Her eyes dart away, yet his are less subtle in their brazen observation of her body. She is all woman now, a fertile vessel for some stallion's child - but not if he gets there first, not if he rips the throat out of any man who looks twice at her. The thought slips across the forefront of his mind with fierce aggression, devouring his attention. Oh, how they have both grown. He is a man now, with balls and a savage hunger for the pleasure they bring him, and she...she is all curves, all sheer muscle and wound sinew, and he wants. Those hips would fit like a puzzle piece to the hooked caress of his forelegs, those stout quarters could easily take his formidable weight...

His chest, and groin, give happy little lurches at the thought. How can something so wrong feel so right inside the sanctum of his sick little mind?

Maybe, as he explained to Isopia, having a male dragon bonded to his mind has not helped things. Like him - or perhaps because of him - Vérzés holds an appreciation of the female form, and their conjoined minds are a testosterone-fuelled mess. He has never had anybody to tell him that his thoughts are wrong, or inappropriate. Perhaps the dragon inside this egg will add a welcome feminine presence inside their heads, to temper the raw masculinity that currently resides there. A woman's touch; he looks back to the egg, nudging it again, unable to stop touching it.

When Nymeria looks at it, the beast thinks for a moment she might take it, and his muscles tense despite themselves. After all, of the two of them, she has always been the more developed, the first to do everything. The first to gain magic, the first to get a dragon, perhaps the first to take a lover, too, although he chooses not to think about this. But now he has beaten her to something - the first to bond to a royal dragon. A queen, no less. He has no doubt that she will follow suit one day, and for a moment he contemplates encouraging his gold to breed as soon as she is physically able, so he can hand an egg to his beloved sibling - but can bonded dragons even breed? He has never seen it. True, Vérzés has tried his luck at bedding several wild dragons over the previous months, but they've always rejected him for being bonded, owned like a dog, the draconic equivalent of castration. Perhaps his golden queen will be different - she, after all, will be the empress of dragonkind, despite being bonded.

Such musings are stealing his attention away from his sister, and he quickly jerks them away to focus fully on her. He rarely sees her, and wants to cherish what precious moments they can have together. Because, despite their arguments, their bickering, their competitive edge towards one another, he loves her with an untamed ferocity. And, perhaps foolishly, he thinks she feels the same - at least enough to be happy for him finding this egg, and not resent him for it.

As he shifts, his fresh wounds sting and tug, and he smothers a wince. Of course, every ounce of pain is worth it for the egg he now owns, but that doesn't stop it hurting. Wolf teeth hurt a damn sight more than horse teeth, even God teeth, and the pain is acute. He is aching, tired, and knows that if Nymeria were to try and snatch the egg now, there wouldn't be a great deal that he could do about it. Adrenaline would only take him so far when he aches in every hard muscle and has lost more blood than is strictly healthy. He resists the temptation to stand in front of the egg and guard it from her - he tries to show trust by staying a short distance away, even though it kills him.

When she speaks, her words take him aback. You will be a king one day. "Of course," he says, dismissive, as though she has simply stated that the sky is blue. But, after the words have left his lips, he tries to force his pain-addled mind to question why she has said that, and why now. What game is she playing? If the years have taught him anything, it is that Nymeria is never what she seems. She has cunning and guile that he could only dream of, and that, in a way, is far more useful than his brute strength. But, as their mother likely thought, combine the two - her brains, his brawn - and they would have an undefeatable team. What she couldn't possibly have contemplated is that they are too alike, for all their differing assets. That they could clash, when at one point they'd seemed inseperable.

If Confutatis was dead, she'd be turning in her grave.

"And you will be a queen. But what's brought this on, sister? We've known this since our dam pushed us from her womb." He looks at her, meeting her gaze, crimson to crimson - her gorgeous face, so similar to their esteemed mother's. His muscles quiver with pain and exhaustion and he itches to rest, but not when his sister is so close he could touch her, not when they're finally speaking again.

Up in the tree, the red nestles close to his black brother, reciprocating, lamenting. Oh, the painful irony of the two dragons - who once squabbled like cat and dog - being closer now than their bondeds.