The deafening crack splits the midnight air, and the stallion jerks awake.

Not that he had been fully asleep - not here, in the middle of the Deep Forest, where any predator could try to have its way with him. Although he'd rested one leg and allowed his muscles to relax, he was still fully aware of the world around him. His dragon was fully alert as well, perched in a nearby tree with his serpentine neck swinging side to side like a metronome to pick up any dangers.

Crack. The beast's skulled head swings immediately towards the egg, which rocks and glows gently on the leaf-littered ground. And, indeed, skulled his head now is. In the aftermath of the fight with Gashad, the skeleton's skull bounced off a tree and landed directly on the behemoth's face, where it has stuck fast ever since. No amount of pulling at the bone will dislodge it, and if Volterra didn't know better, he'd say it was cursed. He can almost hear that ungodly laughter from beyond the grave each time he tries to tug the skull free. It sits sentinel on his face, ironically obscuring the skull-shaped blaze that formally dominated the black fur. Only his sharp red eyes peer through the holes - although, on the plus side, his head now feels quite armoured.

But, now he's largely used to the extra weight, he hardly even notices the presence of the patterned bone, except considerable annoyance that the skeleton is still haunting him even after death. He certainly doesn't notice it now, when cracks are beginning to appear in the golden egg and greed is flooding through his bloodstream like wildfire.

With a tilt of his wings, the red lands beside the egg, sniffing around it. "Soon hatch," he says, and Volterra bites back a sharp remark along the lines of no shit. Since he found the egg, his relationship with the red has become even more strained. Vérzés didn't want him to claim the egg as his own, to share his mind with another dragon - especially a female dragon, and especially one of a scale colour that should be respected when Vérzés, sexist like his bonded, respects no woman. The crimson has tried constantly to change Volterra's mind, but the stallion, in his mule-like stubbornness, has his heart set on bonding to this gold.

Crack. A leg is visible now, a clawed golden paw. Vérzés sits fully in front of it, obscuring it from the beast's vision, and meets his bonded's gaze with eyes that plead. The red never begs. Not in battle, not in life. He has little reason to. But now, as the notion of sharing his bonded blossoms into fruition, Volterra can feel his anguish.

"Please."

A man with more of a heart would have felt it ache. But the stallion simply stares down at the red and pushes him out of the way with his nose, to fix his full attention on the quivering egg. Vérzés squawks angrily, and his emotions inside Volterra's head intensify. Rage, dismay, worry. Worry that, now the stallion has a royal, he will care nothing for his lowly red. Worry that he now has to live alongside a gold, who will no doubt spend her time trying to put him in his place.

Worry that he's losing the man with whom he has shared everything since he hatched, who once idolised him but who is now quite willing to push him aside in pursuit of something better.

Volterra feels all of this, and he has tried to reassure the red that this won't change things, that he has room enough in his heart and mind for two - but how can Vérzés believe this when he sees how hungrily the monolith looks at his newest prize? When he, more than any other living creature, knows that the stallion has an eye for beauty and power, knows that Volterra has revered dragons since the day he was born and would give his left ball to bond to a queen?

With a final crack, the shell breaks in two. From the pieces rolls a small, wet body, all unkempt wings and damp scales. Damp golden scales. Slowly the hatchling unfurls, kicking away the pieces of her egg and opening herself up to the stallion's wanton gaze as he assesses her.

And finds her satisfactory, to say the least.

The fact she is a she is evident in the fact that she is slimmer than Vérzés, her shape more feminine, her limbs less bulky and her chest less pronounced. She is beautiful in a way that the functional-looking red could never be, and yet she exudes power the likes of which Volterra has never seen before. She is raw, feral strength, as deadly as nightshade yet as attractive as a gemstone. Her snout is long and thin, and the horns that protrude from the back of her proud skull are longer and thicker than Vérzés'. These horns, coupled with the smaller ones dotted around the back of her head, give the impression of a crown - and what else would a queen wear?

Spikes run down the length of her back, between her bat-like wings and right down to the tip of her tail, where they transform into a vicious knife-like tip. As the hatchling shifts and stretches, her tail swings and the lethal end of it beheads a nearby flower, just proving to the young stallion what a useful little addition it could prove to be.

She meets his gaze, and he notes that her eyes are red, too. Then she's in his mind, and her consciousness is flooding his own as Vérzés' once did. He can't describe how it feels, to have a second sentient creature inhabiting his thoughts, one that is intrinsically different to Vérzés and yet somehow similar. Like with the red, the young gold emanates hunger, and like with the ruby, Volterra has come prepared. He nudges a dead rabbit towards the hatchling, who gulps it down in two bites. Now, the stallion can feel her satisfaction flooding through him - and, suddenly, he feels surprise coming from her, too.

Surprise as, with a feral yowl, Vérzés leaps at her and tries to pin her to the ground beneath him, a swift and brazen display of dominance.

Vérzés, what the fuck are you doing? hisses Volterra, apopletic. A savage growl erupts from the gold as she fights her way out from beneath the red and rears herself up to her full height - she's smaller than him at the moment, but holds herself like royalty. She flares her wings and hisses, her eyes narrowed to slits beneath her horned eyebrows. Volterra stands forwards and plants one firm foreleg between the two dragons before either can launch a second attack, and turns his massive skull to each of them in turn, ears pinned backwards. No, he commands. Inside, though, he's deeply concerned. His dragons were supposed to be an inseperable, formidable duo, his powerful mind-partners. They weren't supposed to turn against each other so soon. This isn't how he dreamed it.

Vérzés backs away with a snarl, and jumps up to land squarely between Volterra's withers. This is his favoured resting spot, and he will not share it. "You name the bitch?" he questions, his mental voice snarky, hateful. Despite the situation, the beast manages a small smile as he remembers naming Vérzés in Hungarian, bleeding. How strong it had seemed at the time! The gold will not suffer the same fate, and the monolith names her simply - no frills, no trying to be smart. "Vadir," he says, and the gold sniffs her approval whilst pulling rabbit-bones out from between her teeth with her forepaws.