast, a heavier, richer reek of a boy made into stallion, child into adult. Have I changed so much? Nymeria hardly felt it if she had; she mostly felt smaller, less, especially beside her brother. Where Volterra took the spotlight, she faded into the shadows, marked only by her gristly skull.

It doesn't matter.

They were together. She brushes her muzzle against his, dizzy and drunk on his smoky breath, and she hides a shiver coiling down her spine, a quiver in her bones—only for him to pull away anyways. For a stretched-out second, she longs to go after him (why did he retreat?) before reining in her petty desires. It's not anything personal, she tells herself; Volterra is just...

The wolf swallows, and lets her smile soften into seriousness, stepping back to better (albeit subtly) study the curve of his haunches and the swell of his ribcage.

"I have been doing much the same," Nymeria says quietly, letting her gaze flicker out towards Lilómiel. I've been growing up, brother. Letting her bones thicken, finding her stride, dealing with all the ugliness of adolescence on her own, maintaining a pretty face, finding the best way to lie, discovering manipulation—and learning to dominate her own companion, quash his needs beneath her iron fist. And learning to love that. The feeling of control over something else, over something alive, was a more satisfactory sensation than she had ever experienced before. "... and waiting for mother." She avoided saying the obvious. They both knew if Confutatis was coming back, she would be here by now.

It wouldn't change things, not saying it outloud. Their mother, World Eater, was still trapped wherever she was; or, perhaps, even dead. Bile rises in her throat—she swallows it back. Weakness has no place in her heart.

They would have to take Confutatis' place. That had been beaten into them [literally]. This was their mission. She had warned them this might happen; she had prepared them for the inevitable.

But... we never should have left her.