It bites him.

The little shit of a dragon actually bites him. Needle-sharp teeth snap into the flesh of his nose as he pulls back the moment he sees the dangerous forwards movement, the snakelike lunge from the hatchling's rippling neck. This jerk backwards prevents the black bastard gaining a grip, however he still etches ugly and agonising cuts deep into the tender skin between the colt's flared nostrils. Blood pours down into his mouth, and he is dealt the iron tang of nature's crimson paint for the first time in his short life.

He looks down at the dragon, disgusted and horrified, then across to Nymeria, indignant and offended. Of course, he is quite the dragon groupie and ordinarily being bitten by one would be an honour, and the scars would be worn with pride. But this dragon is different. This is his sister's bonded - and O, how the thought still makes his skin crawl - and a new recruit into their herd, so the bite is less of a gift, more of a hated curse. An attempt at insubordination, in Volterra's eyes. A brazen and blatant attempt to dominate him, to let the colt know he is here, and that Nymeria is his now as much as she is Volterra's. Given the youth's fledgling grasp of male dominance, he naturally assumes this is an invitation to a stallion-esque grudge match, and takes great affront to the fact. It doesn't occur to him that he's overthinking it, that the dragon is simply hungry and his inviting black nose looked like a four-course feast. "He bit me," hisses the beastling, ears flat back as his nose pisses blood down his face and stings worse than any horse-bite he has ever known. He feels betrayed, hurt. He needs to get along with Lilómiel, and indeed he made the effort to do so, yet he gets repayed with a torn nose and bruised dignity. The shame of it, snapped at by the creature he most reveres!

Shooting the hatchling a filthy look, Volterra deliberately turns his attention to Nymeria, hooves shifting to present the dragon with his stout backside. Talk to that. His twin explains the bond, explains how their minds are reaching out to one another like two lovers in the night, and yet again the colt feels jealousy burn through him. "Is it good-scary, or bad-scary?" he questions. Good-scary being like when they raced as newborns, pushing into the unknown and testing the limits of their bodies with a healthy sense of fear, but excitement, too. Bad-scary? The sight of Nymeria when Ktulu approached them in her bear form, the idea that the grizzly beast may take her from him, the knowledge that he would do anything in his power to stop that. He hasn't known terror like it, before or since.