The elders hopeful expression fades at the joint refusal of stallion and dragon, neither being able nor apparently willing, in the latter’s case, to help. He glances around uncertainly in search of other assistance, the impulse to thrash his way to freedom or debilitating injury still alive and well in the back of his mind. He consciously quells the urge a second time, skin twitching in primal dissension, yet loath to multiply his pain.

It’s then that the second dragon, whose presence circling above hasn’t even registered to the bag of bones ensnared below, swoops in. This one is slightly smaller than the first, a metallic crimson instead of burnished gold, but his dark eyes glimmer with the same preternatural intelligence and if that isn’t a smidge of sympathy in his calculating gaze, there’s at least a gleam of interest. The creature turns his armored head and something silent - at least to his old ears - passes between the beast and his bonded before the stallion speaks again, this time acquiescent but cautioning. Thank fuck.

The bearded senior nods his head, eyes bouncing along the sharpened spines running down the reds back to the devil’s fork tipping his tail to the long, hooked claws of his hands and feet. He swallows down a wave of renewed anxiety, tail tucking close to his bunched hindquarters, though careful to keep its end on the opposite side of his body from the stranger, the dragons, and his thorny predicament.

“Okay.” He rasps, shifting his raised hip a little higher and folding the airborne leg against itself as best he can. It's not a comfortable position (nothing about this is) and not one that he can hold for very long, but adrenaline has a way of lending the body abnormal strength in times of crisis and he'll sooner tear a muscle from its mooring than subtract a testicle or risk the absolute hell that must be an angry dragon if the crisscross of new and old scars across the other stallions back is what their love amounts to.

As he waits for rescue in the form of reptilian hand-jobs, he wonders which is the more terrifying prospect: accidentally kicking the crimson drake and taking the brunt of his attack in the belly and scrotum, or falling over and giving himself a medieval vasectomy combination chastity belt. They'd both end in cringe worthy brutality, but would gaping wounds or infected splinters be harder to have mended?


OOC// @Volterra